Harini Gokul to Join Afiniti's Board as AI Redefines the Role of the Contact Center

Former customer experience leader at Microsoft, AWS and Entrust joins as enterprises demand direct impact on retention, growth, and customer lifetime value.

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Afiniti today announced the appointment of Harini Gokul to its Board of Directors, adding a seasoned customer experience and growth leader as enterprises rethink the role of the contact center in the age of AI.

Gokul brings more than two decades of experience leading customer-facing organizations at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Entrust, where she most recently served as Chief Customer Officer. Throughout her career, she has built and scaled global teams responsible for customer value realization, retention, expansion, and long-term growth.

"The contact center is finally meeting its moment," said Gokul. "For decades, customer service organizations have struggled to prove their impact beyond operational metrics. AI is changing that. The future belongs to organizations that can directly connect customer interactions to outcomes like retention, growth, and customer lifetime value. That's the opportunity Afiniti is uniquely positioned to capture, and why I'm excited to join the board."

Afiniti has spent more than 20 years helping enterprises make that connection. The company's AI decisioning platform optimizes customer interactions in real time, enabling organizations to influence whether customers stay, spend more, and return. To date, Afiniti has generated more than $2.5 billion in verified incremental value for customers, with every result validated against live control groups.

"Harini understands this transformation from every angle because she has lived it," said Jerome Kapelus, Chief Executive Officer of Afiniti. "She started her career as an engineer in the contact center space, went on to lead global customer organizations, and spent years making the difficult decisions around technology investments and business value." As a board member, Gokul will bring her operator lens to Afiniti's commercial scale and growth, helping the company translate its AI decisioning platform into durable enterprise relationships.

Gokul was drawn to Afiniti's leadership team and their approach to building the company.

"My leadership philosophy is simple: I trust leaders with muddy boots," she said. "The leaders who earn trust are the ones doing the work alongside their teams. Jerome's transparency about Afiniti's journey, the hard decisions the company has made, and the vision for where it's headed made it clear this is a team committed to creating real value for customers."

As a board member, Gokul will help guide Afiniti's next phase of growth as enterprises increasingly view customer experience as a strategic driver of business performance rather than a cost center.

"Customer-facing teams are the voice of the customer, but for too long we've undervalued that role," said Gokul. "AI gives us the opportunity to hear customers more clearly at every stage of their journey, translate those insights into action across the connected lifecycle, and proactively deliver experiences that drive measurable outcomes. This is the shift I have spent my career working toward, and Afiniti is where I want to help lead it."

About Afiniti

Afiniti is the AI decisioning layer for enterprise contact centers. For more than two decades, the company has helped the world's largest brands turn customer interactions into measurable business outcomes, deploying on top of any existing technology stack without disruption. Afiniti has generated more than $2.5 billion in verified incremental value for customers, with every dollar validated against a live control group. Learn more at afiniti.com.