Former Bungie, VMware exec takes on Highspot chief people officer role

Seattle-based sales software platform Highspot has shown impressive growth this year.

In February, the startup raised a $200 million Series E and reached a value of $2.3 billion. Co-founder and CEO Robert Wahbe told the Business Journal in July Highspot had more than 600 employees at the time. As the startup continues to grow, it has brought in Amy Johnson as its new chief people officer to help manage the company's culture.

"A large part of that has to do with just looking at the market forces out there and figuring out how we build talent at hyper growth," Johnson said.

Johnson started at Highspot about a month ago and is the company's first person to hold her position. She was previously the chief people officer at the Bellevue-based game studio Bungie, which is behind the hit Halo and Destiny franchises. She also spent more than seven years at VMware, an app and cloud company based in Palo, Alto, California, but has almost 110,000 square feet of office space in Bellevue.

Johnson also stressed the importance of diversity when growing the company. She said the company prioritizes bringing levity to all-hands meetings, which happen every week. Highspot also has a team that focuses on fun events for employees. For National Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from Sep. 15 to Oct. 15, employees could sign up for virtual salsa dancing lessons, for example.

Highspot was founded in 2012. The company's technology helps customer-facing employees with guidance, training and content management. Its clients include Adobe and Zillow.

According to Johnson, the company now has 700 employees and will likely add about 300 over the next year. The company is still deciding exactly how it will work in the post-pandemic world, but Johnson said Highspot is trying to provide flexibility.

"We think there are times where it's really great to have people in person where we're doing planning or we're doing brainstorming," Johnson said. "But we also want to acknowledge the fact that the desires of the employees are changing as well."