Qualtrics’ Zig Serafin shared the following note with all Qualtrics employees Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025.
Today marks a major milestone — for Qualtrics and for me personally.
After more than 25 years in tech — and exactly nine years since I joined Qualtrics — this week I’m stepping into a new role: Vice Chairman and Special Advisor. I’ll continue supporting the company in this capacity through our next season of exciting growth, as well as on our Board. Qualtrics is at a key acceleration and inflection point. Driven by our AI innovations, adoption, and impact, Qualtrics’ incredible story continues as our business heads toward $2 billion in revenue and we shape an exciting new era for experience management alongside our customers and partners.
While we search for my replacement, Board of Directors members Jim Whitehurst and Mark Gillett will step in as interim co-CEOs.
The hardest part of this decision is that there’s never a perfect time to step back from something you love. But now is the right time to begin a thoughtful search for our next CEO - a process that will take time to do right.
The first time I met our co-founder Jared Smith in 2015, our one-hour dinner in Seattle stretched to 4 hours. A few months later, Ryan Smith and I walked through the Provo office, still under construction, and imagined how we could bring experience management to life there. From those early interactions until we eventually decided it would be right for me to join, I fell in love with Qualtrics — with our mission, the category we created, our values, our people and our customers.
Today, Qualtrics is the AI Experience Management partner to the world’s most iconic organizations, shaping the most critical experiences in business and in people’s lives. That’s a legacy — and a future — we should all be incredibly proud of.
Bringing in Mark and Jim as interim leaders allows them to get directly involved as we shape our 2026 plans and prepare for the planned integration of Press Ganey Forsta. Jim will also become our Executive Chairman, providing continuity into our future CEO’s tenure.
Both Jim and Mark have served on our Board for many years and bring a deep understanding of our business, our strategy, and our culture. Jim is a seasoned executive and former CEO of Red Hat, where he helped grow the company into one of the world’s leading enterprise software businesses. He later served as President of IBM and is widely respected for his leadership in open-source technology and customer-driven innovation.
Mark is a proven leader with several CEO and COO roles in his background, and over the past decade at Silver Lake he’s helped scale and guide some of the world’s most successful enterprise software and cloud companies. He is a technologist and builder, and he knows our business deeply from working closely with our team and Board over the past several years. Both will bring steady leadership, clear focus, and a deep commitment to our people and customers during this transition.
I’ll remain closely connected — championing our customers, serving as Vice Chairman on the Board, and supporting Jim and Mark on our long-term initiatives and our AI innovation.
I’m deeply grateful to have worked alongside so many talented and caring teammates who are building something truly special. I’m also thankful to have partnered with co-founders Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, Dr. Scott Smith, and our investors — Silver Lake, CPPIB, MSD-BDT, Accel, Sequoia, Insight Partners, SAP, and many others. Many of the friendships I’ve made here will stay with me for life.
Thank you — truly — from the bottom of my heart.