Brian Pietras, former head of technology ventures at UK-based outsourcing company Hays, has joined US-based enterprise human resources and finance management software provider Workday as vice-president of corporate strategy.
Last month, Workday relaunched Workday Ventures as its $250m corporate venturing fund. It initially established the unit in 2015 under the leadership of Adeyemi Ajao, its vice-president of technology products strategy, to focus on data and machine learning technologies for the enterprise.
Ajao left Workday in 2016 and the unit has been relatively quiet over the past 18 months. The new Workday Ventures will also fund developers of technologies such as blockchain, augmented and virtual reality.
Pietras told Global Corporate Venturing: “In addition to corporate strategy and growth initiatives, I will continue to work closely with the venture, early stage technology community and [software-as-a-service] ecosystem.”
At Hays, which he left in October 2017, Pietras’ deals included a limited partner commitment in Seedcamp’s third fund and the series A round for background checks service Onfido. His past experience includes time at units run by consumer goods producer Unilever and energy utility Centrica.