Scott Russell (executive)

Scott Russell is an Australian business executive, who currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer for NICE. He became the corporation's CEO in January 2025, following Barak Eilam's retirement after over a decade in the role.

Russell spent his career working in his native Australia for PwC, and held executive roles in Asia for IBM and SAP. He served as an Executive Board Member at SAP as its Chief Revenue Officer prior to joining NICE in 2025.

Russell was born in 1973 and grew up in Australia. He studied at Deakin University in the state of Victoria, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Business.^[1]

Russell notably rose through the ranks at PwC in the 1990s, before becoming a managing consultant at its Melbourne office. In 2001, IBM announced that it would be acquiring PwC Consulting, the consulting and technology arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers. It was then rebranded to IBM Consulting in 2002. Following the acquisition and rebrand, Russell was given the opportunity to relocate to Singapore with IBM in a new role.^[2]

Russell joined SAP in 2010 after a decade at IBM, working across a number of global markets but remaining focused on the Asian market initially. During his time with SAP, he was known for delivering cloud transformation, championing models that accelerated the migration of customers to use cloud related services and products.^[3] In SAP's Asia Pacific and Japan market, Russell rose to become Chief Operating Officer for the region,^[1] securing the role in 2014.^[4] The rise in cloud technology migration became particularly apparent under his leadership where the region became one of the corporation's fastest growing cloud markets. He was then made President of SAP Asia Pacific Japan in 2017.^[5] After SAP reported $140 million in losses in 2017 across Australia and New Zealand, Russell teamed up with regional boss Colin Brookes to lead a successful shift to cloud-based services.^[6] Russell was featured in the Australian media in 2020, after the closure of the country's borders meant a trip back to his native Australia kept him in the country for more than six months.^[7]

Russell joined SAP’s Executive Board in 2021, where he led Customer Success globally, overseeing sales, services, and customer engagement.^[8] He became the corporation's Chief Revenue Officer, and in doing so was SAP's first board member from outside the US and Europe.^[8] While in the role, he was interviewed numerous times about SAP's strategy and the move into cloud and AI adoption,^[9] and also spoke on behalf of SAP after major customer deals were announced.^[10] Russell spoke with Business Insider in 2022, stating that SAP was slowly evolving into a cloud company.^[11] In 2023, he spoke to Fortune about cloud adoption in the retail sector, and how SAP retail clients were using cloud technology to "manage their returns, their supply-chain process, and demand signals to better predict what supply they need and manage that more effectively."^[12] He also spoke publicly about other markets that could demonstrate rapid cloud growth in the coming years.^[13]

In the summer of 2024, it was announced that Barak Eilam would be stepping down as the CEO of NICE after over a decade in the role.^[14] SAP announced on July 30, 2024, that Russell would be leaving his role on its board,^[15][16] with the corporation stating the sudden move was due to "restructuring."^[17][18] The reason for Russell's departure became apparent two weeks later when Russell was unveiled as the new CEO of NICE on August 15.^[19][20] Eilam would remain in the role as CEO until the end of 2024, with Russell taking over in January 2025.^[21][22]

In his first month as CEO, NICE experienced a huge 6.16% single day rise in its share price.^[23] In his first official interview, Russell spoke to CX Today about how his focus at NICE would continue to be on Artificial Intelligence integration.^[24][25] Another interview with MetriSight soon followed, where he outlined his strategic approach to building on NICE’s existing strengths in the customer experience market. He emphasized continued investment in AI, cloud technologies, and personalized engagement to support the company’s ongoing development.^[26]