Fastly Names Microsoft Veteran as CMO

Fastly has picked Margaret Arakawa to serve as the global edge cloud network provider’s next Chief Marketing Officer, effective immediately.

In her new role, Arakawa will report directly to CEO Joshua Bixby and lead the San Francisco-based company’s go-to-market strategy. She will also bring a specific focus on accelerating Fastly’s enterprise customer growth, expanding the company’s total addressable market, and building brand awareness.

Arakawa brings more than 25 years of experience to her new mission, including her most recent role as the CMO at SaaS startup Outreach. Before that, she spent most of her career with Microsoft, where she led business strategy, product planning and product marketing for the tech giant’s Windows, Security, and Azure businesses.

“Margaret has an impressive track record of driving high-growth and business expansion for public companies,” Bixby stated in the company’s press release. “Her expertise in optimizing marketing teams for demand generation and brand building will help propel us to the next level of growth and market relevance, and I’m very excited about the tremendous impact she will have as a key member of our executive team.”

Arakawa is the second significant C-suite hire Fastly has made in the closing months of 2021. In late November, it also hired ex-Google executive Lakshmi Sharma as its new Chief Product Officer to help bolster its delivery, security, and edge compute portfolio.

“Fastly has phenomenal product-market fit and an ever-increasing total addressable market,” said Arakawa. “Fastly supports a significant portion of the online experiences we rely on every day, and there is still tremendous growth potential and opportunity ahead. The future of the internet is being built on Fastly’s network, and I look forward to helping the company grow its brand and enterprise customer base.”