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On Tuesday, GitHub appointed Erica Brescia as its new chief operating officer, and she plans to bring her experience as a founder and active member of the open source community to the table.
Previously, Brescia served as the COO and co-founder of Bitnami, a San Francisco-based startup that makes pre-packaged open source applications designed to run in the cloud. In May, VMware announced it would acquire Bitnami for an undisclosed sum.
GitHub, the mega-popular code-sharing service, has only grown in the time since Microsoft bought last year for $7.5 billion. Now, Brescia says, it's her job to make sure the company stays on track to handle that growth — though, she acknowledges that as the company's first COO in a while, the leadership team will need to learn to adjust to her new role. (P.J. Hyett, a GitHub cofounder, previously served in the role.)
So far, so good, though: Brescia says her new co-workers at GitHub have been supportive and welcoming, and she has already learned a lot.
"We're seeing massive growth and we expect that to accelerate," Brescia told Business Insider. "We all need to work really closely together and make sure we execute well and make sure we're set up to support that growth."
Brescia says she started talking with GitHub CEO Nat Friedman last year, as he was moving into his new role. She says the open source software industry can be a "pretty small world," and that she had been introduced to him a few times over the years when he was still at his startup, Xamarin, which Microsoft ultimately acquired.
As it became clear that VMware was going to buy Bitnami, she became open to the idea of moving to GitHub.
"Originally I was taking some time off but this was an opportunity I couldn't pass up when I started talking about it," Brescia said. "It's really the developer love of GitHub. It's very rare that you find a company that's so beloved by its users. There's a lot of opportunity for improvement and growth."
'A unique set of challenges'
Brescia says she was excited about being able to help GitHub's business scale, and that's she's impressed at how much GitHub has accomplished after the acquisition. Under Microsoft's stewardship, GitHub has shipped over 100 new features, and @rosaliechan17. (PR pitches by email only, please.) Other types of secure messaging available upon request. You can also contact Business Insider securely via SecureDrop.
