Pure-play customer data platform (CDP) BlueConic has appointed Ethan Halliwell as CFO, where he will be responsible for building a world-class finance organization and championing financial and operational excellence at the company. Halliwell will be based in the Boston office. Prior to BlueConic, Halliwell spent seven years at ServiceChannel, where he worked to build the business from $12m in recurring revenue in 2014 to over $100m in 2021. His career includes time spent at Vixxo, Sallie Mae, and Wells Fargo working to build outstanding teams and fueling growth.
Avantgarde London, the brand experience agency, has announced the hire of two senior recruits, Rachel Lewandowska (formerly Bateman) as Client Services Director and Steve Hickery as the agency’s new Creative Director. The hires come following a wave of growth for the agency, with 11 new hires across the client services, creative, digital, new business and operational teams over the last two months. Lewandowska brings with her a wealth of integrated marketing experience, following a 12-year stint at Initials CX, specifically from her role as Head of Experiential, which she held since 2015. Hickery will be working into Avantgarde’s previous Creative Director, Steve Austen-Brown, who has now taken on the role of Head of Design and Creative. Coming from his previous role as Creative Director at Glock, Hickery will be responsible for specific clients including Jaguar Land Rover, Credit Suisse, eBay and Bridgestone – with a particular focus on helping drive agency new business.
Extreme Networks has strengthened its leadership team in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. Jeff Hurmuses has been promoted to Senior Vice President, APAC, Freddy Wang has been hired as the Country Sales Director for Taiwan and Makoto Naito is leading Extreme’s sales efforts in Japan. As senior vice president of APAC, Hurmuses will manage sales operations and continue to drive growth for Extreme across the region. Hurmuses joined the company in 2021 as vice president of sales in APAC and has played a significant role in establishing a presence in the region with key customer wins such as LG Electronics and Marriott Hotel Group Greater China. As country sales director for Taiwan, Wang will lead regional business growth strategies as well as drive Extreme’s expanded presence in the country. Wang brings more than 25 years of IT industry sales experience to Extreme and has expertise in growing channel business initiatives and marketing activities in the Taiwan market. He joins Extreme from Juniper Networks, where he was the senior channel and commercial sales leader for Taiwan. Naito-san will continue to drive growth opportunities across Japan. He has more than 40 years of experience in IT industry sales in Japan and has held sales leadership roles at companies including Sony, Akamai Technologies, IBM, APC Japan, Schneider Electric, Dell, CA Technologies, Barracuda, Eurotech and NCR Corporation. Most recently, he was the regional managing director at DXC Technology.
Moloco, a machine learning company, has announced the appointments of Sabrina Simmons and Pat Wadors to its Board of Directors, effective September 1, 2022. Sabrina Simmons is the former Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Gap Inc., and currently sits on the boards of Coursera, Columbia Sportswear, and Petco. Pat Wadors is Chief People Officer of UKG and currently holds a board position with Accolade, Inc. Prior to UKG, Wadors held roles at tech companies including LinkedIn and Yahoo! Both join Moloco as Independent Board Members.
Totalmobile, a UK leader in Field Service Management software solutions, has announced the launch of its new Partner Programme by newly appointed Head of Channel Sales, Lisa Kirby. Kirby has 20 years of experience working in the software industry, having previously worked for major software vendors including IFS and ServiceNow, forming partnerships with a diverse range of partners and large enterprise organisations. She reports directly to the CRO, Rhys Thomas, and in her first few months at the company has been focusing primarily on the launch of the new Partner Programme.
The web3 music company TokenTraxx has appointed the former Global Revenue Director of The Guardian, Tim Gentry, as Chief Executive Officer at their headquarters in London, England. Gentry co-founded TokenTraxx in 2021 and joined as Chief Operating Officer. He takes over from Paul Taylor, who played an instrumental role in positioning the company as one of the most promising music businesses in the web3 space by launching the TRAXX token on BitMart and AscendEX. Taylor takes up his new position as Chief Commercial Officer with immediate effect. Gentry’s promotion to CEO has been complemented by additional appointments. Chris Ware has been appointed as the Chief Marketing Officer. It is Ware’s first foray into web3, yet he brings a wealth of creative talent and branding experience, having led the UK media account for Apple over a number of years in the UK as well as holding the same position for consumer brand giant Unilever across Europe and most recently as Global lead for car manufacturer Audi. Jason Lamont, a music industry expert who held the position of Vice President Marketing & Creative at Warner Music’s Parlophone Records, becomes Chief Strategy Officer. Lamont has also previously led content and marketing teams at streaming video start-up Babelgum as well as EMI records in Australia. Chief Technology Officer Jitin Jain, whose work has been integral to the UX improvements including the onboarding of Circle credit card and the Venly wallet integration, has been promoted to the company board of directors. Another board member, co-founder Miles Leonard, the renowned ex-Chairman of Parlophone Records and Warner Music is in advanced talks for TokenTraxx to partner with some of the UK’s biggest music labels.
Ogury has announced the appointment of Stéphane Dupayage as Chief Product Officer. In his role, Dupayage will lead the company’s product organization and roadmap to build and execute new strategies around personified advertising, powered by a true IDless and cookieless solution designed for marketers, agencies and suppliers. With over 20 years of experience in digital technology companies, with a majority spent in AdTech and Retail Media, Dupayage brings with him top-tier product, engineering and business knowledge and skills. Most recently, he was SVP Product Retail Media at AdTech company Criteo.
Relative Insight, a comparative text analytics software company, has hired sales expert Kimberly Shernoff to head up its new Philadelphia office. As Sales Enablement Director, Shernoff will be responsible for the U.S. division of the company’s commercial team; onboarding and training new staff and managing all aspects of the sales function. Prior to her new position as Sales Enablement Director for Relative Insight, Shernoff was an independent coach for businesses and sales executives looking to enhance processes, increase sales velocity and develop targeted strategies for growth.
Bidstack, the in-game advertising and video game monetization platform, today announces that Jude O’Connor joins the company from AdColony as Chief Revenue Officer. A 20-year adtech professional, O’Connor joins Bidstack after more than seven years at AdColony, one of the world’s largest mobile gaming monetization platforms. Prior to entering the gaming space, O’Connor worked at pioneering internet companies like Yahoo and AOL.
Kevin Dean, a data industry veteran with over 30 years of experience, has joined AnalyticsIQ as Chief Strategy Officer. Dean brings over three decades of data marketing and information services executive leadership expertise to the organization. Most recently, Dean served as Chief Operating Officer at Infutor which was successfully acquired by Verisk earlier this year. Prior to that, Dean spearheaded global product development for Experian’s marketing services division.
Independent purpose-driven creative consultancy Fox + Hare has appointed Mark Smith as its first-ever Managing Director, following a period of significant growth. Smith joins Fox + Hare bringing with him 28 years of marketing industry experience, with previous roles including Co-Founder and Managing Director at Table 19 (working with clients such as Sky and Carphone Warehouse), Managing Partner at LIDA/M&C Saatchi (working with clients such as RBS/NatWest, The FA and Carnival Cruises) and Managing Director at SevenC3 (with clients including Vitality, Bosch and WW). Smith will report to Craig Hares, Founder, Fox + Hare and will oversee the day-to-day operation of a team of up to 20, initially.
Independent media agency for dynamic growth brands, The Specialist Works, has announced the appointment of Thinkbox’s Sam Olive as Head of AV. He will lead the AV specialist team at The Specialist Works, overseeing delivery of best-in-class media outcomes for clients across brand and performance AV activations. With more than 20 years’ experience in the industry, working for the likes of Ebiquity PLC, Mediacom, Total Media, NatMags and Pearl & Dean, Sam joins The Specialist Works, part of What’s Possible Group, from Thinkbox, the UK’s marketing body for commercial TV. As Thinkbox’s planning controller he was responsible for promoting the power of TV advertising to agencies. Sam will now work with his new team to bring this experience back to an agency setting.
Following a nine-digit Euro investment of Silver Tree and Perwyn, SALESmanago is strengthening its C-Level executive team. The new members of the executive team include experienced leaders from B2B eCommerce and SaaS organisations. New appointments include VP of Sales, Auke Grondsma, Chief People Officer, James Eastwood, and Chief Marketing Officer, Ian Macleod. VP of Sales, Auke Grondsma has 15 years of experience in sales leadership. He was previously Senior Vice President, Head of EMEA Sales for Siteimprove, where he worked for 6 years. He also held a sales leadership position at eBay. Chief Marketing Officer, Ian Macleod, is a B2B / B2C Marketing & Growth Leader with more than 20 years of experience in startup, scale up and global enterprise brands within the SaaS, eCommerce, travel tech, fintech, entertainment and gambling sectors. He was previously VP of Marketing at Linnworks and CMO at Triptease. Chief People Officer, James Eastwood has 20 years of international HR transformation and leadership experience, including 6 years as People Operations Director at Capgemini. Prior roles include HR Director at AON and SVP People Services at Cable & Wireless. He has been recognised as a Global HR Superstar by HRO Today on multiple occasions.
Gigamon, the deep observability company, has announced it has welcomed Stephen Oliver as General Manager, North EMEA, and Jason Wang as Cloud Solutions Consultant EMEA, as the organisation seeks to help customers with optimised and secure hybrid cloud adoption, and advance the deep observability market. Oliver joins Gigamon following over 20 years of working in enterprise IT and security, including roles at Veritas, Symantec and Tanium. In this dedicated cloud consulting role, Wang also joins Gigamon leveraging more than 15 years of experience in the field, to spearhead cloud evangelism in the organisation.
Crowd Network (Crowd), the audio-on-demand network, has welcomed Katherine Hutcheson as commercial director. With over 20 years of experience in audio, Hutcheson has held commercial content director positions for Bauer’s National Brands, Hutcheson was also responsible for the commercial development and strategy for JACK Radio Group. More recently Hutcheson was at Acast responsible for driving revenue and nurturing relationships with senior media agency stakeholders.
Highspot, the sales enablement software solution that bridges the gap between strategy and execution, has appointed former Global Sales Enablement Program Lead, Laura Valerio as their new Principal Consultant for EMEA. At Highspot, Valerio will join the Strategic Enablement Services team. Here, Valerio will contribute to the global team in defining enablement best practices, and will work with customers to create a repeatable enablement methodology to turn their vision into successful execution (Strategic Enablement Framework). Over the last 6 years, Valerio has led global sales enablement programs, from inception to successful implementation at Expedia and Deliveroo.
