Pegasystems, the software company based out of the US, has appointed Katherine Parente as its new chief people officer. Parente will report directly to Alan Trefler,CEO and founder, Pegasystems. In this role, Parente will be responsible for driving Pega’s global people strategy and operations for its 6000 employees working across America, Europe and the Asia Pacific.
“I look forward to helping further evolve and enhance our approach so we can meet new challenges during a time of unprecedented change in the employment marketplace,” says Parente on her appointment.
Parente moves to Pega from FactSet Research Systems, a data technology company with more than 10,000 employees across 20 countries. There, she was the SVP-HR responsible for the global HR strategy across product, content and technology functions.
Parente carries close to two decades of experience in HR working in diverse sectors including financial services, technology, and professional services. Human resources was not the first choice for Parente when she started her career. In the initial phase of her career, Parente worked with Goldman Sachs as an equity programme associate, where she was responsible for equity programme analysis and delivery, focused specifically on expansion of international equity plan design.
After working with the Bank for close to a year, Parente made a lateral shift to HR by taking up a role in compensation at Texas Instruments, serving as the compensation manager handling the European Union region for the Company. In 2003, after spending two years with Texas Instruments, Parente moved to The Macgregor Group as its senior manager – HR. The Group was acquired by ITG (now Virtu Financial), an independent research and execution broker, two years after her joining, that is, in 2005.
Parente was very much involved in the integration process of HRIS systems, compensation structure analysis and compensation committee reporting. After the acquisition was completed, Parente was retained by ITG and she went on to spend nine long years with the firm serving her last position as the director and global head of total rewards and HR operations.
Later, in 2012, Parente also served as VP-people strategy at Axiom, a legal services firm with more than 1000 employees.
According to Trefler, Parente “brings Pega a wealth of experience and innovative ideas that will enable us to continue to nurture our people and attract new talent to our offices around the world”.
A human resource management graduate from the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Parente also carries a degree in human rights from University of Leicester, England.
Earlier, Pegasystems had announced the appointment of Smriti Mathur as its head of people for India in April, 2021.
