Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

Talent Tracker: Who’s Going Where (29/1/21)

Born Social welcomes two new senior hires: Harry Fishwick as Head of Creative and Hannah Wolff as Head of Social Media Management. Fishwick joins from his TUI, the world’s number-one tourism business, where he held the role of Video Marketing Manager and Hannah joins from Three UK where she was lead creative in the social and PR team. They join a team that includes Essi Nurminen and Kate Higham, who have been promoted to Head of Strategy and Head of Operations respectively and Ed Knights who is Head of New Business and Marketing.

Alison.com, a free-to-use online learning and empowerment platform, has appointed Gillian Loos as Marketing Program Manager. Loos has been appointed in order to establish and co-ordinate an effective content strategy across all marketing channels. Prior to her appointment, Loos held a role as Head of Digital Marketing and Social Media at Old Mutual. This position involved managing eleven agencies and leading twelve team members to deliver on annual targets.

Kantar has appointed Paul Sturgeon to lead its brand and marketing return on investment offer. Until recently Sturgeon led Mindshare UK’s data science team.  Prior to that, he held senior roles at MediaCom and PwC.  He is also a member of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Value of Media Committee and an IPA Effectiveness Awards winner and technical judge.

Performance marketing agency, Journey Further, has appointed Ben Ducker as its new Executive Creative Director as it looks to bolster its creative offering. Ducker has previously worked for VCCP and Fold7, as well as running his own production company where he has written and shot campaigns for brands including Carlsberg, O2, Diageo, Microsoft, Easyjet and more. Based in Journey Further’s Leeds office, Ducker will provide a deep understanding of the traditional creative agency approach to brand advertising and combine it with existing data capabilities to create a performance-led and highly measurable approach to brand marketing

Showpad has announced the appointment of two new executive leaders to accelerate global growth. Marissa Aydlett, former Marketing Senior Vice President at Braze, joins Showpad as Chief Growth Officer and Hendrik Isebaert is promoted from Senior Vice President of Worldwide Revenue to Chief Operating Officer. Having previously also held strategic positions at Condé Nast, Buddy Media/ Salesforce and Quartz, going forward, Aydlett will be responsible for leading the marketing organisation and establishing marketing as an engine for organisational growth at Showpad.

Isebaert has shown dedication and demonstrated his skills as a strategic and capable leader at Showpad over the past five years. Now, as Chief Operating Officer, Isebaert will take ownership of the full customer journey, overseeing Showpad’s sales, customer support, product support, partnerships, revenue operations and enablement teams, while working with Aydlett to drive growth through alignment and collaboration of the executive team.

co:collective has hired industry-leading organizational development consultant Derek Newberry to become a lead strategist in its Organization and Culture Design practice. At co:, Newberry will partner with Head of Organization and Culture Design, Kit Krugman, to help clients define the future of work and build purpose-driven cultures. Newberry joins co:collective from the Boston Consulting Group where he spearheaded the cultural change and leadership development efforts of Fortune 500 clients undergoing large scale transformations. A recognized thought leader in the field, Newberry has been an executive educator at the Wharton School and is co-author of the forthcoming book The Culture Puzzle, a guide to building resilient organizations.

In a further boost to the management lineup, co:collective has promoted Jamie Hall, former Group Director, to Head of Client Engagement. In addition, Amanda Ginzburg, its former Head of Marketing, has been promoted to Head of Growth. Jamie Hall will now lead the client engagement discipline at the consultancy, overseeing all client relationships, organic growth, and the growth of the department. Hall, who has worked at co: for four years, has led strategy and business transformation initiatives for brands including LinkedIn, Google, The New York Times and the ACLU. Amanda Ginzburg will now be responsible for overseeing all of business development and growth, in addition to continuing to lead marketing. Ginzburg has been with co:collective for over four years and was previously responsible for building the co: brand across its brand strategy, experience design, organization and culture design and content design practices.

VOODOO has strengthened its senior management team after appointing experienced agile software engineer and business analyst Rob Kerr as its Technical Director. In a career spanning more than twenty years, Kerr has held senior software development roles where he has helped a diverse range of businesses and public sector organisations to embrace new forms of technology to improve customer experiences. For nearly a decade Kerr was part of the BBC’s development team where he led the successful technical redevelopment of the corporation’s GCSE Bitesize service. Kerr helped to transform a tired, static website into a modern interactive experience for end-users.

Redis Labs has named Taimur Rashid as the company’s Chief Business Development Officer. Rashid brings to the company nearly two decades of experience in incubating new market opportunities and expanding the market reach for iconic enterprise software companies, the past 15 years being with leading cloud service providers. Rashid joins Redis Labs from Microsoft where he was General Manager and Head of Worldwide Customer Success for the Azure Data & AI business, leading the cloud solution architects to develop and execute programs for customers to successfully adapt and grow with these services. Previously, Rashid spent more than a decade at Amazon Web Services where he was a founding member of the worldwide commercial field organization, serving in a variety of leadership roles for new product incubation, go-to-market, and strategic business development.

Law firm Kingsley Napley LLP has announced that Leor Franks has joined the firm and its Management Board to lead Business Development, Marketing, Communications and Knowledge. Franks specialises in leading marketing, communications and business development functions in professional service firms. He is Chair of industry body Managing Partners Forum Strategy & Marketing Group, and a board member of Queen Mary University of London Business School. Prior to joining Kingsley Napley, Franks held roles as Chief Marketing Officer of legal services firm Augusta, Managing Director of Marketing Communications at FTI Consulting and Marketing & BD Director positions at Deloitte and EY.

Adam Ross has been appointed as Awin’s Chief Executive Officer, succeeding Mark Walters, who becomes a member of the Supervisory Board. Adam Ross’ appointment as Mark’s successor is a culmination of both his contribution to these strategic initiatives, as well as his highly regarded 15-year tenure as Awin’s Chief Operating Officer. With Mark’s vast experience of Awin and the performance industry, he has been invited to join the Awin Supervisory Board by its Chairman and Axel Springer CFO, Julian Deutz.

Merkle has appointed Sam Taverner to the role of chief growth officer EMEA for Merkle, and dentsu’s customer experience management Service Line. In this role, Taverner will be responsible for providing strategic leadership to new and existing clients, helping them navigate Merkle’s CXM offering across marketing technology, data and analytics, CRM and performance media to deliver effective and efficient customer experience transformation programmes. Taverner joined Merkle in 2017, as part of the acquisition of Comet Global Consulting, where he was group MD. Prior to this, he has held senior roles at CACI, Experian and Acxiom.

NoA (The North Alliance) has announced that founder, Thomas Høgebøl, is being elevated from CEO to the position of Executive Chairman, where he will oversee international acquisitions and expansion in 2021. Mikael Jørgensen, until now the NoA Country Manager for Denmark and CEO of creative advertising agency and NoA component company, &Co, is announced as the new NoA CEO.

Claire Umney has been appointed as managing director of Breathe Technologies to drive the company through its next phase of growth. Umney joins Breathe Technologies from international software solutions provider, AEB, where she worked for 12 years, most recently as strategic initiatives director. She has also held roles at CEVA Logistics and TNT. David Carroll will become CEO, where he’ll take a more strategic and supportive role while exploring further opportunities and partnerships for Breathe Technologies.

Alert Logic has announced that John Post has been named Chief Executive Officer. Post’s role as Alert Logic CFO will be assumed by current Vice President of Finance, Jon Sachs. Former CEO Bob Lyons is departing to pursue new opportunities. Prior to joining Alert Logic as CFO in 2020, Post held the role of CFO and subsequently General Manager of Webroot and most recently COO of Carbonite, following Carbonite’s acquisition of Webroot in 2019.

Ecommerce data integration company Productsup has appointed Thomas Kasemir to the new role of Chief Product Officer. Kasemir has over 20 years of experience, having held senior product roles at IBM, Heiler Software, and Informatica. He joins Productsup from Informatica, where he served for eight years as Vice President of Product Development, MDM Solutions. Kasemir has managed teams across multiple markets, coached talent, grown software products into enterprise solutions, and developed necessary structures and processes to ensure companies’ sustainable growth.

Metapraxis, the financial analytics technology firm, has announced the appointment of Carmen Hula as Chief Financial Officer, following the retirement of Andrew Mosely. Hula is a certified chartered accountant and brings a wealth of experience in technology and finance to Metapraxis. She has previously held the head of finance role at PrePay Solutions, a pioneering VC backed Fintech business, before spending eleven years in the finance team at HSBC. More recently, Hula has worked with start-up focused Act 5 Ventures and as CFO Constellation AI, while providing mentoring at Hult International Business School and NatWest.

Provider of employee communication and engagement software Thrive.App has appointed Laura Ard as Digital Marketing Specialist, to fuel further growth in its business. With 10 years’ multi-sector experience in brand, marketing and digital communications, Ard leads the company’s digital marketing efforts, with responsibilities including SEO, PPC, social media and email marketing. Ard is a Google and HubSpot-certified Chartered Marketer.

Contentsquare has announced the appointment of Niki Hall as Chief Marketing Officer. With over 20+ years’ experience in the field and numerous marketing leadership roles under her belt, Hall will help the company deliver its ambitious growth strategy and accelerate global awareness of Contentsquare. Hall held senior leadership roles at Cisco Systems, Polycom, Five9, and most recently as CMO of Selligent Marketing Cloud. Passionate about people, process and technology, she is well-versed in raising company profiles, building high-performing teams, and scaling for growth.

Enterprise connectivity platform Yapily has welcomed Iain McDougall to the executive team as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO). Prior to joining Yapily, McDougall was the Country Manager and Executive Director at Stripe, where he led the UK and Ireland as Stripe’s first and largest region outside the US. Playing a key role in defining Stripe’s strategy across Europe, McDougall scaled and shaped teams to lead the business through periods of significant year-on-year growth. Prior to Stripe, McDougall was the Head of Sales at Google Cloud in both the UK and Australia/New Zealand, where he played a key role in the early definition of the business before leading through periods of hyper-growth.

First Derivatives has announced the appointment of Sean Andany as Head of Data. With 25 years of experience, Andany brings to First Derivatives a wealth of experience in data and analytics, specifically in relation to cloud and Big Data technologies and has extensive financial services knowledge, having led large-scale global data projects for a number of tier 1 retail and investment banks including HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Barclays. In his most recent role, Andany was Head of Data working directly for the CDO of Astra Zeneca, where he was responsible for the strategy and build-out of the CDO function to deliver a comprehensive Data ecosystem across the firm.

Interbrand Group has announced the promotion of Gonzalo Brujó to Global President, effective February 1st, 2021. Currently, the Global Chief Growth Officer of Omnicom Group’s Interbrand Group, Brujó steps into this newly created role with expansive leadership experience and will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of Interbrand Group around the world. Brujó has been Global Chief Growth Officer of the Interbrand Group for three years. Prior to that, he spent more than fifteen years scaling the Interbrand business in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. He is a trusted partner of a diverse array of leading companies, multinationals and public institutions.

Epicor Software Corporation has hired a new Chief Financial Officer, Samuel Monti. Monti brings close to three decades of public and private equity experience. He spent the first twenty years of his career with two Fortune 500 companies in executive leadership roles ranging from international finance to software division CFO. In his most recent role as CFO at Khoros, a customer engagement software company, Monti was charged with leading the key financial divisions of the company such as banking, M&A, FP&A, accounting, and business system operations.

Udacity, the global online learning platform has announced the appointment of Jennifer Dearman as its Senior Vice President of Global Success and Operations. Leveraging more than 25 years of experience in leading customer success and engagement teams, Dearman’s efforts will further accelerate Udacity’s growth in the enterprise marketplace

Digital marketing veteran Chris Underhill has been appointed as chair of Leeds-based Force24. Underhill brings a wealth of experience to the role having worked in the digital marketing sector for over 20 years. He founded and IPO’d international marketing automation software company smartFOCUS, growing it organically and via acquisitions in the UK, the US and Europe before its sale to a US venture capital firm. Underhill is a highly experienced SaaS B2B investor, chairman and non-executive director, who works with investment groups, ambitious founders and leadership teams to grow companies in the martech, adtech, social and AI space.