Avalara appoints Sydney Carey & Karyn Smith to top roles

Avalara has announced the appointments of Sydney Carey as Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Karyn Smith as Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer.

Both executives will serve as members of Avalara's executive leadership team and report directly to the company's President.

Sydney Carey will lead Avalara's worldwide Finance & Accounting team. She is also tasked with modernising the finance and accounting processes for the company.

Carey brings more than 20 years of experience working at and with technology companies. Most recently, she was Chief Financial Officer at Talkdesk. Previously, she served as Chief Financial Officer at Sumo Logic, where she led the company through its initial public offering. She has also worked as Chief Financial Officer at Zscaler and MongoDB, and spent a decade at TIBCO, initially as Corporate Controller and subsequently as Chief Financial Officer when it was a public company.

Karyn Smith joins Avalara with over 30 years of experience working at and with high-growth companies, both private and publicly traded. She spent more than seven years at Twilio, having joined the company in 2014 as its first lawyer. Smith led a global team at Twilio, overseeing legal, government affairs, regulatory compliance, privacy, and ethics as the company grew to USD $2.8 billion in annual revenue in 2021.

In her role as Chief Legal Officer, Smith will head Avalara's Legal team, with responsibility for all legal matters related to global operations and strategic business initiatives.

Ross Tennenbaum, President of Avalara, remarked on the appointments. "Sydney and Karyn bring deep finance, legal and operational expertise to Avalara that will help us continue to grow profitability while protecting our proprietary offerings," said Tennenbaum. "Avalara aspires to be part of every transaction in the world, and we look forward to having these two renowned leaders in technology as part of our team."

Avalara provides tax compliance automation software solutions for over 41,000 business and government customers in more than 75 countries. The company's software leverages over 1,200 signed partner integrations across ecommerce, ERP, and other billing systems, to support tax calculations, document management, tax return filing, and access to tax content.