New Relic names Wendi Sturgis to board for AI expertise
New Relic has appointed Wendi Sturgis to its Board of Directors, adding a technology executive with AI and international operating experience.
Sturgis is Senior Vice President at Yext, where she oversees strategy and growth outside North America. She previously served as Chief Executive Officer of Cleverbridge and has held board and advisory roles at Sabre, The Container Store and the Georgia Tech Foundation.
The appointment comes as software companies and infrastructure providers seek directors with experience in AI, product strategy and large-scale customer operations. Across the sector, boards have been adding executives who bring both commercial judgement and technical knowledge as companies decide how to invest in AI products and governance.
New Relic said Sturgis completed the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI/ML Intensive programme, a background it believes will add a technical perspective to oversight of its AI agenda.
Ashan Willy, Chief Executive Officer of New Relic, described the move as part of the company's next stage of development.
"I'm excited to welcome Wendi to the board as a director," said Ashan Willy, Chief Executive Officer, New Relic. "Wendi brings a wealth of experience from running companies to transforming GTM teams and focus. Her rare combination of sales, technical, and international expertise - coupled with her leadership in AI-led strategies - will be pivotal as we scale through our next phase of growth in this dynamic market."
Career background
Sturgis has spent more than two decades in senior roles across technology and customer engagement businesses. According to New Relic, she has managed billion-dollar revenue organisations at Yahoo! and helped lead international expansion at software companies.
Her experience also includes transactions and governance. New Relic said she has overseen multi-billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions, including the USD $1 billion sale of Kustomer to Meta Platforms.
At Cleverbridge, Sturgis launched initiatives, including CleverAutomations aimed at customer retention, according to New Relic. At Yext, the company said she built a customer success organisation that maintained a retention rate above 90%.
That background reflects the profile many software boards now seek as recurring-revenue businesses face pressure to improve customer retention while investing in new products. For observability providers in particular, AI has become a key area of competition as customers seek tools to manage increasingly complex data and application environments.
Board focus
New Relic sells observability software that companies use to monitor digital systems and identify operational issues. The market has become more crowded as vendors expand from application monitoring into broader data, infrastructure and AI-related services.
That has increased the importance of board oversight on product direction, execution and risk, especially as companies make claims about embedding AI into software used in critical business systems. Directors with both operational and technical backgrounds can play a larger role in reviewing those decisions.
Sturgis said the industry is at a turning point and linked her appointment to broader change in the observability market.
"I am thrilled to join the New Relic Board during this inflection point in the industry," said Sturgis. "I have immense respect for the company leadership's vision of how New Relic can seize the opportunities within the observability space in the AI era. AI isn't just a professional interest for me - it's a personal mission. I look forward to supporting New Relic as it helps enterprises move from experimentation to execution, ensuring their AI systems are performant, governed, and secure."
Sturgis joins the board with experience spanning executive management, international expansion, customer retention and public company governance, at a time when those priorities are converging for software companies under pressure to turn AI investment into measurable business results.