Kira Makagon
An 11 year veteran of RingCentral, Kira Makagon serves as Chief Innovation Officer where she leads global product, user experience, engineering, cloud operations, security, and IT. She has been a critical driver in defining RingCentral’s product strategy and global reach that has put RingCentral at the forefront of the communications and collaboration market, leading to rapid year-over-year growth from pre-IPO to over $1.5 billion in annual recurring revenue.
From 2012 on, Makagon led a number of market-first product innovations at global scale, such as RingCentral's mobile-first cloud PBX with integrated video meetings capabilities. She launched RingCentral's open platform, allowing for customizable workflows through open APIs.
In 2015, Makagon led the acquisition of Glip, a team messaging solution, making RingCentral the first cloud communications provider to have a truly unified solution across messaging, video, and phone. Under her leadership, RingCentral brought omnichannel capabilities into its collaborative contact center solution with the acquisitions of ConnectFirst and Dimelo, enhancing the customer experience for businesses worldwide.
In 2020, Makagon spearheaded the launch of RingCentral Video®, the company's proprietary video meetings solution.
In 2021, she focused on launching RingCentral Ventures™, RingCentral's corporate ventures arm, which partners with exceptional founding teams and leading venture capitalists to reimagine the future of work through communications and collaboration. With RingCentral Ventures well on its way, Makagon expanded her responsibilities and resumed her leadership of the innovation organization.
Makagon has received numerous awards, including a 2021 Aragon Research Women in Technology Award; a 2020 Silver Stevie for Most Innovative Woman of the Year – Technology; a 2019 Gold Women World Award for Excellence in Industry Woman of the Year: Cloud Computing/SaaS/Internet; a 2018 San Francisco Business Times Forever Influential Honor Roll award; a 2016 Silver Stevie for Female Executive of the Year; a 2016 Most Influential Women in Business from the San Francisco Business Times; a 2015 Women of Influence from the Silicon Valley Business Journal; and a 2015 Golden Bridge Business and Innovation award.
Throughout her career, Makagon has pioneered multiple transformational technologies and companies, and served as an advisor to entrepreneurs and early stage companies. Before joining RingCentral, Makagon founded and served as CEO and president of Red Aril, a real-time audience and media optimization platform, acquired by Hearst Corporation. Prior to that, she co-founded and held executive and board positions at flagship online marketing and CRM companies, including Octane Software, acquired by E.piphany, and Scopus Technology, acquired by Siebel.
Makagon is a regular lecturer at UC Berkeley and participant in industry panels and podcasts. She holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Calix and American Technion Society.