Big Data Career Notes: January 2020 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!

Ed Anuff

DataStax announced Ed Anuff is joining the company as chief product officer. Anuff has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, creating innovative consumer and enterprise products and starting and selling several companies, and as an executive, defining product strategy at an early stage and publicly traded companies. He has also played critical roles in multiple rounds of funding and transactions from M&A to IPO.

Before DataStax, Anuff was director of product management and was leading products and strategy for Apigee at Google. He was responsible for maximizing the total addressable market for API and microservice management products, building technology partnerships for multi-cloud and hybrid cloud strategies, and leading Apigee’s technology corporate development, evaluating acquisition opportunities.

Robert Bearden

Cloudera announced the appointment of Robert Bearden as president and chief executive officer. Bearden was co-founder and CEO of Hortonworks, a publicly-traded open-source company that merged with Cloudera in 2019. He also served as president and COO of SpringSource until its acquisition by VMWare in 2009. Before joining SpringSource, Bearden also served as COO of JBoss until its acquisition by Red Hat in 2006.

“I am excited to become Cloudera’s CEO and to help lead its next phase of growth as the enterprise data cloud company,” Bearden said. “As a board member, I’ve been engaged with the leadership team on the company’s vision and strategy. I am fully committed to that strategy and confident our team will continue to execute on our growth initiatives. There is a large market for enterprise solutions that manage the complete data lifecycle across any cloud or data center. The new Cloudera Data Platform will enable us to capture more of this high-growth opportunity.”

From left to right: Christal Bemont, Ann-Christel Graham, and Jamie Kiser

Christal Bemont, Ann-Christel Graham, and Jamie Kiser

Talend announced the appointment of Christal Bemont as its chief executive officer and director on the Talend Board of Directors. Talend also announced the appointments of Ann-Christel Graham to the newly-created position of chief revenue officer and Jamie Kiser as chief customer officer.

Bemont has a demonstrated track record in digital transformation, new market expansion, channel and partner collaboration, and creating operational efficiency. Previously, she spent 15 years at SAP Concur, most recently leading its business organization as chief revenue officer. Graham was vice president of sales for enterprise clients at SAP Concur and responsible for managing complex, multi-million-dollar sales cycles to Fortune 1000 companies and building high-performing sales teams. Kiser served over six years with SAP in various products, services, and implementation roles where she was most recently vice president, global public sector for SAP Concur.

“The cloud plays an increasingly essential role in delivering business insights to the enterprise, and Talend plays an equally important role by providing the industry’s only cloud platform that removes the major hurdles preventing companies from using data as a strategic asset. Talend is now in a unique position to attack what has become a multi-billion-dollar cloud market opportunity,” Bemont said. “I’m delighted to be joining the company and look forward to working with my leadership team and a talented group of employees to leverage Talend’s cloud momentum and drive the business forward.”

Dayle Hall

SnapLogic announced the appointment of Dayle Hall to the role of chief marketing officer. Hall now leads the company’s global marketing initiatives, including branding and digital marketing, corporate communications, product marketing, demand generation, field marketing, and more. He joins SnapLogic’s executive leadership team and reports to CEO Gaurav Dhillon. Most recently, Hall was CMO at People.ai, where he was instrumental in creating a new category for AI-powered revenue intelligence, and helping to grow the company’s revenue.

“The opportunity at SnapLogic was too good to turn down,” Hall said. “The team has done an incredible job establishing a market-leading position with a product that’s intuitive, easy to deploy and use, and sits at the fulcrum of all enterprise automation. There’s a massive opportunity to put this powerful platform in the hands of IT teams and functional lines of business alike because real business acceleration begins when data and applications are accessible across the entire organization. I’m excited to be here and put some firepower into SnapLogic’s go-to-market and marketing machine.”

Chris Knerr

Syniti announced that Chris Knerr, CEO and co-founder of Mareana, has been named Syniti’s chief digital officer. Under the new role, Knerr will lead the expansion of Syniti’s Data Strategy practice and Unstructured Data/Analytics offerings globally — both serve as key strategic elements of Syniti’s global strategy.  Most recently, Knerr was CEO of Mareana, a high-growth enterprise software tech start-up and management consulting company, which he founded to help clients monetize unstructured data and improve business analytics outcomes using AI and machine learning.

“I am thrilled to be joining Syniti at this critical inflection point in our growth,” Knerr said. “We have an incredible opportunity to bring even more value to our customers in their Data Journey through strategy, analytics, and an industry-leading, holistic approach to Data. A robust Digital Strategy depends on Data Strategy and execution, and we’re uniquely positioned through our world-class software and services to deliver on that business value.”

Kevin Petrie

Kevin Petrie joined the Eckerson Group as vice president of research. Petrie has a decade of experience in data management and analytics. He launched, built, and led a data services team for EMC Pivotal in the Americas and EMEA, implementing data warehouse and data lake platforms for Fortune 2000 enterprises. More recently, he ran field training at the data integration software provider Attunity, now part of Qlik.

Petrie has co-authored two books and also serves as a data management instructor at eLearningCurve. He has a B.A. from Bowdoin College and an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley.

Amit Walia

Informatica announced that its Board of Directors named Amit Walia as chief executive officer. Walia succeeds Anil Chakravarthy, who is stepping down from his role as CEO to pursue other professional opportunities. Walia, who most recently served as Informatica’s President of Products and Marketing, has been a member of Informatica’s leadership team since joining the company in 2013.

“I am honored to serve as CEO during this extraordinary era of digital transformation, as Informatica is perfectly positioned to capitalize on this shift and help customers unleash the power of data,” Walia said. “We are privileged to have a great customer base, an amazing team of employees across the globe, and a unique leadership position in all the markets where we compete. I look forward to working closely with the Company’s Board and leadership team to continue building upon the exceptional transformation we have executed over the past few years and scale a long-term innovation-driven organization. Our best days are truly ahead of us.”

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.