Big Data Career Notes: July 2023 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!

Venkat Achanta

TransUnion, a global information and insights company, appointed Venkat Achanta as its chief technology, data, and analytics officer. Achanta will be responsible for all aspects of the company’s technology, including strategy, security, product engineering, operations, infrastructure and delivery of solutions.

“The link between technology, data and analytics has become even greater and plays an ever-increasing role in TransUnion’s innovation and new solution offerings,” said Chris Cartwright, President and CEO, TransUnion. “Venkat’s leadership and extensive experience will complement the Global Technology team’s existing capabilities as we continue our transformation across global platforms and products.”

Paul Auvil

Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, nominated Paul Auvil to its board of directors. Auvil will bring more than 35 years of finance, technology, and corporate leadership experience to the Elastic board of directors. He has previously served on One Medical, OpenTV, Marin Software, and Quantum Corporation boards.

“Elastic is recognized around the world as the leading platform for search-powered solutions,” said Auvil. “I am excited to join the leadership team as the company delivers on the promise of innovations like generative AI to enable anyone to find the answers they need in real-time using all their data, at scale.”

Andres Botero

Rubrik, the zero trust data security company, appointed Andres Botero as its chief marketing officer. Botero will be responsible for driving Rubrik’s go-to-market strategies and growth initiatives. He most recently served as the chief strategy and marketing officer at BlackLine.

“Data security threats—especially ransomware—are some of the toughest challenges for which executive teams and cybersecurity leaders must prepare. Rubrik is leading the charge in cybersecurity by creating new categories of solutions and building partnerships that secure data and provide customers the confidence of cyber resilience,” said Botero. “I am grateful for the opportunity to join this successful leadership team and to work with the company to accelerate our market strategies and growth.”

Ido Bukspan

Pliops, a provider of data processors for cloud and enterprise data centers, appointed Ido Bukspan as its chief executive officer and board member. Bukspan most recently served as senior vice president of Chip Design at NVIDIA.

“I’m excited to join Pliops and continue to integrate the advanced technology it developed – together with its founders, Uri, Moshe and Aryeh, and the company’s leaders and employees,” Bukspan said. “Pliops is experiencing an excellent momentum for continued growth and expansion.”

Betsy Doughty

Hammerspace appointed Betsy Doughty as its senior director of worldwide partner marketing. She also serves on the board of directors for the YWCA Boulder County and is an active professional mentor in the CU Leeds School of Business Professional Mentoring Program.

“I am honored to join Hammerspace at such a pivotal time in its growth and expansion trajectory,” said Doughty. “Hammerspace’s commitment to leading-edge innovation is truly inspiring. I am thrilled to work alongside its talented team to strengthen our partner relationships, drive impactful marketing initiatives and help deliver unparalleled value to our customers.”

Rom Kosla and Bethany Mayer

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) appointed Rom Kosla as its chief information officer. Kosla comes to HPE from Retail Business Services, having served as the company’s executive vice president, IT, and chief information officer. Before Retail Business Services, Kosla was PepsiCo’s senior vice president and CIO of Corporate and Enterprise Solutions.

In addition, HPE appointed Bethany Mayer, former president and CEO of Ixia, to HPE’s board of directors. She will also serve as a member of the board’s technology committee. Before Hewlett-Packard Company’s 2015 separation into Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HP Inc. and prior to joining Ixia in 2014, Mayer led the expansion of Hewlett-Packard Company’s networking business as senior vice president and general manager.

Deborah Leff

SQream appointed Deborah Leff as its chief revenue officer. Leff will lead the company’s global sales and go-to-market teams including global partnerships and business development, particularly in the North American market. Prior to SQream, she served as the global lead of business analytics sales at IBM and industry CTO for IBM data science and AI.

“I am thrilled to be formally joining the SQream team. Over the last year, I have seen first-hand the impact that SQream is having on enterprises that either need to analyze more data than current systems can handle or benefit from dramatically reducing time to insight for critical business processes,” said Leff.“At a time when AI is pushing the limits of existing cloud infrastructures and budgets, SQream is in a perfect position to tackle those challenges with its ability to overcome barriers in data analytics, and I am excited to put my experience to work and accelerate SQream’s growth across the US market and globally.”

Amr Nour-Eldin

LXT, a solutions provider of AI training data, appointed Amr Nour-Eldin as its vice president of technology. Nour-Eldin brings an extensive background in speech and audio processing as well as machine learning in the context of automatic speech recognition. Most recently, Nour-Eldin was a principal researcher in the global R&D division at Nuance (now part of Microsoft).

“With the emergence of AI as a truly transformational technology, the LXT mission to power technologies of the future through innovative data generation in every language, culture, and modality is more important than ever,” said Nour-Eldin. “I am very excited to join such a talented team and look forward to shaping the landscape and future of AI data together.”

Tyler Prince

Snowflake, the data cloud company, appointed Tyler Prince as its senior vice president of worldwide alliances and channels. Prince will lead Snowflake’s global channel and partner business to drive increased growth, collaboration, and customer-centric innovation across the data cloud ecosystem.

“Customers are at the heart of everything Snowflake does, and the Snowflake Partner Network is a world-class example of how delivering choice in the tools and solutions available to customers drives our customers’ success,” said Prince. “I look forward to continuing to grow the Snowflake ecosystem, engaging more deeply and broadly with partners to accelerate their own businesses.”

Sendur Sellakumar

Dremio, the easy and open data lakehouse, appointed Sendur Sellakumar as its chief executive officer. Sellakumar joins Dremio with over two decades of leadership experience in enterprise software and data analytics. Prior to joining Dremio, Sellakumar served in a variety of software technology roles at Splunk and ServiceTitan.

“I am honored and excited to join Dremio as its CEO,” said Sellakumar. “Dremio’s innovative approach to enterprise analytics and its commitment to empowering organizations with fast, flexible, and reliable access to their data is truly impressive. I am looking forward to working closely with the talented Dremio team to further accelerate the company’s growth and deliver exceptional value to our customers. We are committed to helping enterprise customers realize the value of their data in driving business outcomes.”

Dan Zugelder

Dynatrace appointed Dan Zugelder as its chief revenue officer. Zugelder joined Dynatrace from VMware, where he held the role of senior vice president and general manager of the Americas region. Prior to VMware, he worked for 18 years at Dell EMC, where he held several key sales management positions, most recently serving as SVP of global accounts.

“I’m honored to be joining Dynatrace,” said Zugelder. “With the rapid evolution of the cloud and resultant explosion in data, end-to-end observability and application security have become mandatory. Dynatrace’s ability to provide precise, data-driven analytics and automation has proven to be key differentiator in the market. Building upon the strong go-to-market foundation that Steve and his team have in place, I am excited to play a key role in the next phase of growth for Dynatrace.

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.