Helen Russell is the chief people officer (CPO) of Atlassian.

As CPO, Helen has global responsibility for the attraction, engagement, development, and experience of Atlassian's most important asset – its people. She champions Atlassian's mission: 'to unlock the potential of every team,' playing a critical role in enabling the company 'to be the ultimate team.' With a growing employee base, Helen enables Atlassian to scale, while retaining the very elements that have made the company so successful to date.

Helen brings 20 years of people leadership experience across multiple industries, geographies, and scale of businesses. Prior to joining Atlassian, Helen served as CHRO of Sonos Inc., a leader in the home sound system space and CHRO of Kantar, one of the world's largest research, data and insight consultancies. From 2005 to 2010, Helen served as VP HR EMEA for Yahoo Inc. and from 2000 to 2005 as VP HR EMEA for Siebel Systems, an enterprise software company, acquired by Oracle in 2005.

As an HR executive, Helen's passion is around culture. She has had the opportunity to work alongside Professor Charles O'Reilly and Dr. Peter Finkelstein, both of Stanford Graduate School of Business and leading experts in the leadership and culture space. She is an advisor to a number of smaller businesses, as well as a mentor to a number of emerging HR professionals and executives across the globe. Helen holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Liverpool, England.