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Leavey School of Business Santa Clara University

Cabrera, Chris

Chris Cabrera
Founder & CEO,
Xactly Corp.
LSB Advisory Board Member Chris Cabrera Head Shot

Christopher Cabrera is a seasoned executive with more than two decades of successful senior management experience at both early-stage and public companies. 

Mr. Cabrera is a noted industry expert in issues relating to sales performance management, sales compensation, and enterprise and on-demand/software-as-a-service delivery models. He was recently named the 2011 “Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the USC Marshall School of Business. 

Cabrera is the author of Game The Plan (River Grove Books, 2014) and co-author of Xactly Sales Compensation for Dummies(Wiley Publishing, 2006), as well as a contributing writer to such industry publications as Selling Power Magazine, destinationCRM.com, BusinessFinance, and SandHill.com. 

Prior to founding Xactly Corporation, Mr. Cabrera was senior vice president of operations for Callidus Software (NASDAQ: CALD), an on-premise incentive compensation management company. At Callidus, he was responsible for the execution of worldwide sales and marketing strategies, customer advocacy, and strategic alliances with companies such as IBM, Accenture and Deloitte. Under his leadership, the company acquired more than 100 customers, contributing to the growth of annual revenues from zero to $100M run-rate and a successful IPO in 2003 raising more than $70M. 

Before joining Callidus, Mr. Cabrera spent 7 years in sales and sales management at Silicon Graphics, a UNIX hardware and software vendor. 

Cabrera earned a B.S. degree in business administration with an emphasis in entrepreneurship from the University of Southern California (USC) and a master’s degree in business administration from Santa Clara University (SCU). Today Mr. Cabrera is on the Board of USC Marshall Partners, Northern California. He is also on the Advisory Board for Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business as well as the SCU Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE).

MBA '97

Joined Board: 2013