Veteran Euro Tech Exec Kate Burns Shifts To SHIFT To Help Its Expansion

Last time we checked in with Kate Burns, the former Director of Google UK and AOL EU, she’d been hired by Drawbridge, a cross-device ad targeting startup backed by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia. Now one of Europe’s most experienced ‘scaling up’ executives has literally shifted over to SHIFT to head its European expansion and focus on driving global adoption for its marketing platform.

SHIFT’s Open Marketing Cloud is for “social” advertisers, providing tools for planning, advertising and analyzing social marketing campaigns across Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. She will be based in London, where SHIFT opened its first international office in September 2013.

Burns is a rare beast on the European tech scene: a highly experienced operator with over 16 years of sales, business development and digital expansion experience on an international level for major technology brands.

She was Google’s first international hire in 2001, has held key sales positions at Altavista, Doubleclick, Ziff Davis, and News International and also created KT3, a commercial development firm helping technology businesses expand into Europe.