Peter Gassner is the visionary behind Veeva, one of the world’s most successful and innovative cloud software companies. He pioneered the industry cloud category when he founded Veeva in 2007 with the belief that vertical cloud software would be the next wave of cloud innovation. Today, Veeva helps more than 1,000 life sciences companies bring new medicines and treatments to patients faster.
With more than 30 years experience at leading technology companies, Peter has been at the forefront of every major transition in enterprise software, from the mainframe at IBM Silicon Valley Lab, to client-server at PeopleSoft, the cloud at Salesforce, and industry cloud software at Veeva. He was a key visionary force behind three of the industry’s most successful enterprise application platforms: Veeva Vault, the Salesforce Platform, and PeopleTools.
Peter is an advocate for corporate social responsibility, customer success, and employee success. Driven by a belief that companies have a duty to serve society, not just shareholders, he led the effort for Veeva to become a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). With a focus on employee rights he has taken a strong stand against non-compete agreements which restrict employees’ basic freedom to change jobs.
Through his leadership, Veeva has been widely recognized as one of the world’s top growth companies, including the Fortune Future 50, Forbes Fast Tech 25, and Fortune 100 Fastest-Growing Companies.
Peter currently serves on the board of directors of Veeva and Zoom, and served on the board of directors of Guidewire Software from 2015 to 2019. He holds a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Oregon State University.