Agiloft Hires Former Mitsubishi and John Deere Executive Kristin Knox Esche as General Counsel

Esche joins from Mitsubishi HC Capital America, bringing two decades of legal operations and AI governance experience to the company's leadership team

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., June 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Agiloft, the global leader in data-first contract lifecycle management (CLM), today announced that Kristin Knox Esche has joined the company as General Counsel, effective June 22. Esche brings more than 20 years of experience building legal functions inside engineering-driven and highly regulated organizations, most recently as Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at Mitsubishi HC Capital America.

At Mitsubishi HC Capital America, Esche helped modernize and centralize the legal function following a period of rapid inorganic growth. She stood up the company's first eBilling and matter management system and laid the foundation to integrate CLM directly into the company's financial origination system and to unify template management processes that traditionally spanned multiple systems and repositories.

Before that, Esche spent more than a decade at Deere & Company. She initially supported Crop Harvesting Engineering and then worked in the Office of the Corporate Secretary on SEC reporting, corporate governance, and capital market transactions. She later served as Associate Chief Counsel for Product & Innovation at John Deere Financial. There, she led the legal and compliance workstream for the company's shift to agile product development and helped seed Deere's AI governance working group following the release of ChatGPT.

"Kristin has sat on the other side of the table from us as the legal leader actually living with the contracting problems we build software to solve," said Eric Laughlin, Chief Executive Officer at Agiloft. "She has run legal operations inside companies going through real change: mergers, agile transformations, the early days of generative AI inside a legal department. That's exactly the perspective we want shaping our own legal function and informing how we build for customers like her."

"I've spent my career translating complexity into clarity, whether that meant standing on a factory floor with engineers or designing the operating model for a unified legal department after periods of rapid inorganic growth," said Esche. "What drew me to Agiloft is that every part of that experience finally points the same direction. I have been the customer this company builds for, and I am looking forward to helping shape what comes next, both inside Agiloft and for its customers."

Esche holds a J.D. from UC Law San Francisco (formerly known as Hastings College of the Law), an M.A. in Women's Studies from The Ohio State University, and a B.A. in Literature from the University of California, San Diego. She serves on the Iowa Supreme Court Access to Justice Commission and has a long-standing commitment to pro bono legal work.

About Agiloft

Agiloft is a global leader in data-first contract lifecycle management (CLM), helping businesses improve outcomes. Its no-code CLM platform with embedded AI centralizes, automates, and governs contracts from request through renewal, reducing review times and integrating with over 1,000 systems for real-time visibility. Astra, Agiloft's contracts AI platform, unlocks post-signature data to drive better decisions across legal, procurement, sales, and finance teams. Backed by KKR, JMI Equity, and FTV Capital, Agiloft delivers strong performance with high implementation success and customer renewal rates, enabling organizations to create, control, and capture more value across industries today. Learn more at agiloft.com.

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SOURCE Agiloft