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December 16, 2019

Big Data Career Notes: December 2019 Edition

(Who is Danny/Shutterstock)

In this monthly feature, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the big data community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!


Eric Chan 

Alation Inc. announced the appointment of Eric Chan as the company’s chief financial officer (CFO). Chan served as CFO at Optymyze, Formation Data Systems, and Syncplicity by EMC, where he was responsible for the spinout to Skyview Capital. Before Syncplicity by EMC, Chan also held various leadership positions at SuccessFactors and VMware. He now leads all aspects of Alation’s global finance and accounting operations.

“I’m excited to join such a high caliber team that has driven really impressive growth,” Chan said. “Enterprises continue to seek solutions that enable data-driven decision-making, and Alation is well-positioned to support organizations in their data journey. I look forward to working with our customers, partner community, employees and investors, and contributing to the company’s continued growth.”

Scott Davidson

Alteryx announced that Scott Davidson joined the company as its chief operating officer (COO). Davidson is responsible for building out the infrastructure that will enable global scale and efficiency, including corporate development, information technology, enterprise applications, and human resources. Davidson brings more than 20 years of experience leading operations and finance teams at fast-growing organizations. Most recently, he served as COO and chief financial officer at Hortonworks. During his time at Hortonworks, he helped take the company public in December 2014 and negotiated its merger with Cloudera in January 2019. Before joining Hortonworks, Davidson held a variety of financial leadership roles at Quest Software and Citrix Systems.

“Data analytics software is one of the most exciting, competitive and fast-growing sectors in business today,” Davidson said. “I have long-known Alteryx as a leader and an innovator in this market space, and as I come aboard, I am most impressed by the talent, the vision, and the strategy in place to continue the company’s global expansion.”

Madan Gadde

Collibra announced the appointment of Madan Gadde as chief customer officer, a new role for the company. Gadde will lead the company’s efforts in supporting more than 400 global customers spanning financial services, technology, utilities, retail, healthcare, and more.

With more than 20 years of experience driving customer-centric technology solutions globally, Gadde most recently served as senior vice president (SVP) of customer success at DataStax. Before that, Gadde led customer service offerings at FIS as SVP of worldwide professional services. Gadde also held various leadership positions at H.P., Genesys, and Mercury Interactive.

“Collibra is at the forefront of helping today’s global enterprises leverage Data Intelligence to unlock the value of their data,” Gadde said. “My mission is to help our customers quickly adopt Collibra and enable all Data Citizens to optimize processes, increase efficiency, and drive innovation.”

Carlo Garbagnati

Cloudian announced that Carlo Garbagnati joined the company as vice president of engineering. Garbagnati previously served as an engineering vice president at HDS, Pivot3, BlueArc, Quantum, and Meridian Data, overseeing development and delivery of hardware and software products as well as multisite team management, quality assurance and sustaining engineering.

“The strength of Cloudian’s HyperStore object storage platform — from its fully native S3 compatibility to its rich metadata tagging and other unique features — is clearly evident from the company’s success in expanding its customer base and industry alliances over the past few years,” Garbagnati said. “I am super excited to work with the engineering team to build on the industry-defining work they’ve done and deliver even greater benefits to our customers and partners.”

Keith Kohl

Information Builders announced the appointment of Keith Kohl as senior vice president, Product Management. In this role, Kohl will assume responsibility for all product management functions and serve as a liaison between product, sales, and marketing teams. Most recently, Kohl served as vice president, Product Management, for Syncsort, a provider of big data management software, leading all product management within a global team, setting strategy, roadmaps, and go-to-market plans across data integration, data quality, mainframe, and more. He came to Synscort via the company’s acquisition of Trillium Software, where he held the same role.

“I’ve been in the data software world for a long time and Information Builders has always been a company I’ve had the utmost respect for,” Kohl said. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with this exceptional team internally, as well as our tremendous network of partners and, of course, customers, to ensure that Information Builders continues to stand for the best BI and data products in the industry.”

Kiran Narsu

Alation Inc. announced the appointment of Kiran Narsu as vice president of business development. Narsu joins Alation with more than 20 years of experience helping organizations leverage new and emerging technologies. He previously served as chief revenue officer at Kasisto and has held finance and leadership positions at Pegasystems, Digital Reasoning, Oracle, and i-flex. Narsu oversees Alation’s ecosystem of partners and is charged with expanding Alation’s use among global organizations.

“What truly excites me about Alation are the transformational business outcomes that customers experience when their people put our technology to use,” Narsu said. “I am looking forward to building on that incredible foundation and working with some of the brightest, most energetic, and collaborative people I’ve ever encountered.”

Gary Ogasawara

Cloudian named Gary Ogasawara as its first chief technology officer (CTO). In his new role as CTO, former Vice President of Engineering Gary Ogasawara will focus on Cloudian’s long-term technology vision and direction, including the interaction of HyperStore with next-gen data analytics platforms, container-based compute technologies and multi-cloud architectures.

In this new role, Ogasawara is responsible for setting the company’s long-term technology vision and direction. Before Cloudian, Gary led the eCentives engineering team, and he also led the development of real-time commerce and advertising systems at Inktomi. Gary holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, specializing in uncertainty reasoning and machine learning.

Scott Roza 

TIBCO Software Inc. announced that Scott Roza had been appointed its new president & global head of customer operations. In this role, Roza plans to lead TIBCO’s global sales, alliances, professional services, and customer excellence functions. He formerly served as president of worldwide field operations at Clearwater Analytics and before that served as chief business officer at Guidewire Software. Before Guidewire, Roza was CEO of Skytap, a venture-backed SaaS company.

“It’s a privilege to join TIBCO and have this opportunity to serve our global customers across virtually every industry. Any company that has begun or will begin a digital transformation will get there faster and see better results with TIBCO,” Roza said, “I’m excited to help world-class enterprises get even better with TIBCO.”

Stoffel Vandoorne

SAP SE announced the addition of Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E Team Official Driver Stoffel Vandoorne as its latest brand ambassador. Before entering the ABB FIA Formula E Championship in 2018, Vandoorne made a name for himself with a motorsport career. Having raced since the age of six, Vandoorne was brought onto the McLaren Young Driver Program in 2013 before he was announced as McLaren Mercedes’ official reserve driver in 2014. Beside his Formula One role, he was also racing in the GP2 Series for the French squad ART Grand Prix. A year later, Vandoorne stepped in as a replacement for Fernando Alonso to make his Formula One debut in the 2016 Bahrain Grand Prix. He finished in the points on his very first outing and went on to race in two full seasons in Formula One for the McLaren team in 2017 and 2018.

“As I’m embarking on my second season in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship, I’m excited to be partnering with SAP as a brand ambassador,” Vandoorne said. “SAP has a long history of sponsoring motorsports, and its commitment to Formula E is the next logical step for such an innovative and future-oriented company. I look forward to working with them on their technology solutions for the team and support them with my expertise.”


To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click here.

Do you know someone that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.

Datanami