Big Data Career Notes: February 2021 Edition

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!

Edward Bortnikov, Ofer Bustin, Angela Restani, and Marius Tudor

Angela Restani, Marius Tudor, Ofer Bustin, and Edward Bortnikov joined Pliops’ leadership team. Former senior director of research at Yahoo, Bortnikov, joined Pliops as its new VP of technology. Bortnikov will oversee the research and architecture of the next-generation products for Pliops. Bustin was appointed as the company’s chief operating officer. He brings 20 years of experience in operations, engineering, infrastructure building, methodologies, and execution.

Restani joined Pliops as vice president of marketing. She brings more than 20 years of experience holding executive leadership roles for tech companies, including Hedvig, Nutanix, DataEndure and Cancom US.  Lastly, Tudor joined as the VP of sales and business development at Pliops. He will manage the existing sales pipeline and developing new business opportunities and relationships.

Jeffrey Casale and David Donatelli

MarkLogic Corp., a cloud data management company, appointed Jeffrey Casale as its chief executive officer and David Donatelli to its board of directors. Casale previously served as president of Dell Technologies Select Group. Before Dell technologies Select Group, he was senior vice president for VMware.

Donatelli brings M&A, product leadership, operational, and growth experience serving in leadership positions at Oracle Corp. and Hewlett-Packard. At Hewlett-Packard, he was the executive vice president of its enterprise group, where he led the $30 billion division that oversaw the storage, server, networking, and converged infrastructure solutions.

Sue Bergamo, Pat Collins, and Anjan Kundavaram

Precisely appointed Sue Bergamo, Pat Collins, and Anjan Kundavaram to leadership roles at the company. Bergamo was appointed to the newly created role of chief information security officer. She comes from the digital commerce company Episerver, where she held the role of CIO and CISO.

Collins was appointed to the role of chief financial officer. He comes from Dell EMC, where he served in multiple financial leadership roles over the past 20 years.  Kundavaram was appointed as Precisely’s chief product officer. He comes from Hitachi Vantara, where he held the role of VP and general manager.

Rick Franke, Helen Protopapas, and Tom Whaley

VAST Data, a storage solutions provider, appointed Rick Franke as its vice president of global customer success, services and support; Helen Protopapas as its VP of finance; and Tom Whaley as its VP of sales. Franke will be responsible for growing VAST’s customer experience. He comes from VMware, where he held the role VP of global customer services and support.

Protopapas will be responsible for the company’s financial operations. Protopapas comes from the Ringier Group, where she served as divisional CFO. As VP of Sales, Whaley will oversee VAST’s initiatives in customer adoption. Whaley has more than 20 years of experience focusing on Fortune 50 customers.

Andy Jassy

Amazon announced the promotion of Andy Jassy to the role of chief executive officer. Jassy, who joined Amazon in 1997, steps up to the role of CEO from his current CEO role for Amazon Web Services. He will replace Jeff Bezos, who is stepping down to become the company’s executive chair in its board of directors.

During his tenure as CEO of AWS, Jassy helped grow the business unit grow since it was established as the infrastructure that would drive and fuel what would become the retail giant. He is also a minority owner of the Seattle Kraken and the National Hockey League.

Scott Jones

Incorta, a provider of an enterprise data and analytics platform, welcomed Scott Jones as its chief executive officer. Jones brings over 25 years of experience working with early stage, rapid-growth, and market-leading public companies. Before joining Incorta, Jones served as president and chief revenue officer for automated analytics company Alteryx.

“Companies today need to be able to change direction and make decisions quickly, and that is only accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis. Data powers this agility,” said Jones. “Incorta is breaking through 30-year barriers with its unique innovative direct data mapping technology that eliminates the time consuming and expensive traditional ETL processes both IT and businesses face today. Incorta uniquely enables business users to manage the entire analytic workflow in one platform. The real time enterprise today is looking for the data, the analysis and the predictive analytics, all in one.

Sun Lee

Sisu, an augmented intelligence solution provider, welcomed Sun Lee as its chief marketing officer. Lee will be responsible for all marketing operations at the company. Most recently, Lee was the vice president of experience at the storage-as-a-service vendor Pure Storage. Before Pure Storage, she was VP of brand experience at SurveyMonkey.

“Sisu is building truly disruptive technology that transforms the way companies understand and make business decisions, utilizing all of their data. When I saw the product for myself, I knew I had to join this company,” said Lee. “I look forward to strengthening the understanding of what Sisu can do for data leaders and working to define the future of analytics.”

Amy Medeiros

DDN, artificial intelligence and multi-cloud data management solutions provider, appointed Amy Medeiros as its senior vice president of DDN’s corporate marketing and inside sales division. Medeiros will be responsible for DDN and Tintri’s marketing and sales initiatives to increase channel partners’ profitability and enhance their value to customers.

“DDN and Tintri, alike, are at the forefront of innovation with broad portfolios of Intelligent Infrastructure solutions that enhance the value of data while decreasing the cost to manage it – in virtually every sector and at any scale,” said Amy Medeiros, senior vice president, Corporate Marketing and Inside Sales, DDN. “Building on a successful year, I’m thrilled to continue the momentum in arming partners with the technology, tools and support they need to help customers drive out infrastructure complexity and inefficiency and benefit from accelerated time to value with simplified and smart data management.”

Carrie Palin

NetApp, a cloud-led, data-centric software company, welcomed Carrie Palin to its board of directors. Palin currently serves as senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Splunk, the Data-to-Everything Platform provider.

“NetApp’s growth is impressive and its vision for the future is compelling,” said Palin. “As we enter the next decade, it is essential for companies across all industries to better harness the power of data, and NetApp is best positioned to help customers do just that. I look forward to contributing to that journey as a member of the board.”

Vidya Peters

InfluxData, developer of the time series database InfluxDB platform, appointed Vidya Peters to its board of directors, becoming the first member of the board with a marketing background. Peters is currently the chief marketing officer at FinTech company Marqeta, Inc.

“InfluxData is a category-defining company in a market with incredible opportunity,” said Peters. “The company has built a strong foundation with developers and enterprise customers, and I’m excited to work with the Board and the team on the next chapter of their journey.”

Naveen Rao

Naveen Rao joined NeuReality’s board of directors. Rao left Intel in February 2020, shortly after Intel bought Habana Labs, which made similar AI chip technology. Prior to his role at Intel, Rao was the chief executive officer at Nervana Systems, which Intel acquired in 2016. Intel stopped the development of Nervana neural network processors to focus on the Guadi AI chips.

“After seeing so many AI companies focusing on deep learning accelerators at the device level, NeuReality intrigued me with their refreshing view of overall AI deployment barriers and their unique systems-level approach that will eclipse today’s outdated data center architecture,” said Rao. “NeuReality’s innovative design solves AI scalability and cost challenges.”

Taimur Rashid

Redis Labs, a Redis Enterprise platform provider, appointed Taimur Rashid as its chief business development officer. Rashid comes from Microsoft, where he held the role of general manager and head of worldwide customer success for the azure data and AI business unit.

“I’ve admired how Redis Labs has not only expanded the capabilities of Redis to power modern applications but also by developing new technologies to help enterprises explore data layer strategies that enable real-time use cases,” said Taimur Rashid, Chief Business Development Officer at Redis Labs. “I’m excited to not only make it easier for our partners to sell and help our customers grow with Redis, but also for businesses to build on top of Redis too.”

Oliver Schabenberger

Oliver Schabenberger joined SingleStore, the Database of Now platform provider, as its chief innovation officer. He recently served in a dual role as chief operating officer and chief technology officer at analytics and AI solutions provider SAS.

“Digital transformation is an urgent need across industries,” said Schabenberger. “At the heart of it are data-driven processes. Many organizations face a big gap between digital transformation vision and reality. SingleStore closes this gap with a platform that makes batch and real-time processing converge to deliver real-time, data-driven insights. I am fortunate to join SingleStore’s innovative culture and excited to help the company and its customers achieve even greater potential.”

Dean Thomas

Alation Inc., an enterprise data intelligence solutions provider, appointed Dean Thomas as its senior vice president of customer success. Thomas will be responsible for Alation’s support, services, and client strategy team. Most recently, he held the role of VP of customer experience at Sumo Logic, an intelligence software company.

“I’ve always believed integrity is one of the most important qualities of a customer success organization. Our customers trust us to do the right thing and by doing so, we earn their loyalty rather than expect it,” said Dean Thomas, SVP of Customer Success, Alation. “Alation is laser focused on delivering customer value, and I’m looking forward to scaling our talented and passionate customer success team to ensure our customers exceed their business goals.”

Suresh Vittal

Alteryx, Inc. welcomed Suresh Vittal as its chief product officer. Vittal will manage the product management, engineering, and development organizations at Alteryx. He will also be responsible for the strategic vision of the company’s leading analytics and data science innovation.

“Alteryx has a uniquely passionate customer base, and its APA platform is indispensable to citizen and advanced analysts, data scientists and organizations worldwide who are accelerating their digital transformation journey,” said Vittal. “I am thrilled to join a company that is well-positioned to help leverage and scale data science within the enterprise, democratize insight creation and distribution, and accelerate bringing analytical workloads to the cloud. I look forward to leading this incredibly talented team to deliver innovative solutions to our customers, partners and advocates across the globe.”

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.