Big Data Career Notes: May 2021 Edition

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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!

Chris Battles

Reltio, the data management software as a service platform provider, welcomed Chris Battles as its chief customer officer. Battles brings to Reltio 20 years of leadership experience. Most recently, he served as chief people officer of Zuora.

“I am very excited to join Reltio at this time of rapid growth,” said Battles. “My experience as a customer-driven product and executive leader gives me a deep appreciation for the data management challenges Reltio’s MDM SaaS platform helps businesses overcome to thrive in the digital, data-driven economy. I have first-hand experience in delivering amazing customer experiences and driving timely and accurate business decisions when faced with the siloed, fragmented, and disjointed data systems that are all too common in the enterprise. I have a passion for helping customers quickly, easily, and efficiently realize value from their investments in cloud services.”

Brian Cabrera

Quantum Corp. appointed Brian Cabrera to its executive leadership team as general counsel and chief compliance officer. Cabrera, a 25-year veteran in the legal industry, previously served as an assistant United States attorney in the criminal division of the Northern California federal prosecutor’s office. He also previously served as a senior vice president and general counsel for Nvidia.

“I am very excited to join the executive leadership team at Quantum as they continue to build leading platforms supporting the large and growing video and unstructured data market,” said Cabrera. “I look forward to contributing to the company’s future growth and success.”

Teresa Carlson

Splunk Inc., the provider of the data-to-everything platform, appointed Teresa Carlson to the newly created president and chief growth officer role. Carlson is an executive with more than 25 years of industry experience in leading business transformations for SaaS, data management and cloud businesses.

“I am thrilled to join the passionate and talented team at Splunk, and motivated by this opportunity to bring exciting cloud and data solutions to global customers across all industries,” said Carlson. “Together, we will build on Splunk’s legacy of innovation as one of the fastest growing companies in the history of enterprise software.”

Tony Coffey

AHEAD, a digital platform solutions provider, welcomed Tony Coffey as its chief operating officer. Coffey will be responsible for scaling AHEAD’s operations to meet the demands of a fast-growing organization. He brings more than 25 years of experience in the technology sector, including serving as chief strategy officer at VCE, Dell EMC’s converged infrastructure division.

“AHEAD is extremely well-positioned to continue its high growth, both organically and through acquisition,” said Coffey. “I’m energized to help scale AHEAD’s operations and facilitate the efficient, quality delivery of digital solutions to our clients.”

Paula Hansen

Alteryx, Inc., the analytics automation company, appointed Paula Hansen as its chief revenue officer. Hansen will be responsible for the global go-to-market organization, including worldwide sales, channels, and all industry-specific GTM initiatives.

“Alteryx is a proven market leader with incredible growth potential as the urgency of digital transformation accelerates the need for analytics, data science and process automation,” said Hansen. “We have an imminent responsibility to deliver on this demand for our global customer base and to help every organization generate transformational outcomes from data. I look forward to leading this high-caliber team as we capitalize on the tremendous market opportunity in front of us and aim to put our unified platform in the hands of every data worker across the globe.”

Benjamin Henshall

Denodo, a data virtualization solutions provider, appointed Benjamin Henshall as its vice president of Australia, New Zealand.  Henshall will be responsible for developing and accelerating Denodo’s growth in both the Australian and New Zealand markets. He comes from Red Hat, where he most recently served as general manager of South East Asian markets.

“I have been closely following Denodo’s worldwide growth, specifically in the ANZ region, for the last few years,” said Henshall. “I personally know the data-related pain points of many organizations in the territory, and I definitely believe Denodo has the right product to solve many of those problems. My near terms focus will be to build the awareness of Denodo’s product and solution, not only working with my colleagues at Denodo but our amazing partner ecosystem in the ANZ region.”

Haniyeh Mahmoudian

DataRobot, an enterprise artificial intelligence solutions provider, appointed Haniyeh Mahmoudian as its global AI ethicist. The newly created role aims to further the company’s mission to build and deliver trustworthy and ethical AI systems. Mahmoudian previously served as a data science researcher for DataRobot, focusing on privacy, bias, trust and ethics in AI.

“When used properly, AI can be a force for good and help contribute solutions to some of society’s most pressing issues, such as access to equitable healthcare,” said Mahmoudian. “The COVID-19 pandemic has inspired unprecedented interest in AI. However, to accomplish those goals, we must ensure machine learning systems have trustworthy and ethical parameters built-in from the start. I’m proud to lead DataRobot’s efforts to make AI tools accessible, trusted and equitable for all stakeholders, including the medical community.”

Barbara Nelson, Rick Spencer, and Marc Kaplan

InfluxData, the developer of the database InfluxDB solution, promoted Barbara Nelson to vice president of applications, Rick Spencer to VP of platform, and Marc Kaplan to VP of technical services. Nelson will deliver the user interface and e-commerce platform for InfluxData’s cloud service as head of the applications team.

As InfluxData’s head of platform, Spencer will be responsible for the core storage engine, developer tooling, and running InfluxDB Cloud 2.0 on Kubernetes in multiple clouds and regions. Kaplan will advance core capabilities across sales, professional services and support, with a focus on accelerating product adoption and customer satisfaction.

Aayush Prakash

AI.Reverie, a synthetic data platform provider, welcomed Aayush Prakash as its head of machine learning. Prakash is renowned in the field of machine learning and recognized as one of the foremost synthetic data researchers in the world. Over the course of his career, Prakash has delivered important work, including scene graph generation and domain randomization. At Nvidia, he was focused on unlocking the domain gap problem.

“I have joined AI.Reverie now because of its lead in synthetic data development,” said Prakash. “Rather than talking about the future, AI.Reverie has already been making it easy for organizations around the world to put synthetic data to work in order to take on their biggest opportunities and challenges. Shortly, AI.Reverie’s self-serve platform will put the data at every machine learning professionals’ fingertips.”

Thomas Siekmann

Exasol, a high-performance analytics database company, welcomed Thomas Siekmann as its chief information officer. Siekmann will be responsible for the internal systems and services for all Exasol. Siekmann comes from Siemens Gamesa Renewable Service GmbH, where he served as its vice president of IT and digitalization.

“I am very excited to have joined the Exasol leadership team as CIO,” said Siekmann. “Exasol’s high-performance analytics database is thrilling. It’s fast, easy to implement, and easy to maintain. This brings massive business value to customers looking to accelerate their data-driven decision making.”

Matt Webb

CData Software, the provider of standards-based drivers and data access solutions for real-time data integration, appointed Matt Webb as its chief financial officer. Webb has held financial leadership roles at Devada and MaxPoint, Valassis Digital (after it acquired MaxPoint), and healthcare software company, M*Model.

“I am excited to join the CData team and to build on the impressive growth the business has seen over the past few years,” said Webb. “Data is core to the future of organizations across the world. As a leader in data connectivity with exceptional technology and a proven team, CData is well positioned to support organizations looking to leverage their data to drive their businesses forward. As a result, the sky is the limit for CData.”

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.