Pleasanton, Calif. – September 15, 2026 -- Workday, Inc. (NASDAQ: WDAY) has appointed Sarah Kennedy Ellis as chief marketing officer, effective October 5, 2026, tasking her with driving the enterprise software vendor's brand strategy for the AI era.
Kennedy Ellis arrives from Google Cloud with two decades of enterprise marketing experience
Kennedy Ellis will report directly to co-founder, CEO, and chair Aneel Bhusri and take charge of Workday's global marketing and communications organization. She joins from Google, where she led global marketing for Google Cloud and Google Workspace, contributing to what the company describes as one of enterprise technology's fastest-growing businesses.
Her prior roles include CMO positions at Adobe Experience Cloud and Marketo
Before Google, Kennedy Ellis served as chief marketing officer of Adobe Experience Cloud and, earlier, as CMO of Marketo, where she played a role in the company's 2018 acquisition by Adobe.
Workday frames the hire around AI-driven transformation across HR, finance, and IT
Bhusri said Kennedy Ellis has "driven growth at scale for some of the biggest technology companies in the world" and has spent the past decade focused on enterprise AI. Workday, which serves more than 11,500 organizations globally including over 65% of the Fortune 500, positions the appointment as part of its push to translate AI capabilities into customer-facing narratives as enterprises reassess how they manage workforce and financial operations.