by Amer Akhtar
VP & Head of Small Business

Providing the best possible experience for our customers is our biggest priority at Yahoo Small Business, and an important part of that is making sure we hire the best talent. Leading up to the expected separation and the introduction of Luminate later this year, we’re continuing to focus on expanding our executive team, which is why I’m very excited to let you know about three key additions to the team: Chris Wayne, our new head of IT and Infrastructure, Matt Cokely, our new head of Customer Care, and Brandon Cruse, our new head of HR.

Below is a little bit about Chris, Matt, and Brandon, and why we’re thrilled to have them on board.

Chris Wayne, Head of IT and Infrastructure
As a Yahoo veteran of more than 12 years, Chris Wayne knows the ins and outs of the company. During his tenure, Chris led the Service Reliability Engineering team (or, as he likes to call it, the “technical firefighters”), where he was responsible for keeping Yahoo’s sites up and running. In his new role as the head of IT and Infrastructure, Chris has the important job of ensuring the technology behind our product is scalable, dependable, fast and secure.

Prior to Yahoo, Chris also served our country in the military where he was a combat engineer demolitions expert, a paratrooper in the 82nd division, and rose through the ranks to Sergeant. This unique background shows Chris’ loyalty, integrity, and honor, which he brings to the company everyday. I can’t think of a better person to entrust with maintaining our technology, which is the foundation of the services we offer.

Matt Cokely, Head of Customer Care
Matt is no stranger to Yahoo Small Business; in fact, some of you may recognize his name. Matt has been at Yahoo for 10 years, and was most recently the Director of Product Support Management. He also worked in customer support for Small Business and as an escalation engineer. And prior to Yahoo, he was a web developer by trade, so he has extensive knowledge of the backend of online stores and sites.

Matt is very familiar with our business, and has spent years building relationships with many of you. Because of this, he understands your wants and needs and is deeply invested in your success.

As we welcome Matt back to the Small Business team, he’ll be spending his time reconnecting, listening to your feedback, and providing real value for each of your small businesses. Matt will also be intimately involved in the rollout of many product initiatives we have planned to ensure customer success.

Brandon Cruse, Head of Human Resources
Brandon Cruse has many years of experience in HR, and we are thrilled to welcome him to the team. In his new role, Brandon will take a non-traditional HR approach, drawing from his experience working at a high energy startup and high growth larger company environments, with the goal of creating a results-driven, innovative, collegial, and most importantly, a customer-focused culture for our employees.

Most recently, Brandon was at Intuit and has experience managing HR for a global corporation. He also worked with a healthcare IT company where he learned the importance of a nimble, startup environment. With expertise in both large tech companies and smaller startups, he’s uniquely positioned to help us create a more dynamic culture, which is tantamount to the success of our team – and in turn allows them to give you the best possible care and attention.

These three new key hires ensure we have the best and the brightest to engage our customers and our employees. Our future is looking luminous.