- In January, cloud data company Talend recruited Christal Bemont as its new CEO, following her 15 year stint at Concur.
- Just a couple months later, she had to lead the company through the coronavirus crisis, but still managed to exceed Wall Street's expectations in the first quarter.
- Bemont says that she pulled on her past experiences with adversity to help her lead.
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As the oldest in a family with four children squished into a trailer in Missouri without electricity or running water, Christal Bemont had to grow up fast. She got a job starting at age 10 to contribute to the family's finances and helped grow food so that they'd have enough to eat. She eventually became the first person in her family to go to college, taking out student loans that would take her ten years to pay off.
"When those things happen at a very early age, I've seen people fall to the ground and succumb to their circumstances," Bemont told Business Insider, "Or figure out a way to get through that."
She chose the latter: "What it taught me was resilience," she said.
Bemont's penchant for strength in tough circumstances came in handy earlier this year: Just two months after data company Talend recruited her as CEO, she found all her plans thrust into turmoil because of the coronavirus crisis. Like all leaders, Bemont had to adjust on-the-fly.
"No company or person has gone through anything like this," Bemont said.
During her first quarter as CEO, Talend, which builds software that helps with managing and analyzing large amounts of data, managed to beat Wall Street expectations. It reported total revenue of $68.1 million, up 18% from the first quarter last year. Its annual recurring revenue grew 20% year-over-year and its annual recurring cloud revenue in particular grew 150% from last year to $61.1 million.
Bemont's strategy during the coronavirus pandemic is to make sure the company spends its time wisely and comes out stronger, while being sensitive to what's happening in the market. While Talend had to put some deals on hold in March, it also signed on plenty of new customers.
"The real self imposed challenge is to say, 'How do we serve our customers at any point? Meet our customers where we're at?" she said. "Let's figure out how we can partner with you."
Why Bemont took the job at Talend
Early on in her career, Bemont worked at companies like Motorola, Extensity, and Clarify. Most recently, she worked at Concur, spending a total of 15 years at the company, including during its 2014 acquisition by SAP. While there, she moved up through various sales roles, eventually becoming chief revenue officer of SAP Concur. This January, she decided to make the leap to Talend. In doing so, she was finally achieving one of her long-time aspirations — to be a CEO — which was based in part on a memory from childhood when a woman whose house she cleaned offered assistance by giving her food and a place to stay.
"Seeing that act of kindness was extremely foundational for me," Bemont said. "People have shown me that true humanity can make a difference in one person's life. That is the thing where, if I leave a legacy behind, I want to impact as many lives as I can. It drove why I wanted to be a CEO."
Bemont decided to take the role as Talend's CEO because she was always interested in data, and how companies could use it to inform how they run their businesses.
"I was thinking about how important data is to the lives of every customer," Bemont said. "If I was going to move somewhere, it was going to be right in the center of that."
Read more: Google Cloud lures 2 key hires from SAP and rival Amazon Web Services
During the coronavirus pandemic, Talend has been working with health researchers to build data products to analyze COVID-19 datasets.
In her reign, Bemont has also prioritized expanding leadership roles for women at her company. At Talend, half of the leadership team is women. When she became CEO, she brought on two other teammates from SAP Concur: Ann-Christel Graham as chief revenue and Jamie Kiser as chief customer officer.
"I am deeply passionate about the mindset, how I've traversed my career, how I apply myself to business problems, and how I think about interacting with people," Bemont said. "The people I surround myself with have been really important to my achievements and how I show up in an authentic way."
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