Instructure Names Rachel Orston as Chief Customer Officer to Build on Legacy of Transformative Customer Experience

SALT LAKE CITY — January 10, 2024 — Instructure, the leading learning platform and maker of Canvas, today announced Rachel Orston as its new Chief Customer Officer. Instructure’s CX team leverages real-world educational experience as it helps customers improve student outcomes, with over half of its CX team having taught or worked in educational institutions.  Former Chief Customer Experience Officer Melissa Loble now assumes the newly-created Chief Academic Officer role full-time to further elevate the educator experience and surround customers with academic expertise. 

Orston brings over 25 years of experience strengthening customer relationships in various organizations and a deep passion for education. Her leadership experience at various companies, including Fortune 100 businesses and startups in various industries, will prove instrumental as Instructure continues to scale to meet the evolving needs of international customers. She joins Instructure at a time of significant growth, as customers adopt new solutions within the Instructure Learning Platform to fulfill the evolving demands of the learning experience, integrates recent acquisitions and evolves to meet the needs of lifelong learners. 

Prior to Instructure, Orston served as Chief Customer Officer at SmartRecruiters, a hiring platform,  leading their post-sales organization and achieving record-breaking customer satisfaction and net retention targets. From 2019 to 2021, Orston held the position of Chief Customer Officer at BetterCloud, where she similarly orchestrated the growth of customer success, professional services and support teams. BetterCloud received a strategic growth investment from Vista Equity in 2022.  

“Instructure’s unique approach of surrounding customers with passionate, experienced advocates attracted me to this role,” said Orston. “I look forward to building on a legacy of outstanding customer experience and making learning more accessible as we work alongside educators.” 

“The key to our success is our singular focus on our incredible customers and helping them keep educators at the center of the learning experience,” said Steve Daly, CEO of Instructure. “Rachel’s background, passion for education, and leadership experience will be invaluable to the company as we work together to meet the unique challenges faced by our global customer base in 2024 and beyond.”

Orston has extensive experience in the world of blogging and public speaking, having presented at several notable events, including SaaStr, Gainsight Pulse and SuccessCon. She is an investor and founding member of CS Angel, as well as a proud member of CHIEF. Orston earned a Master of Business Administration from Georgia Tech and a Bachelor of Science in Journalism from Northwestern University. 

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains “forward-looking” statements, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the potential, timing and examples of any strategic alternatives. All statements other than statements of historical facts are “forward-looking statements,” including statements relating to expectations and benefits of our strategy, market share and growth opportunities, organic platform expansion, and future business and product capabilities. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, but are based on management’s expectations as of the date of this press release and assumptions that are inherently subject to uncertainties, risks and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements include the risk factors described in the Company’s annual report on Form 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on February 17, 2023 and other documents filed with the SEC and could cause actual results to vary from expectations. All information provided in this press release is as of the date hereof and Instructure undertakes no duty to update this information except as required by law.