PeopleAdmin Leadership Team

Rishi Rana is GM (CEO) of the Higher-Ed business in the edtech sector for PowerSchool Group LLC, leading strategy, growth, and with direct ownership of Product, R&D, Services, Customer Success, Sales, and Marketing. He has over 22 years of executive and leadership experience with a proven track record in leading businesses while developing complex, critical software solutions, products, and platforms across various domains.

Previously, Rishi was COO of AGDATA LP. He oversaw the transformation of several product and service lines into a single platform providing data-enabled insight and analytics for the agriculture industry. Rishi has led several businesses towards high growth in topline revenue, revamping service lines and factory models towards multiple-fold EBITDA growth. Prior experience includes serving HCM and Talent landscape as SVP for Global Services at Skillsoft Limited and GM-APAC for SumTotal Systems, where he setup offices in various countries and crafted teams and functions from the ground up. Rishi also held several leadership roles at Microsoft for over a decade where he led product, services, and strategy across a variety of functions and markets globally.

Rishi is an avid speaker at events and recipient of several awards in management excellence, strategy, communication, and mentoring. He recently won the “CEO with HR Orientation” Award from Asia Pacific HRM Congress. He holds a BS in Computer Science & Math and an MBA, both from Texas A&M University.

Chengdian leads the Product Engineering and Development in the HigherEd division of PowerSchool. He has over 25 years of experience in software leading various organizations in creating and solving problems. He has lead several organizations and teams in Product Engineering, Architecture, DevOps, and Professional Services helping increase customer retention via technology and impact across various business models, customer bases, structures, and cultures throughout his career.

Chengdian comes to PowerSchool from AGDATA where he successfully led the Product Development team on transformation siloed on-prem to SaaS-based products and processes. Chengdian was CTO at YouRuan where he provided technology vision and roadmap, overseeing engineering and IT, and helped shape the overall vision and strategy of the company. He has held various management roles in various organizations and successfully led onsite and offshore teams and delivered several mission critical solutions. He has also provided technology consulting services to various global companies like BlueCross BlueShield, AT&T, Ajinomoto, PNC, Kraft Foods, etc.

Chengdian received his B.S. in Math from the University of Science and Technology of China, M.S. from Beijing University, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Chicago. In his free time he enjoys sports and travel.

In his role, Akshay he oversees the Professional Services, Technical Support, and Customer Success functions. He brings with him over two decades of global leadership experience across Strategy & Operations in the enterprise software & technology space.

Prior to PeopleAdmin, Akshay worked at SumTotal Systems where he led strategic initiatives across Professional Services and Support functions, delivering high customer satisfaction along with overall operational efficiency & business value.

In his free time, Akshay loves to read and travel as often as possible to explore new places & cultures.

Traci is the head of Marketing and Strategic Alliances for PeopleAdmin. She is responsible for the vision, strategy, and execution for all marketing and partnership programs. Prior to joining PowerSchool, Traci was the Head of Marketing at Origami Risk, a SaaS insurtech company, and before that was the Head of Marketing at Market Track–now Numerator, a Vista company.

In both roles, she was responsible for building a team from the ground up as well as planning, development, and execution of the organization’s marketing initiatives. Earlier in her career, she worked in publishing and at a custom content agency where she led development and execution of comprehensive channel market and communications strategies in several industries including financial services, technology, construction, home décor, eCommerce, retail, restaurant/quick service, and CPG. She recently moved to Austin from Chicago and has enjoyed not seeing snow most of the winter. She enjoys the outdoors and loves running, hiking, fishing, camping, and spending time with her husband Tim, beagle Suzy, and her six nieces and two nephews.