At Freshworks, Chief People Officer Johanna Jackman is quietly but powerfully reshaping how a fast-growing tech company builds its culture and scales its workforce. Since joining the cloud-based customer service software company, Jackman has focused on strengthening core foundations that enable rapid yet sustainable growth. A key part of her approach involves using AI to create a 360-degree view of employees, leveraging tools that track learning attributes to identify skill gaps and guide future talent investments. Her efforts are aimed at ensuring that as Freshworks expands globally—from its roots in Chennai to a U.S. headquarters and offices worldwide—its culture remains strong, intentional, and unified. Jackman’s impact goes beyond policy—she’s prioritizing a seamless employee experience, building operational maturity, and embedding a strong people strategy across the company’s next growth phase. Her work is enabling Freshworks to scale without losing its human-centered roots, while keeping employees aligned and engaged.
Jackman’s career spans continents and industries, shaped by both her early grounding in Australia and her global leadership roles across high-tech companies. She earned her bachelor's degree in business from Queensland University of Technology and later held pivotal HR roles at Microsoft and ninemsn before moving into senior leadership at LinkedIn. At LinkedIn, she helped scale the company from 1,200 to 10,000 employees, guiding the people function through rapid growth and its acquisition by Microsoft. As CPO at Pure Storage, she helped the company hit a $1 billion valuation in record time for the industry, and later led HR through hypergrowth at Airtable. Jackman’s trajectory shows a consistent thread; she thrives in high-growth environments where organizational focus, scalable systems, and culture-building must work hand in hand.