Yext Taps Google Alumnus Michael Hartwig to Lead Expansion in Central Europe

Yext, the global leader in Location Data Management, today announced the addition of Michael Hartwig, as Managing Partner for Central Europe. As of January 1st, Hartwig leads the new Berlin office, Yext's base of operations for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Hartwig brings over 15 years of sales, marketing and, technology experience to the role, having served most recently as Director for DACH and Central and Eastern Europe of Google's Doubleclick, where he led the adtech business unit across 31 countries. Prior to Google, Hartwig was CEO of eprofessional, one of Germany's leading performance marketing agencies. He proved his background as brand marketer in senior roles at Zanox, Opel, eBay, and BMW.

"The age of intelligent search requires businesses around the world to actively manage authoritative, precise, up-to-date attributes about their locations, people and products in search engines, digital assistants, maps, social apps, connected cars, and AI engines." said Brian Distelburger, Yext President and Co-Founder. "Michael brings unparalleled industry experience to the company. The combination of his senior roles in brand marketing plus the impressive results from his time at Google, define him as the perfect entrepreneur to expand Yext's business across Central Europe and help businesses to redefine their location data management and marketing activities in a game-changing way."

With the evolution of intelligent mobile search transforming consumer behavior worldwide, businesses across Europe are leveraging the award-winning Yext Location Cloud. With it they can control the attributes about their locations in real time across their websites, mobile apps, internal systems and the world's largest ecosystem of maps, apps, social networks, directories and search engines, including Google, Apple, Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, and Yelp.

"Location-based technology will underpin the next decade of innovation in everything from mobile search to autonomous driving," said Hartwig. "I'm excited to be joining Yext at such a critical moment, as the company builds the software driving this transformation in how businesses in Central Europe and around the world serve their customers. And that is only the beginning."

Apart from several resources in account management and business development, which Yext has already in place in the Berlin office, Hartwig recruited a number of senior leaders who followed his call and will join him right from the start. They include:

• Christian Zingel as RVP of Enterprise Sales, formerly eBay's Head of Sales for Fashion; before that, he built Zalando's partner program.
• Stephan Damm as Senior Director of Enterprise Sales for the region; Damm most recently served as Client Partner and Member of the Management Board at MetaDesign.
• Arne Henne, former leader of several SMB programs at Facebook in EMEA, as Senior Director of Partner Sales for Central Europe
• Thomas Staab, former COO of Publicis DigitasLBi Germany, as Senior Director, Agency

"Michael and the Berlin team will kick our growth in Europe into an even higher gear. Their leadership and experience will make the difference as we expand our footprint and reach new customers." said Distelburger.

To learn more about Yext visit Yext.com.