Pluralsight Executives Honored with Top Awards in Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Product Development
CEO, CMO and CPO Recognised Following Record Year in Growth, Revenue and National Awards for Professional Learning Company
Pluralsight, the global leader in online learning for technology professionals, capped a record year of company-wide growth with prestigious individual awards for three members of its executive team.
Aaron Skonnard, CEO and co-founder of Pluralsight, was named the 2016 MountainWest Capital Network Entrepreneur of the Year and a Utah Business CEO of the Year. After bootstrapping the company for nearly a decade, Skonnard led Pluralsight through several multimillion-dollar funding rounds and seven key acquisitions. Under his leadership, the company has achieved a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 100 percent over the past five years.
At the helm of Pluralsight, Skonnard has built an internal team of more than 500 strong committed to democratising professional technology learning, and has grown Pluralsight’s author network to nearly 1,000 industry experts focused on curating timely and relevant courses that empower tech and creative professionals to remain in the forefront of their industries. He’s also shown leadership in expanding tech learning nationwide by partnering with the White House’s TechHire initiative, contributing a $20 million in-kind donation to provide free courses to unemployed individuals across the country.
Pluralsight chief marketing officer Brett Barlow and chief product officer Nate Walkingshaw were recognised in Utah Business’ SAMY Awards and Forty Under 40 list, respectively. Barlow executed several successful marketing campaigns through adept branding and messaging; Camp Pluralsight (a six-week gamified training challenge) and Three Days of Coding (a three-day free public coding initiative) saw a combined total of 66,000 participants, resulting in more than $1 million in revenue from paid sign-ups. Walkingshaw, an inventor and entrepreneur, introduced a uniquely disruptive product development team to Pluralsight. Using his Directed Discovery product development blueprint, Walkingshaw led his team in overhauling Pluralsight’s learning platform, providing new and improved experiences for the course page, dashboard, search function and mobile app, optimising the user experience for both individual learners and enterprise customers and propelling the company toward becoming a real-time, personalised learning platform.
“I’m proud of our team’s commitment to Pluralsight’s mission of democratising professional technology learning,” said Skonnard. “As we continue working to enable professionals and enterprises to skill up professionally and learn new technical skills, we’re thrilled to have leaders like Brett, Nate and many others on board who emulate our company culture. We’re looking forward to what 2016 will bring.”
These awards follow a year of numerous distinguished accomplishments and milestones for Pluralsight in 2015, including:
• The American Business Award: 2015 Most Innovative Tech Company,
• Forbes America’s Most Promising Companies,
• Utah Business Magazine’s Best Companies to Work For,
• Inc. 500: No. 2 fastest growing private education company,
• The Deloitte Technology Fast 500: No. 95,
• Business Intelligence Group’s 2015 BIG Awards Company of the Year for business education category,
• Entrepreneur’s Top Company Cultures List: No. 20 in the large enterprise category,
• Business Insider’s 20 Best Unicorn Startups to Work For: No. 1, and
• Best in Biz Awards: Gold 2015 Company of the Year.
For more information on Pluralsight, visit www.pluralsight.com.