The Penn Museum’s mission statement is simple: it seeks to transform the understanding of our common human experience. Emphasizing the need for “humility in reckoning with our past” and “making archaeology and anthropology accessible,” the Philadelphia-based institution aims to show us that we’re all connected.
For Arnab Mishra, the Chief Executive Officer of cloud-based SaaS company Xactly, the mission of the museum mirrors that of his company. This is not a coincidence; Mishra, a 1996 Penn graduate, has been on the museum’s Board of Advisors since 2022. As someone who’s been face-to-face with dinosaurs, he’s making sure that his companies don’t become them.
“We are always questioning the status quo,” he said in a 2024 interview, “and thinking beyond traditional solutions to make our customers’ lives easier and deliver more value.”
Mishra took over at Xactly in December 2023 after four and a half years as Chief Product Officer and nearly a year as Chief Operating Officer, and has continued Xactly’s embrace of artificial intelligence, a grip that goes back nearly two decades. In 2023, it introduced the Xactly AI Copilot to help, in Mishra’s words, keep “pushing the boundaries of what's possible.” The tool helps ensure information is conveyed to clients in bespoke, contextual ways that make it as easy as possible for its users to understand.
Everything the Harvard Business School graduate does reinforces his commitment to what he calls a “culture of excellence,” driven by three key principles: truth-seeking behavior, embracing trends quickly, and taking a long-term perspective. “Companies that are nimble, agile, and understand how the world is changing are viewed as the market leaders,” he said.
In introducing Copilot, he avoided the pitfalls that have swallowed others in the industry by living by these three virtues. “Despite the importance of implementing AI, stakeholders must ensure there are appropriate guardrails to promote responsible use across the business,” he said. “The hardest thing about being a leader is adapting your style to the needs of the moment. That requires one to be highly cognizant of what’s happening and having insight and intuition around what’s needed.”
It’s the same intuition that has led him to the Penn Museum and its contextualization of history, and why there’s no fear, under his leadership, that Xactly will go the way of the dinosaurs.
