Our mission is to accelerate the growth of emerging enterprise software companies that are valuable to our customers and complementary to our products.
We seek to partner with promising private companies to create the next generation of enterprise software.
Workday took an entirely new approach to enterprise software. We started from a clean sheet of paper and reinvented an industry. Along the way, we’ve collected coveted honors and become an industry leader.
Workday Ventures stems from the same innovative roots, making us an incredible partner for your innovation journey.
Our $250 million fund invests in early- to growth-stage companies that will shape the next generation of enterprise technology. We want to extend Workday research and development by discovering and strategically investing in new technologies and business models that will benefit our customers. And we want to accomplish this with an open mind-set for innovation while fostering meaningful relationships with the start-up venture community.
Together, we will help shape the enterprise software industry.
Leighanne Levensaler is managing director and co-head for Workday Ventures. She is also the senior vice president of corporate strategy at Workday, where she leads the organization responsible for developing integrated business strategies.
Leighanne brings 20 years of experience and an exceptional level of expertise in technology and business to her current role. Leighanne previously led product management for Workday’s applications including Workday Financial Management and Workday Human Capital Management. Prior to joining Workday in 2009, Leighanne was principal analyst and director of talent management research at Bersin & Associates. Before that, she led the learning consulting practice at SystemLink Enterprise Solutions, and previously held positions at SmartForce, Edutrek International/AIU, and Deloitte Consulting. Leighanne has served on the board of directors for Landit since 2015, and has been on the employer advisory board for Jobcase since 2016. In addition, Leighanne currently sits on the advisory committee for BSA’s foundation, Software.org and is a member of the Rework America Task Force, a Markle Initiative.
Leighanne holds a master’s degree in human resource development from Georgia State University and a bachelor’s degree in education from Clemson University. She was named one of the “Most Influential Women in the Bay Area” by the San Francisco Business Times in 2014 and 2015, and is a member of the 2012 Class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute.
Mark Peek is managing director and co-head at Workday Ventures, and oversees Workday’s investments in emerging enterprise technologies. Previously, from 2015 to 2018, Mark served as Workday’s co-president, and from 2012 to 2016, served as Workday’s chief financial officer.
Prior to joining Workday as chief financial officer in June 2012, Mark served as co-president and chief financial officer at VMware, a global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure. During his five years at VMware, Mark led the company’s IPO and helped to build the finance and business operations infrastructure as the company scaled to become a large enterprise software provider. From 2000 to 2007, Mark was senior vice president and chief accounting officer at Amazon.com. Mark also spent 10 years as a partner at Deloitte. Mark has served on the board of directors for Trimble Navigation since 2010, was previously on the board of directors for Workday from 2011 to 2012, and currently sits on the advisory board of the Michael G. Foster School of Business at the University of Washington.
Mark graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in accounting and business administration from Minnesota State University.
Brittany joined Workday Ventures in 2018 after nearly a decade at Goldman Sachs where she was a senior technology investment banker in San Francisco. At Workday Ventures, she is responsible for leading investments and helping accelerate the growth of portfolio companies.
While at Goldman Sachs, Brittany was an advisor to enterprise software and internet companies. She worked on products and advisory assignments, including equity, debt, mergers and acquisitions, and select investments. She spent a significant amount of time identifying, growing, and developing relationships with the next generation of clients for GS and led its annual Cloud Conference from 2014–2016.
Brittany’s GS experience includes one year in leveraged finance in New York. She was jointly staffed between Technology, Media, Telecom Leveraged Finance and Middle Markets Leveraged Finance. In TMT Leveraged Finance she worked with the TMT industry group to advise and execute debt issuance for higher-risk borrowers to raise working capital for general corporate purposes, leveraged buyouts, M&A, and refinancing. She analyzed market trends, and go-to-market judgments for clients. Brittany was selected by Leveraged Finance senior leadership to dedicate a portion of time toward helping create a new MM Leveraged Finance business.
Brittany completed over 75 financing and strategic transactions during nearly a decade at Goldman Sachs. Transactions involved clients including Amazon, Appdynamics, Atlassian, Citrix, Cornerstone onDemand, Docker, Dropbox, Genesys, Getty Images, Google, Looker, Sabre, Softbank, Sprint, SuccessFactors, Tableau, Tesla, Yodlee, and Zendesk.
Brittany is a Georgetown University alum, a former NCAA Division 1 Golfer, and IMG Academy / David Leadbetter Golf Academy alum.
James is a core member of Workday’s Corporate Strategy team, where he explores product-based frontiers. Given his extensive product and go-to-market experience, he also is part of the thought leadership determining new Workday Ventures investments.
James came to Workday in 2015, following the acquisition of MediaCore, a cloud video infrastructure application, where he was an early employee and leader. He then led Product Strategy and go-to-market for Workday Learning, before joining the Corporate Strategy team to focus on frontier-based product strategy across the Workday platform.
James has spoken at SXSW, TEDx, and State of the Net, served on the board of the SXSW LAUNCH start-up competition, and has advised U.S. policymakers on enterprise blockchain policy.
He holds a classical music degree from the University of Sheffield, and has studied disruptive strategy, blockchain, artificial intelligence, and product management at HBS, MIT, Oxford Saïd Business School, and UC Berkeley, respectively. Outside of Workday, much of his time is spent singing in the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and doing CrossFit.
James gets excited by cloud infrastructure, the API economy, platform strategy, and crypto, and has a passion for building products that use advanced technologies to create transformational experiences.
Eric leads operations at Workday Ventures. He works closely with portfolio companies to help drive their growth and access to Workday and the broader software ecosystem.
Prior to joining Workday in 2017, Eric was an investor at Presidio Ventures, the strategic venture arm of the Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo Corporation. During his 5 years at Presidio, he helped lead and close 20 deals across enterprise software and infrastructure, ranging from mobile enterprise platforms to software defined storage. Eric also worked in business development at Xerox PARC helping to commercialize and bring to market PARC research and technology. An engineer at heart, he began his career as a software engineer, first developing avionics software at Boeing for the B-1B strategic bomber before moving to Qualcomm to help debug mobile 3G data layer protocols.
Eric holds a bachelor and masters degree in computer science from UCLA, and an MBA from Yale.
