Raquel Peterson
Raquel P. is a GTM Infrastructure and Digital Customer Success Leader and Manager of Digital Customer Success at GitLab, where she leads teams that design, curate, and scale customer learning content and digital programs to drive product adoption and meaningful customer outcomes. She is passionate about bringing go-to-market teams together around a unified customer success vision, ensuring organizations deeply understand customer needs and can deliver prescriptive, engaging guidance that helps users maximize value from their investments. Her current work is heavily focused on supporting new GitLab customers through onboarding, education, and enablement experiences, as well as advancing adoption of AI-native capabilities through the GitLab Duo Agent Platform, helping customers leverage AI across the software development lifecycle to improve speed, efficiency, and innovation.
With more than 20 years of experience spanning customer success, operations, and program leadership, Raquel has built her career on translating complex technical concepts into business-friendly strategies that drive measurable impact. She is known for working cross-functionally with technical, product, and go-to-market teams to align business priorities with customer goals. Throughout her career, she has received recognition for her contributions, including the Outstanding TFO Contributor of the Year Award, reflecting her ability to drive transformation, build scalable programs, and improve customer experiences across global markets. Raquel earned both her MBA and business degree, further strengthening her strategic and analytical approach to building digital success frameworks and customer lifecycle programs.
Outside of work, Raquel is a dedicated mother of five beautiful children and is deeply committed to maintaining balance through health, wellness, and physical movement. She is an avid gym enthusiast who believes that movement is medicine and uses fitness as a way to build resilience, focus, and personal strength. Raquel is also driven by curiosity, continuous learning, and the desire to challenge the status quo. She approaches problems with a solutions-oriented mindset, believing that anything is figureoutable and that growth often comes from stepping into new opportunities before feeling fully ready. Her life and career reflect her commitment to leadership, service, and building systems that create lasting impact for customers, teams, and communities.
• Account Management for Growth
• DevSecOps Essentials
• ITIL
• University of Washington - MBA
• American Military University - BBA
• Outstanding Technical Field Organization Contributor of the Year
• President's Club
• Customer Success Manager of the Year
• Impact Award
• Blue Scarf Society
• Milgard School of Business Master of Business Administration Association
• UW Tacoma Milgard School of Business Women's Initiative
• HashiCorp
• Parent Teacher Association
• Special Olympics Georgia
• Habitat for Humanity
What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to my four years of active duty in the military and time in the National Guard, where I developed a really strong foundation in building relationships and working with people within different teams. I also have a tremendous desire to constantly grow and learn and challenge the status quo. I don't like working on the same things - I like to learn new things. Part of my success is a combination of me just being extremely curious and digging into problems and questions that I just wanted to answer for my customers. I really pride myself on being able to work closely with technical people and taking that technical information and translating it in a way that makes sense to the business. I also credit walking through the fire - I'm very brave, and when an opportunity presents itself, I take it, even though I may not be ready. I level up that way. I don't see anything as a blocker for me. Everything is figureoutable. I know I will not always have the answer, but I can find someone who does.
What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Take opportunities even if you don't feel fully ready; level up through experience.
Be curious, keep learning, and build repeatable systems to scale your work.
What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Opportunity: scaling enablement and adoption of AI agent/platform capabilities across the software development lifecycle.
Challenge: creating scalable content and engagement models so customer success teams can focus on high-impact initiatives while minimizing churn risk.
What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
Curiosity, continuous learning, relationship-building, community support, process-driven thinking, bravery, and a customer-first mindset.