Wellington, New Zealand – Global small business platform Xero has appointed Chris O’Neill to the role of chief growth officer, where he will be responsible for strategic direction and operational performance within Xero’s newly-created applications and services division, which represents part of Xero’s small business platform. He starts his role at Xero officially on April 4, 2022.

As he will be based in San Francisco, USA, he will be responsible as well for leading the strategic development of Xero in the Americas, and working closely with Tony Ward, president for the Americas at Xero.

Chris joins Xero having served as a senior executive, board member and investor for a number of global technology companies, including Google and Evernote. He also has deep leadership experience in global and North American consumer and enterprise markets.

Steve Vamos, CEO at Xero, commented, “The global cloud-based small business applications software market is still in a relatively early stage of development and represents a huge opportunity. Chris brings extensive experience to help further develop and grow a number of exciting business areas within Xero.” 

He added, “I look forward to Chris helping us further scale Xero’s business in the US and Canada, building on our go to market and product efforts to date; through partnerships, acquisitions, and further development of our product capabilities to meet the needs of customers and partners.”