Indianapolis software firm OnBoard names new CEO
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Indianapolis-based board management software firm OnBoard has hired Marc Huffman as its new chief executive to succeed the company’s founding CEO, Paroon Chadha, the company announced Thursday.
Huffman, 54, took over the reins last week at OnBoard, whose platform allows boards of directors to create agendas, store and manage digital documents, conduct online voting, and conduct other board business digitally.
Chadha, 49, has led the company since co-founding it in 2003. He said the time was right to bring in new leadership, and that Huffman has the experience to help OnBoard grow.
“I have run this race already a long time, longer than most,” Chadha said. “We feel like this is the right option to bring in Marc, with his background and experience in scaling the company from this level to what lies ahead.”
Chadha will remain active with OnBoard as the company’s board chair and as a strategic adviser to Huffman.
Huffman comes to OnBoard with more than 25 years of experience in the software industry. He previously served as CEO at Los Angeles-based BlackLine Inc., a publicly traded company that provides financial accounting software. Founded in 2001, BlackLine has about 1,750 employees and reported an annual profit last year of $52.8 million on revenue of $590 million.
Before BlackLine, Huffman oversaw global sales and distribution at Austin, Texas-based software company Oracle NetSuite. (Oracle, which has about 159,000 global employees, acquired NetSuite in 2016.)
OnBoard, whose parent company is Indianapolis-based Passageways Inc., has more than 250 employees, most of whom live in the Indianapolis and Lafayette areas. The company also has remote workers across the country and outside the United States, including Toronto, London, Belfast, and Sydney, Australia.
In 2021, OnBoard secured a $100 million growth investment from JMI Equity, a Baltimore-based growth equity firm that invests in software companies.
“My mind is on maximizing our opportunity,” Huffman said.
OnBoard’s customers represent more than 6,000 boards around the world operating in a variety of sectors, including financial services, government, health care, higher education, technology and software, professional associations, and not-for-profit organizations.
Huffman and Chadha said they see huge potential for OnBoard, given the huge number of potential customers that exist.
“In financial services, not-for-profits, health care—globally, there are hundreds of thousands of organizations who have independence and boards,” Huffman said. “…There’s so much more opportunity to go unlock with them.”