Zapier names Chief People & AI Transformation Officer to lead culture shift

Zapier has appointed Brandon Sammut as its first Chief People & AI Transformation Officer, placing organisational focus on people and cultural change in the implementation of artificial intelligence.

The company's approach differs from traditional AI initiatives by prioritising talent and organisational culture over technological infrastructure. According to Zapier, 97% of its employees currently use AI as part of their daily roles, while all job candidates are now assessed for AI fluency. Developer productivity has also increased by 11% in 2025 through the use of AI tools including Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot.

Wade Foster, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Zapier, emphasised the significance of a people-led approach to AI.

"Every company is talking about AI transformation, but few are doing it well," said Foster. "While much focus is on AI tools, true transformation starts with people, culture, and leadership. And when teams use AI to radically pursue business and customer value, they don't just automate tasks-they reimagine work-unlocking new ways to serve customers and create impact at scale."

AI transformation officer

Zapier's internal figures indicate that the company has prioritised widespread employee adoption of AI technology. Beyond evaluating job candidates for AI proficiency, various departments have reported operational improvements. The Talent team uses AI to prevent fraudulent candidates entering recruitment pipelines, and can generate new hiring plans 90% faster, reportedly saving five hours for every new role. The Revenue Operations team is running 25 AI workflows and agents, claiming to save the equivalent of 34 full-time work weeks each month. Meanwhile, the Finance team has automated processes to reduce month-end close times by 25%, despite an increase in complexity, and maintains operations with an eight-person team for a business with annual revenues exceeding USD $5 billion.

Brandon Sammut, Chief People & AI Transformation Officer at Zapier, said,

"The Zapier team is becoming a blueprint for AI transformation. Done thoughtfully, AI transformation isn't about replacing humans with machines. It's about redesigning work in ways that boost efficiency, quality and, importantly, the experience of the people doing the work."

Practical insights and results

Zapier is running a series of webinars with business leaders to discuss tactics for deploying large-scale AI transformation projects. The main session in the series will see Zapier unveil its 2026 AI Transformation Strategy and Playbook.

Several customers have shared feedback on the adoption of Zapier's AI-powered automation. David Long, Vice President of Marketing at the Portland Trail Blazers, reported:

"Our marketing team at the Portland Trail Blazers went from spending 50 hours a week manually analyzing fan event feedback surveys to just 3. We used Zapier and AI to connect our feedback tools, analyze sentiment, and share insights with sales in real time - and the results boosted fan engagement and revenue."

Other clients saw changes in operational efficiency and revenue. Jacob Sirrs, Marketing Operations Specialist at Vendasta, commented,

"With Zapier and AI, we've turned manual busywork into a growth engine. Our sales reps have reclaimed 282 working days a year and we've recovered over USD $1 million in revenue-simply by letting automation handle what used to slow us down. Now, our team can focus on what they do best: connecting with customers and closing deals."

Edward Tull, Vice President of Technology at JBGoodwin REALTORS, indicated streamlined recruitment efforts, stating,

"Zapier has completely transformed how we recruit and support our real estate agents. By combining automation and AI, we've increased recruiting by 37%, cut manual work by 25%, and given every recruiter detailed applicant insights automatically. It's like having a highly skilled team working behind the scenes-creating, refining, and scaling everything from content to data-so our people can focus on what matters most: helping clients move forward."

Zapier's model is centred around positioning business teams at the forefront of transformation, with leadership roles such as AI Transformation Officer intended to embed AI as a shared organisational capability rather than an isolated technology function. The forthcoming webinar series aims to share learnings and strategies to help other organisations adopt similar approaches in 2026.