JW Player Welcomes Phil Harrell as Chief Revenue Officer

(US and Canada) JW Player, the leading online video platform for video-led businesses, today announced it has appointed seasoned sales and marketing leader Phil Harrell as Chief Revenue Officer. In his new role, Harrell will oversee all of JW Player’s go-to-market and growth initiatives across the company’s sales, marketing, customer success, and partnerships teams. The strategic hire comes as the company continues to accelerate its growth after generating record revenue and profitability during the past year.

“When it comes to scaling SaaS organizations, Phil’s track record is second to none,” said Dave Otten, CEO and co-founder of JW Player. “His deep knowledge and expertise are invaluable assets as we continue to accelerate JW Player’s top line growth, building on our momentum from prior years. Importantly, Phil is an exceptional professional, whose character and leadership philosophy are a perfect fit for JW Player’s culture. We could not be more excited to have him join our team.”

Phil joins JW Player with 30 years of experience building and leading high-performance sales and marketing teams at both established enterprises and early-stage startups. Prior to joining JW Player, Phil most recently served as vice president and group director of sales research at Forrester. There, he led a team of veteran sales leaders in providing actionable insights and valuable guidance to a wide variety of growth-oriented business professionals. Phil’s past leadership positions at hyper growth tech startups include vice president of sales at HubSpot, and vice president of sales at Akamai Technologies, among others.

“I am thrilled to come aboard JW Player as a member of its exceptional leadership team,” said Phil. “Never have I felt so confident in a company's ability to see immediate, sustained returns from a well-integrated, well-executed revenue growth strategy. Much of that confidence comes from the simple fact that they have created an incredible product that their customers can believe in. Their cutting-edge video monetization capabilities consistently deliver ROIs well beyond those of their nearest competitors. And when it comes to innovation, they never take their foot off the gas. JW Player is a company fuelled by the belief that their platform can always be expanded, improved, and reimagined.”

Phil began his high-tech sales career at Pegasystems, the leading business process management software provider, and later worked as chief revenue officer at Firecracker and vice president of sales at Kaminario. For the past 20 years, Phil has excelled as an active angel investor in early-stage B2B companies, including digital video startup, Viddler, for whom he served as a member of the board of directors for several years. Over the years, he’s also dedicated time to various charitable efforts, including serving on the boards of directors of Read to a Child, an education nonprofit for at-risk elementary students. Phil is also an active and well-respected industry thought leader, whose three-and-a-half year run as Host of the popular “Ask a Sales Leader” podcast helped thousands of listeners navigate the complexities of B2B sales.

Over the coming months, he looks forward to learning the finer-details of the thriving digital video economy, and bring his talents to bear in this new terrain.