Name: Michelle Donnelly
Company: Crescendo
Position: Chief Revenue Officer
Website: https://www.crescendo.ai/
About Michelle Donnelly
Michelle Donnelly joined Crescendo, the AI-native CX platform, as Chief Revenue Officer in 2024 at a pivotal moment for the company and the broader customer experience industry. AI adoption was accelerating, but most revenue organisations were still operating with traditional sales structures built for a pre-AI era. Michelle stepped into the role with a clear mandate: redesign the commercial engine to match a fundamentally different technological reality.
One of the first challenges she faced was structural. Her team not only sold AI solutions but also relied on AI daily for research, forecasting, and proof-of-value development. Traditional compensation models, workflows, and performance expectations no longer reflected how work was being done. Rather than layering AI onto outdated systems, Michelle rebuilt the go-to-market motion from the ground up. She restructured incentives around measurable outcomes, clarified where human accountability was essential, and ensured automation raised performance standards rather than lowered them.
Since joining Crescendo, Michelle has scaled the go-to-market organisation by 3x. She helped design an outcome-based pricing model that guarantees measurable business results for enterprises transforming customer service with AI. Under her leadership, Crescendo surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in under two years and delivered more than 500 AI deployments globally. Internal adoption mirrored external success, with account manager ramp time reduced by nearly 45% using the same AI tools used for customers.
Earlier in her career, Michelle spent nearly a decade at Salesforce, leading retail go-to-market strategy and securing multimillion-dollar enterprise agreements with global brands. Later, as CRO at Groq, she tested commercial strategies across cloud, enterprise, and customer experience markets. Those experiences reinforced a defining principle: revenue growth must be grounded in product market fit and operational discipline, not persuasion alone.
Michelle’s impact extends beyond company performance. She is helping redefine how revenue leaders approach AI adoption. Her philosophy is clear: technology drives efficiency, but humans remain accountable for outcomes. She hires for grit over pedigree, building diverse teams that challenge assumptions and close decision-making blind spots. By proving that AI can accelerate ramp time, compress deployment cycles, and support guaranteed pricing models, she is demonstrating that operational excellence is as important as product innovation.
Across 15 years in high-growth technology environments spanning retail, financial services, and AI infrastructure, Michelle has built durable revenue engines in emerging markets. Her leadership is pragmatic, data-driven, and focused on measurable impact. In an industry still debating the role of AI, she is building the commercial blueprint for how it should work in practice.
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