Independent creative agency, AML Group, has announced the appointment of Hugo Bone to the role of Creative Director. Bone joins from The Gate where, as Creative Director he produced notable campaigns for, among others, Chiltern Railway; The Electoral Commission and Lives Not Knives. Prior to the Gate Bone spent time at a number of leading agencies with extended tenures at both BBH and VCCP creating campaigns for O2, Audi and Virgin Media – including the celebrated ‘Introducing the Bolt Family’ with sprint legend Usain Bolt in multiple guises.
Oxfordshire-based SEO agency, Evergreen, has welcomed three strategic managerial hires. Stacey Barton joins Evergreen as Outreach Manager, with eight years’ agency experience in building authoritative links for clients. Elizabeth Hind is responsible for the clients’ content marketing activities, and Stan Welman-Williams will be managing and growing the agency’s PPC offering to complement the SEO activity. All three managers will be collectively working on boosting clients’ visibility, leads and online traffic, at a time when the agency is rapidly growing its eCommerce and SME roster.
Kinesso, IPG’s marketing intelligence company, has announced that Dr. Femi Olu-Lafe has been hired as SVP, Culture and Inclusion. Dr. Olu-Lafe will be responsible not only for Kinesso’s DEI efforts but for those at its sister IPG companies, Acxiom and Matterkind. Previously, Dr. Olu-Lafe was a Senior Consultant at YSC Consulting where she used her expertise in cognitive psychology and applied data analysis to provide leadership insights, executive coaching, and partnership to organizations wishing to develop and execute bespoke DEI initiatives. Before that, she was part of Catalyst’s Diversity and Inclusion practice.
B2B Media Group has appointed former Criteo executive Andreas Misera as its VP Product to accelerate the development of its product portfolio for B2B companies, including its data platform, B2B.IQ. Misera brings more than 20 years of experience in digital marketing and ad technology to B2B Media Group, having recently led Criteo’s technical and data & analytics operations in Central Europe, Russia/CIS, the Middle East and Africa for seven years. Misera’s role at Criteo was focused on business expansion, new product rollouts and operational success across the regions. Prior to Criteo, he held positions at Adconion and Yahoo.
Dorian Payne, Client Services Director at promotional staffing agency StreetPR, has been elevated to the role of Managing Director, as the company’s founder and longtime MD James Rix steps back to focus on the group’s burgeoning digital business, Crowdify Global, and a new venue – Knowhere Special. Payne is a dedicated and experienced events professional with over 20 years of experience in hosting, managing and running large-scale events across a diverse range of venues. Payne joined StreetPR in 2005 as Operations Director and quickly became the agency’s go-to guy for all large scale event staffing. His most recent post was Client Services Director for StreetPR and Director of Experiential for Crowdify.
Digital Guardian has announced the appointment of Richard Orange as its new Vice President of EMEA Sales. Orange will be responsible for the revenue growth of the company’s award-winning cloud-delivered data protection platform which enables companies to protect critical data and IP from the endpoint to the cloud. Orange brings nearly 25 years of experience and joins Digital Guardian from Forescout, where he spent over four years as part of the EMEA leadership team, growing its customer base and delivering 350% growth in revenue over his tenure. He has also enjoyed success with F5 Networks, HP Enterprise Security and specialist cybersecurity services firm, Vistorm.
Amdocs Media, a division of Amdocs has made two new appointments. Michael Ritchie joins Amdocs Media from System 73 as Head of Sales for Western Europe and Africa, and Emil Umetbaev joins the business from MediaKind in the role of Sales Director responsible for business development in Eastern Europe and the Nordics. Prior to joining Amdocs Media, Ritchie was CCO at System 73 and previously held a series of senior commercial roles at Eurovision (EBU), Piksel, Red Touch Media and Fastly. Prior to joining Amdocs Media, Umetbaev was Program Director at MediaKind and previously had notable successes in delivering growth at Ericsson.
Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) has announced that Prof. Stephen Clark is joining the company as Head of Artificial Intelligence. Until recently, Prof. Clark was a Senior Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind in London where he led a team working on grounded language learning in virtual environments. He also holds an Honorary Professorship at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to starting at DeepMind in October 2016, Prof. Clark spent 10 years as a member of faculty at the University of Cambridge Department of Computer Science and Technology, where he was Reader in Natural Language Processing.
Incubeta, the digital marketing services group, has announced the appointment of Tom Smith as Marketing Director in the US. As an experienced digital marketing strategist with more than 15 years of experience, Smith will originate the role of Marketing Director at Incubeta in the US market. Prior to joining Incubeta, Smith held senior marketing roles at Yahoo in Microsoft Bing’s paid search division, Apploi and DCL. Most recently, as Marketing Director at data analytics SaaS platform, Signals Analytics (acquired by Kenshoo), he was responsible for driving marketing and demand generation initiatives to further company growth.
Arcus Global, specialist cloud solutions provider for the public sector, has hired Paul Langridge as sales director. In his role, Langridge will be responsible for the local government team, establishing and enacting a strategy to propel Arcus Global towards its growth goals by identifying new market opportunities and defining the actions required to take advantage of them. Using his extensive knowledge of local government operations and back-office processes, Langridge will engage with local government teams to understand their digital transformation strategies and fine-tune Arcus Global’s value proposition in response to a national move towards a unitary authority structure, which will consolidate councils.
Boutique digital agency Fablr has expanded its team with the appointment of Sean Keegan as a new project manager and the promotion of senior project manager Chris Bennett. Keegan, who has a degree in software engineering and an MSc in International Business Management, has built up a good foundation experience working as a project manager in the digital sector. His technical expertise coupled with his passion for all things digital makes him a great fit for Fablr, and this new role will give him the chance to work directly with clients, taking projects from conception all the way through to delivery. Fablr has also promoted senior project manager Chris Bennett to head of operations. Bennett joined Fablr in December 2019 with considerable experience across the digital sector, from working client-side delivering award-winning science communications for an internationally renowned research centre, to building infrastructure and marketing programs for a web technology start-up.
Netskope has announced the appointment of Michael Herman as VP Channel Sales for EMEA and Latam. With extensive experience in technology sales, and over twenty years leading and architecting channel strategies, Herman joins with a remit to build out Netskope’s channel partnerships, support team and programmes across both the EMEA and Latam regions. Herman joins Netskope from Palo Alto Networks where he served for almost six years as VP EMEA Channels and Commercial Sales. Before Palo Alto Networks, Herman filled senior leadership roles at IBM and Cisco, all of which equipped him with powerful knowledge and experience in the convergence of network and security in a cloud-first environment.
Sim Local, one of the world’s largest SIM providers in the travel sector, has appointed Ian Rankin as its Chief Trading Officer, effective immediately. Ian joins with a remit to accelerate international expansion; enhance the existing retail offer and will also have responsibility for supplier relationships globally. Prior to joining Sim Local, Ian was Managing Director for WHSmith Singapore where he was responsible for building the presence and profitability of the business across South East Asia. His career prior to this saw him work in buying for major household retailers including Tesco and Sainsbury’s before he joined WHSmith in 2015.
ThoughtSpot has announced Pam Holmberg has joined the company as Head of People. In her role, Holmberg will be responsible for driving employee engagement, recruiting, and human resources at ThoughtSpot. Pam Holmberg brings over twenty years of diverse HR experience to her role at ThoughtSpot. As EVP of People at Realtor.com, Holmberg led the HR function which included translating strategic and tactical business plans, fostering talent development and managing employee relations. Prior to her time at Realtor.com, she served various Human Resource positions at Veritas Technologies, Pivotal Software Inc., NetApp and LSI Logic where she oversaw talent acquisition, retention, career development and training and leadership development initiatives. Holmberg takes pride in her foundational work building and sustaining innovative and entrepreneurial company cultures.
