SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zapier, the most connected AI orchestration platform, today announced the appointment of Brandon Sammut as its first Chief People & AI Transformation Officer, marking a new chapter in how companies lead AI transformation from within.
Unlike AI efforts focused squarely on technical infrastructure, Zapier’s AI transformation model reflects the belief that the AI opportunity—like prior business transformations—comes down to talent and culture.
“Every company is talking about AI transformation, but few are doing it well,” said Wade Foster, co-founder and CEO of Zapier. “While much focus is on AI tools, true transformation starts with people, culture, and leadership. And when teams use AI to radically pursue business and customer value, they don’t just automate tasks—they reimagine work—unlocking new ways to serve customers and create impact at scale.”
AI Transformation as a Business-Led Movement
As AI adoption accelerates, many organizations struggle to scale beyond pilot projects. With an AI Transformation Officer leading the efforts, organizations can realize faster progress, more empowered employees, and a culture of experimentation that turns AI into a shared capability rather than a siloed function. Since the beginning of 2024, Zapier has:
- Enables 97% of employees to use AI in their daily work.
- Evaluates the AI fluency of 100% of job candidates across every department.
- Increased developer productivity by 11% in 2025 with Cursor, Claude Code, and Github Copilot
“The Zapier team is becoming a blueprint for AI transformation,” said Brandon Sammut, Chief People & AI Transformation Officer at Zapier. “Done thoughtfully, AI transformation isn’t about replacing humans with machines. It’s about redesigning work in ways that boost efficiency, quality and, importantly, the experience of the people doing the work.”
Business Teams Must Lead Transformation
To illustrate a practical blueprint for AI transformation, Zapier is hosting a webinar series (6 live events in November and December) with business leaders to share practical tactics for deploying department- and organization-wide AI transformation projects. The flagship webinar, scheduled on Thursday, November 20, will unveil Zapier’s 2026 AI Transformation Strategy and Playbook.
Departments within Zapier have already seen notable results:
- Zapier Talent Team: Uses AI workflows and agents to flag and block fraudulent candidates before they enter the pipeline, and generates hiring plans 90% faster, saving five hours per new role.
- Zapier Revenue Operations Team: Runs 25 AI workflows and agents across the revenue funnel to automate lead and customer operations—saving the equivalent of 34 full-time work weeks per month (8 FTEs) in productivity.
- Zapier Finance Team: Automated key accounting processes to cut month-end close time by 25% (from 8 to 6 days)—despite a 43% rise in complexity—enabling a lean 8-person team to manage finances for a $5B+ business.
Zapier customers are already seeing similar results:
- “Our marketing team at the Portland Trail Blazers went from spending 50 hours a week manually analyzing fan event feedback surveys to just 3,” said David Long, VP of Marketing at the Portland Trail Blazers. “We used Zapier and AI to connect our feedback tools, analyze sentiment, and share insights with sales in real time – and the results boosted fan engagement and revenue.”
- “With Zapier and AI, we’ve turned manual busywork into a growth engine,” said Jacob Sirrs, Marketing Operations Specialist at Vendasta. “Our sales reps have reclaimed 282 working days a year and we’ve recovered over $1 million in revenue—simply by letting automation handle what used to slow us down. Now, our team can focus on what they do best: connecting with customers and closing deals.”
- “Zapier has completely transformed how we recruit and support our real estate agents,” said Edward Tull, VP of Technology at JBGoodwin REALTORS. “By combining automation and AI, we’ve increased recruiting by 37%, cut manual work by 25%, and given every recruiter detailed applicant insights automatically. It’s like having a highly skilled team working behind the scenes—creating, refining, and scaling everything from content to data—so our people can focus on what matters most: helping clients move forward.”
Resources
To help organizations move forward on their AI Transformation journeys in 2026, see the following:
- AI Transformation Webinar Series
- Why we have an AI Transformation Officer at Zapier
- Connect with Brandon on LinkedIn
About Zapier
Zapier is an AI orchestration platform that connects 8,000+ apps to help companies automate workflows and improve productivity. Since 2012, millions of users have trusted Zapier to automate everything from lead routing and data synchronization to customer conversations—all without writing code. By turning complex integrations into simple, point-and-click workflows, Zapier empowers teams of all sizes to focus on strategic work. From startups to Fortune 500 companies, organizations worldwide trust Zapier to streamline operations, reduce errors, and accelerate growth through intelligent automation.
Learn more at www.zapier.com.
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