Zscaler announced on September 24 that Ross Tackett will become Chief Revenue Officer, effective October 1. Standard disclosure applies: I work at Zscaler. I'll add a second one: I'm a huge fan of Ross, so this is not a neutral take, and I'm not pretending it is.
Ross will own global revenue operations, the sales organization, the strategic partner ecosystem, and go-to-market execution. That's the whole engine that turns the platform into customers.
A Promotion, Not a Parachute
The detail I like most is that this is an internal promotion. Ross has been at Zscaler for three years, most recently as Head of Worldwide Sales. He's not showing up on day one with a slide deck about how things worked at his last company. He already knows the product, the customers, the partners, and the people carrying the number.
His resume behind that is serious: more than three decades in technology sales leadership, including over a decade at ServiceNow and more than 16 years at Dell. According to the release, his track record includes scaling multi-billion-dollar enterprise go-to-market organizations, pushing international expansion, and building high-performing revenue teams. That's exactly the experience you want at the wheel when a company is operating at Zscaler's scale.
"Ross Tackett brings an exceptional combination of operational discipline, global scale, and customer-first leadership to this important role."
— Jay Chaudhry, CEO, Chairman, and Founder, Zscaler
He's Selling the Right Story
Ross's own quote in the release is the thesis I've been writing about on this site for years:
"Enterprises worldwide are retiring complex, vulnerable legacy firewall and VPN-based security in favor of Zero Trust architecture, and Zscaler is uniquely positioned as the platform of choice."
— Ross Tackett, Chief Revenue Officer, Zscaler
Firewalls and VPNs keep showing up in breach reports because they put users on the network and hope for the best. Zero trust replaces that with a direct, verified connection between a user and an app. Having a CRO who leads with that argument, and not with feature checklists, matters.
A Clean Handoff
Ross succeeds Mike Rich, who is stepping down as CRO for personal reasons. Mike will stay on as a strategic advisor through December 31, 2026, to keep the transition smooth. His own comment says a lot about how this was handled:
"Having partnered side-by-side with Ross, I know our go-to-market team is in outstanding hands. His promotion reflects the strength of our leadership bench."
— Mike Rich, Zscaler
Thanks to Mike for everything he built. A handoff from one leader to someone he's worked alongside, with a real transition period, is how you change leadership without losing momentum.
Bottom Line
Promote the person who already knows the business, the customers, and the team, and who's done this at scale before. That's what Zscaler did. Congrats, Ross. Well deserved.
Full release: Zscaler Appoints Ross Tackett as Chief Revenue Officer