Skip to main content
Sep 07, 2022

Spire Global hires legal chief

Boyd Johnson was previously general counsel at SPS Commerce

NYSE-listed Spire Global has appointed Boyd Johnson as chief legal officer (CLO). He is a member of the company’s executive team and reports to Peter Platzer, CEO and co-founder of Spire.

Johnson most recently was general counsel, corporate secretary and chief compliance officer at SPS Commerce. During his decade with the company, he helped lead two public offerings and 10 acquisitions.

Before his time at SPS Commerce, he was senior vice president and CLO at Merrill Corporation, where he created and ran the company’s SaaS contract management business unit. Johnson was also previously general counsel at MTS Systems Corporation, a role that involved him in strategic acquisitions and divestitures.

Boyd Johnson


He succeeds Ananda Martin, who has been general counsel at Spire since 2018. Martin says: ‘After building a world-class legal team and taking Spire public, I am taking some long-overdue time off. I will announce my future plans at a later date.’

Spire provides space-based data, analytics and other space services.

Platzer says in a statement: ‘With decades of experience as [CLO]… Boyd has a proven track record of building relationships to drive operational excellence and provide high-integrity corporate strategy and business advice. He will play a crucial role in achieving our strategic, legal and business objectives as a public company.

‘On behalf of our entire team, I want to thank Ananda for her tremendous contributions and strategic counsel over the past four years as we grew internationally and became a public company.’

Johnson says in the announcement: ‘As a private pilot who has flown planes for decades, I’m fascinated by the aerospace industry and the way in which Spire leverages the ultimate vantage point of space to improve life on Earth.’

Ben Maiden

Ben Maiden is the editor-at-large of Governance Intelligence, an IR Media publication, having joined the company in December 2016. He is based in New York. Ben was previously managing editor of Compliance Reporter, covering regulatory and compliance...

More on