Backstory names Mackenzie Smith SVP of customer value

On June 30, 2026, Backstory, formerly People.ai, announced the appointment of Mackenzie Smith as Senior Vice President of Customer Value. According to the release, Smith will lead Backstory's customer success strategy, overseeing value attainment, insights and support so that enterprise customers achieve measurable outcomes from the platform. She was most recently Vice President and Head of Growth at ASAPP, where she led customer execution, value attainment, insights and support. Before ASAPP, she built advertising technology platforms for clients at IPONWEB and led digital advertising client engagements at Merkle. CEO Jason Ambrose says enterprise customers are now asking AI vendors to show value from its use.

The details

• Smith's title is Senior Vice President of Customer Value.
• Her remit covers customer success strategy, value attainment, insights and support.
• She was previously Vice President and Head of Growth at ASAPP.
• Earlier roles include building advertising technology platforms at IPONWEB and leading client work at Merkle.
• Backstory names OpenAI, NVIDIA, Red Hat, Five9, Palo Alto Networks, Iron Mountain, TransUnion and Randstad among companies whose sales leaders use it.

Context

Smith is the second senior hire in our coverage since People.ai renamed itself Backstory on April 15, 2026, after the May 27 appointment of former Meta security leader Victor Chang as CISO. Three weeks later Backstory launched Situation Search, and later in 2026 it hired Sam Branson from Adobe and named Shilpa Varma CTO.

Not disclosed

• Who Smith reports to
• Size of the customer value organization
• Start date