SAN FRANCISCO, January 6, 2023 — Forethought, the leading Generative AI platform for customer support teams, announced today it has hired enterprise SaaS partnerships veteran Aaron Verstraete as the company’s first VP of Strategic Alliances to focus on developing our existing partner ecosystem and expanding it to support our customers, partners, and team more effectively.
Aaron joins Forethought after 20 years of working across company boundaries as a product manager, consultant, and partnerships specialist. Aaron started his career at Microsoft before joining Bain & Company as a consultant in their Chicago, São Paulo, and San Francisco offices. Since then, he has focused on enterprise SaaS as a PM and partner leader at Box, DataFox, unitQ, and Zendesk. While at Zendesk, he spearheaded partnerships with tech giants like Amazon Web Services and others.
“My passion for the CX space was born in my time at Zendesk and continues in this transition,” says Verstraete. “Forethought’s mission to transform customer experience with Human-Centered AI resonates strongly with my belief that there is a better way for agents and users to connect. The appetite for these tools, the state of innovation, and the need for improved experiences and efficiency have aligned to introduce incredible change.”
In his new role, Aaron will focus on making our existing partners—including help desk and contact center partners, BPOs, and other CX technology vendors—successful in helping our customers thrive, identifying new partners with whom to collaborate, and eventually building out the team needed to support a thriving ecosystem of partners.
“I couldn’t be more excited to welcome Aaron to Forethought! His broad industry expertise will help us strengthen our strategic partnerships and ultimately better serve our customers,” says Deon Nicholas, CEO, and Co-Founder at Forethought. “We’re lucky to have Aaron on board and can’t wait to see what we can accomplish together.”
About Forethought
Launched in 2018, Forethought is a leading generative AI company providing customer service automation that helps support teams maximize efficiency and productivity. Forethought’s products enable seamless customer experiences by infusing generative AI, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), at each stage of the customer support journey: resolving common cases instantly, predicting and prioritizing cases, and assisting agents with relevant knowledge—all from one platform.
