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IAB Data Rockstars

IAB Data Rockstars 2

IAB’s Data Rockstar and Rising Star awards honor those doing amazing things, innovating and changing the world of data. Award recipients are nominated by peers, managers and partners or are self-nominated.

IAB Data Rockstars and Rising Stars are selected by the IAB Data Center of Excellence Board of Directors and honored at IAB events.


2019 Data Rockstars

Donna Hamilton

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Donna Hamilton, SVP Data Acquisition & Activation, Alliant

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Data strategist, data evangelism, product ideation, innovation

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Donna is Alliant’s subject matter expert in ideating data-driven solutions. She is a master at combining data assets and technology in unique ways, delivering marketing results for brands and agencies. Her marketing acumen and exceptional creativity have been a key source of revenue growth for the company. A consummate self-learner, Donna leveraged her solid experience base as a direct marketer and service provider to successfully transition her foundational skills in data-driven marketing to digital advertising. Her embrace of digital data and natural leadership abilities made her the critical factor in leading Alliant’s digital transformation.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

For the past ten years, Donna has been a key contributor to Alliant’s success. As a member of Alliant’s senior leadership team, Donna serves as a subject matter expert supporting sales, product, analytics and the compliant use of marketing data. In 2016, Alliant awarded her its Robert H. Burns Innovation Award — an internal recognition awarded to individuals to recognize singular achievements in technology or data excellence. Disciplined and focused in her own career development, Donna also serves frequently as mentor to Alliant’s younger professionals and interns.

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Ross Jenkins

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Ross Jenkins, SVP Marketing Sciences, IPG Mediabrands

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Marketing sciences, data management, and insights

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Ross is on a mission to help clients deliver channel-less breakthrough experiences that drive value for customers. He was inspired by modern day approaches to data application development, web design, touchscreen environments, and design thinking and as a result, created a hybrid product development framework called, “the design of data experiences.” This forward-thinking strategy disrupts the commonplace approach to waterfall development of dashboards and reimagines the ideation, development, delivery, and ongoing maintenance and development of reports and reinvigorates the category of visual communication.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Ross’s ideas have helped IPG deliver even greater data experiences to the delight of clients. He leverages a multi-disciplined approach to product development that goes beyond technical excellence and data governance, and now utilizes user experience, design, business intelligence, front-end development, business stakeholders and product designers. Ross's contributions have made a direct, positive effect on productivity and have inspired data creativity. His accomplishments include productizing, automating, and increasing the efficiency of recurring analytical workstreams, reevaluating his team’s historical waterfall/scrum development approach to building dashboards, and presenting analytical information in ways that make client data not only accessible, but entertaining, actionable and ownable.

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Kevin Moeller

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Kevin Moeller, Head of Media Insights & Analytics, PepsiCo

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Analytics, measurement, and insights

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Kevin has established a forward-thinking vision to ensure Pepsico continues to be a leader in the marketing world by rethinking processes and procedures to re-energize the organization around analytics, including pushing the company to be more self-reliant. Some of his priorities include utilizing historical data to predict future outcomes, crystallizing optimization processes with agencies, and demystifying data within the organization. Kevin acts with the future in mind while being pragmatic, helping the company innovate.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Kevin built a team from scratch with a mix of in-house and newly hired employees. In the short time he has been within Pepsico, his team has ensured data is at the forefront of every media decision made. He led an engagement project with IBM to build a new state of the art analytic software product within Pepsico that uses data from hundreds of sources to inform the company's strategy, planning, optimization, and overall campaign measurement. Kevin is a fantastic team leader for his newly formed group. He leads with his head as well as his heart, showing empathy for his team members and mentoring more junior staff.

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Emma Pop

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Emma Pop, EVP and Director of Advanced Analytics and Insights, Starcom U.S.

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Research, advanced analytics, and insights

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Emma has worked to advance the scope and offering of the Starcom Solutions Architects practice by helping the organization’s extensive client roster apply the right marketing technology solutions. In the last 12 months, Emma and her team have made huge impacts on new and existing clients—embedding themselves into 90% of all Starcom U.S. client teams including Chick-Fil-A, Red Bull, and Lionsgate. Additionally, under Emma’s leadership, this group has spearhead data-informed insights for Lowe’s, Kellogg’s, Kraft, Best Buy and many others throughout 2018. Given her impressive track record, Emma participates in numerous new business pitches including Red Bull, Lionsgate and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles—Starcom’s biggest win in the past 10 years.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Emma has been an integral part in founding and cultivating Starcom’s Advanced Analytics and Insights practice. Throughout her tenure with the agency, she has contributed to research and analytics for influential marketers including KraftHeinz, Allstate, U.S. Cellular, and Sara Lee to name a few. Additionally, as a female leader, Emma takes pride in closing the gender gap traditionally held in the field of AAI by growing the practice, now 217 Solutions Architects strong, to reflect a more diverse group of individuals.

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Isaac Quiroga

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Isaac Quiroga, Sr. Director of Video Engagement, Mattel

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Digital video programming, optimization, insights

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Isaac creates real-time dashboards to surface rising creators for Mattel to work with. In order to understand the correlation between sales and digital video, he works with his team to measure the saturation of their video efforts. His colleagues now better understand weekly engagement’s effects on sales. Much of his team's output serve as inputs to the company’s media mix modeling and the ultimate allocation of media investment.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Isaac built out the YouTube practice at Mattel in order to create the framework for Mattel’s online video strategy. The company has grown tremendously because of the programming strategy and alignment with the marketing calendar and product launches. He has grown the one YouTube team to multiple teams, including other teams focused on Instagram and other platforms.

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Jeff Sporn

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Jeff Sporn, Chief Digital Officer, Data-driven Marketing, Equifax

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Digital strategist, product visionary, and data evangelist

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Jeff helped lead the acquisition of an Australian marketing analytics firm last year which brought advanced analytics to Equifax’s US customers and launched Equifax’s new capability, OptimaHub. Through OptimaHub, Jeff is helping marketers quickly and easily understand how each touchpoint moves a customer along their journey while helping brands achieve their goals and move beyond last-click analysis for attribution. With his marketing and finance background, Jeff also helps educate CFOs on the value of multi-touch attribution technology. Finance departments that use OptimaHub can implement cost savings without impacting sales by reducing budget in low-performance channels.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Jeff productized OptimaHub in a way that made the technology accessible to customers of all sizes. Through this initiative, he’s helping Equifax broaden its offerings beyond consumer data to bring deeper intelligence to brands. Jeff was also an early player in the Data Management Platform (DMP) landscape, bringing Equifax into digital offerings at the beginning of that sector’s growth. He’s forged pivotal partnerships that have helped propel other data marketing heavyweights such as with Adobe and LiveRamp. With Jeff's leadership, Oracle also recently named Equifax as an Oracle Data Cloud Premier Data Provider.

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Charles Wolrich

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Charles Wolrich, General Manager, Hearst Data Studio

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Audience insights, data strategy

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

From conception to execution, Charles is critical to the ideation and development of all data and advertising products created by the Hearst Data Studio. Recently, under his leadership, the studio brought to market several game-changing tools for advertisers. For example, under Charles’ lead, the Data Studio is developing Hearst Audience Select, a self-serve portal that enables advertisers to view available inventory and build their own schedule to be served against segments they identify. Hearst Data Studio also recently introduced the Hearst Smart Shoppable Gallery, a shoppable, self-optimizing ad unit powered, Auto’s “Near Market Automotive” targeting product, a tool that forecasts the likelihood someone will be in market for a specific type of vehicle within the next 90 days, and Sample Ignition 360, a social media advertising integration that embeds customized social content for clients across Hearst’s social handles.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

As the Hearst Data Studio’s founding leader, he works cross-functionally to integrate corporate and advertising teams to create groundbreaking data products across a variety of mediums. His ability to bring to market new and innovative product solutions for Hearst’s brand clients has enhanced Hearst’s big picture data and advertising strategy, helped create entirely new lines of revenue, and poised Hearst to be one of the foremost media players in the data ad space.

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2019 Data Rising Stars

Nisreen Al-Basha

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Nisreen Al-Basha, Data Engineer, Yieldmo

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Data transformation, automation, research, and system optimization

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

With the consistent expansion of Yieldmo’s business and increasing data volume, it is challenging to efficiently operate and scale machine learning pipelines. As the closest person to the system, Nisreen was able to anticipate rising demand. She followed a systematic procedure of assessing and documenting the current state and quickly identified areas for improvement within the process. She proposed a comprehensive design to modularize and logically partition processes that could be orchestrated to achieve maximum resource efficiencies and parallelize execution for scale. With this design change, Yieldmo can effectively scale and power ten times more campaigns while only doubling infrastructure costs.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Nisreen is thoughtful and makes a conscious effort to ensure that the workplace is safe space inclusive and enjoyable for everyone. Nisreen recognized the challenge of communication and participation for remote engineers on her team and took it upon herself to manage the camera, microphones, electronic whiteboards to better collaborate between in-office and remote members. Nisreen also diligently arranges cross-team online Python training sessions so everyone can take an hour a week to share, retool, and enhance their programming skills and build industry leading data products. Over her time at Yieldmo, Nisreen has also had great success participating in public speaking engagements to showcase and demonstrate our enterprise data architecture in front of her peers from the industry.

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Danielle Dzbanek

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Danielle Dzbanek, Director of Analytics, MediaMath

Main field in the data ecosystem:

Advanced analytics, insights, and visualization

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:

Danielle is curious, hardworking and does things without being asked. She helped revamp MediaMath’s Lift Measurement tool and was instrumental in understanding and developing the underlying data science and calculation so that MediaMath can use learnings from the product’s beta release to build an improved offering. Danielle also created a lift measurement solution for CTV for a client, something MediaMath had never done before. She worked with her Programmatic Strategy and Optimization team to run a target test, reporting on control and test based on increased response rate. Danielle also built an interim solution for CTV attribution based on industry standards, which she recently presented to the whole CSO team.

Contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:

Danielle has made substantial contributions to the team since joining in January of 2015. Taking the lead on the bulk of revenue captured in North America, Danielle has touched nearly every client on MediaMath's Top 30 list. Danielle is continuously seeking out how to streamline client processes, fill critical product gaps and craft an appropriate narrative while solving for clients’ most critical business needs. Danielle has been a cross-functional champion, working across Product, Sales, Account, PSO, and Solution Engineering, and a truly masterful multi-tasker. Through a balance of fire-drill responsiveness and proactivity, Danielle brings a vibrant, honest approach to getting things done.

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2018 Data Rockstars

Arthur Coleman

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Arthur Coleman, General Manager & Chief Product Officer, Acxiom Research

"Arthur launched and managed a 26-company open source project which allows companies to track consumer opt-in consents through a data supply chain using blockchain technology.”

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Product Visionary, Product Management, Data Scientist

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Arthur conceives and builds products based on data science, statistical reasoning and machine learning. As head of Acxiom’s research division, he was responsible for a series of groundbreaking new products that were seen as instrumental in Acxiom and LiveRamp’s business.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Most immediately and significantly, Arthur launched and managed a 26-company open source project called PrivacyChain, which allows companies to track consumer opt-in consents through a data supply chain using blockchain technology. This projected was done in collaboration with IAB.

Other recent, and significant successes:

  1. Development of two blockchain products used for anonymization and consumer privacy
  2. Development of a series of advanced machine learning API’s and services that underlie all Acxiom data exchanges
  3. Development of an artificially intelligent assistant to assist in Acxiom’s data sales and other internal processes
  4. Developed new data fingerprinting technologies with eleven patents pending
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Jessica Donohue

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Jessica Donohue, Vice President, Client Strategy, Nielsen

"Jessica has brought the voice of client feedback to apply our data assets & technology to support client use cases.”

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Data strategy

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Jessica is leading a team of strategists who help CPG clients formulate precision marketing plans, and understand how data can be used to inform not just targeting but creative optimization and consumer insights. The clients that Jessica works with are applying these data-driven playbooks in the US and EU.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Jessica has brought the voice of client feedback to apply our data assets & technology to support client use cases – both in terms of consumer segmentation and activation. She consults with client & agency teams to guide how data will be used within campaign dashboards, client-side BI environments.

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Judith Hammerman

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Judith Hammerman, Head of Audience Manager, Adobe

"Adroit at identifying, shaping, and leading change, while building high achieving, flexible teams for scale.”

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Customer data, insights, identity and privacy regulation (GDPR), machine learning and AI, ad tech platforms and products, programmatic/RTB, cross-device/mobile, native content, online video, and distribution.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
High-performing, high-energy senior executive with proven ability to create growth in emerging media and technologies. Adroit at identifying, shaping, and leading change, while building high achieving, flexible teams for scale. Successfully launched over a dozen new products, repositioned, and re-energized three established companies.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
An active member of the IAB Data Council.

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John Haws

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John Haws, CTO, Reveal Mobile

"It's this ability to navigate uncertainty in an industry that demands certainty that makes John an invaluable asset to our team.”

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Creating predictive algorithms with machine learning techniques. Said in plain English, he oversees creating new audiences that show where visitors are likely to be seen in the future, derived from opted-in mobile location data.Creating predictive algorithms with machine learning techniques. Said in plain English, he oversees creating new audiences that show where visitors are likely to be seen in the future, derived from opted-in mobile location data.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
John takes a methodical approach to his problem solving. He knows which elements need to be pulled in at each stage in the evaluation cycle, and which people to work with, even if the end outcome is still unknown. It’s this ability to navigate uncertainty in an industry that demands certainty that makes John an invaluable asset to our team.John takes a methodical approach to his problem solving. He knows which elements need to be pulled in at each stage in the evaluation cycle, and which people to work with, even if the end outcome is still unknown. It’s this ability to navigate uncertainty in an industry that demands certainty that makes John an invaluable asset to our team.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
John’s contributions help position us very strategically against our peers and competitors. We’re building products that customers want, and that no one else has at the moment. This ability to think months and years ahead gives us a sustainable advantage over time.

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David Justus

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David Justus, Vice President of Data Acquisition & Operations, Lotame

"David’s work has led to Lotame’s introduction of Lotame Precision Audiences — data segments that exceed industry on-target benchmarks and improve targeting, insights, and analytics.”

Main field in the data ecosystem:
David is a thought leader in the area of data quality and applies this expertise to his work as Lotame’s Vice President of Data Acquisition and Operations, where he leads a team of experienced data professionals committed to procuring and providing partners with the highest quality data. As an active IAB member, David served as a contributor to the IAB’s 2016 Data Maturity Model and currently serves as co-chairman of the IAB Data Transparency Working Group.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Under David’s direction, Lotame delivers an end-to-end solution for the generation of high-quality data. It screens prospective providers before agreeing to distribute their data and evaluates data it receives from providers on an ongoing basis. Criteria include: Entity, Collection Methodology, Source, Derivation, and Modality. Lotame created and follows a rigorous process for data ingestion, categorization, and validation.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
David’s work has led to Lotame’s introduction of Lotame Precision Audiences — data segments that exceed industry on-target benchmarks and improve targeting, insights, and analytics. First-to-market from this line are Precision Demographic Audiences, now widely available in DSPs. The segments are created with Lotame’s proprietary curation and verification process. The audiences are offered at scale across major countries worldwide.

As a member of the IAB Data Council, David contributed to IAB’s July 2016 “Data Maturity Model for Digital Advertising” — a framework for companies in the data ecosystem to assess their competence across the data life cycle — collect, process, and activate.

Today, David co-chairs the IAB Data Transparency Working Group, which is developing a framework for the data supply chain including a labeling system, audience taxonomy, API, and compliance program.

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2018 Data Rising Stars

Amanda Newport-Foster

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Amanda Newport-Foster, Data Scientist, Valassis Digital

"Amanda changed the way the entire company sees viewability as media transparency rather than just another KPI to optimize."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
She draws data in from a 12-petabyte data repository that includes information collected from 120 billion online ad decisions every day and works on our automated decision process. Our process conducts 2.2 million decisions on ad placements every second for our clients. Amanda analyzes this data and provides intelligent procedures, algorithms and models that makes the decision-making process smarter.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Amanda has become fluent in advanced machine learning by identifying online ad characteristics and predicting the most viewable available inventory for our clients. She has developed her skills along the four pillars of data science (Data Wrangling, Machine Learning, Productionization, and Business Strategy). In her short career she first learned the strategic value of how her work can be used, then the tricks for handling, analyzing and understanding big data, modeling key characteristics of placements and consumers, and finally, she shepherded the deployment of her work into production.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Amanda changed the way the entire company sees viewability as media transparency rather than just another KPI to optimize. Due to the data modeling and machine learning that Amanda performed, the company now raises the bar on industry standards by serving only ad opportunities that are predicted to have more than 70% viewability using the IAB Viewability standard. She increased our systemwide viewability average from 58% to 76% across all clients. She also has been able to dispel the notion that viewability comes at the cost of other KPIs. Using Amanda’s models, we can predict the daily viewability of our campaigns to within 5% of the third-party vendor being used for the campaign.

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Paloma Torres

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Paloma Torres, Senior Analyst, GroupM

"Her skill of extracting and synthesizing insights from various sources allows her to bring a multi-dimensional picture of audiences."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Paloma is a key member of a data strategy team that takes a data agnostic approach to solving client and business challenges. Within this ecosystem, Paloma has cultivated a strong skill set in the area of consumer insights. Relying on various tools and rigorous data mining techniques (i.e. custom research, trends data, social intelligence, proprietary tools etc.), she uses data insights to paint a holistic story of today’s consumer and the evolving marketplace. Through this approach, Paloma seeks to unlock the motivations behind consumers behavior to enhance a client’s ability to reach their desired audience in a more meaningful and impactful way.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Paloma’s foresight in data has been demonstrated by her ability to marry culture and data to unearth the “WHY”. Remaining in tune with culture and utilizing data to substantiate what is happening has led Paloma to find her voice within the marketplace. Her skill of extracting and synthesizing insights from various sources allows her to bring a multi-dimensional picture of audiences. Paloma has independently and proactively created a semi-annual work stream called “culturePulse” which demonstrates her potential as a dynamic thought leader.

This workstream is founded on the insight that cultural norms and technological behaviors are first adapted or created by ‘micro-audiences’. These tribes influence society in such a profound manner that they create the groundswell that takes a trend from niche to mass. Her approach to data storytelling has brought forth vivid stories that humanize consumers.

Data Rock Star’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Paloma has made countless contributions to her team, organization and the industry. By taking an innovative approach to data analysis through “culturePulse,” Paloma has helped her team generate positive attention and measurable impact among U.S. clients and agency partners. Impressively, her work has been shared globally within WPP and has garnered intrigue by teams in offices outside the U.S. who are interested in bringing a similar work stream to their clients to highlight agency value.

As an active member of WPP’s P70 Data Alliance, she works alongside other members of the data council to bring the best knowledge and resources to the company on a global scale. Paloma’s ability to cultivate relationships within the organization and with its data partners has elevated WPP’s data infrastructure.

Her contribution to the industry through its future talent is the work Paloma is most proud of. As a first-generation Latina working in corporate America, Paloma is acutely aware that her story becomes increasingly important to those who may not have had previous exposure to others in the marketing and advertising industry. Her story of going from ‘intern to hire’ has been inspirational for other young people who are looking for guidance within marketing and advertising, and often don’t see themselves reflected.

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2017 Data Rockstars

Rajiv Bhat

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Rajiv Bhat, Senior Vice President, Data Sciences and Marketplace, Inmobi

"Rajiv was responsible for the overall gross margin for the company which increased significantly by over 30%."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Rajiv manages the portfolio for Data Sciences and Marketplace Operations at InMobi.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
In his machine learning role, Rajiv rebuilt the data science team at InMobi to deliver production ready models quickly to avoid models sitting in lab machines for too long. He is also responsible for increasing the core data assets at InMobi that are value accretive for the overall business portfolio. He developed a micro-cell algorithm for generating dynamic data cohorts based on model device handset and geo-location data, comprising of billions of transactional records per day, which are extremely sparse. The micro-cell approach is now used at InMobi to deliver unparalleled brand performance across major brand agencies and their clients.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
During the time that Rajiv was running the marketplace, the company’s revenue grew six-fold to several hundreds of millions of dollars a year. During this period, Rajiv was responsible for the overall gross margin for the company which increased significantly by over 30%.

Amongst other contributions, Rajiv has helped develop and been involved in:

  1. User based response prediction systems using machine learning and artificial intelligence
  2. Algorithm design and implementation of user lookalike modelling at a scale corresponding to more than a billion users
  3. Design and development of a unified marketplace – a multi-tier auction system
  4. Publisher revenue share management and automation
  5. Design and implementation of ad rotation and frequency capping systems
  6. Publisher floor management
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Jaysen Gillespie

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Jaysen Gillespie, Vice President, Head of Analytics and Data Science, Criteo

"Jaysen is comfortable with all types of data and systems, from high-volume “big data” transactional logs, to highly-distilled KPIs."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Jaysen Gillespie is the VP and head of analytics and data science at Criteo, a commerce marketing technology company. In this role, he has developed a deep understanding of how to create competitive business advantages, stemming from his expertise in analytics, marketing, data science, and management. Jaysen uses this knowledge base to oversee several teams at Criteo with the parallel mission of growing the company’s core commerce marketing technology business and contributing to ongoing innovation on a global scale.

He currently manages the following functions within the Criteo business:

  • Advanced Analytics & Insights
  • Business Intelligence, Dashboards, Reporting for Advertisers
  • RTB, Auction Models, Buy-side, Publisher Analytics
  • FP&A, Targeting, Sales Operations

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Jaysen is comfortable with all types of data and systems, from high-volume “big data” transactional logs, to highly-distilled KPIs. His personal approach is thinking of analytics like sales: you can’t be the most effective Chief Analytics Officer (CAO) unless you are comfortable discussing nuances in data or code, whether that’s in front of key clients or a company’s most recent hire.

Jaysen further demonstrates excellence in this field by maintaining expert-level knowledge of Criteo’s complex underlying commerce marketing engine and suite of related products. This expertise includes predictive modeling methods, recommendation engine algorithms, online real-time advertising exchanges, measurement of true incrementality, and use of web analytics/attribution as a proxy for value.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Jaysen has taken on leading and managing client-facing, market-facing and internal analytics efforts for corporate teams spanning Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. He is also one of the key members of the leadership team driving maximum client retention, closing new business and developing new product offerings on a regular basis.

His contributions have made a direct, positive effect on productivity and company strategy in the following areas:

  • Turning data into actionable insights across all functional areas, including client-facing (advertiser) questions, publisher-related issues and internal research related to the Criteo ecosystem
  • Serving as the primary analytical link to the R&D team in Paris, France and working with the Criteo global analytics and data science community to develop tools and analytical methods that can be used in all countries
  • Productizing, automating, and increasing the efficiency of recurring analytical workstreams, such as AB testing for incrementality
  • Acting as the key author of Criteo’s strategy and tactics for structuring head-to-head contests vs. other vendors and for demonstrating incrementality in Criteo-vs-control marketing analyses
  • Presenting analytical information about account performance—such as CTR trends, conversion rates, attributed sales, incremental revenue, cost of sales, device mix, in-store effect, and x-device effects—to major accounts
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Stacey Hawes

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Stacey Hawes, President, Data Practice, Epsilon

"Stacey’s approach is to find unique data assets to bring to Epsilon’s customers."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
As President of Epsilon’s Data Practice, Stacey is responsible for helping more than 3,000 clients leverage Epsilon’s robust data offerings to grow their business through powerful transactional data with billions of transactions updated weekly; compiled U.S. consumer data including thousands of unique data points on virtually every U.S. household; and self-reported insights from 10+ MM consumers in North America. Stacey and her team of 500+ associates help brands like Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Williams-Sonoma and Patagonia build deep customer profiles and leverage predictive models to deliver personalized marketing.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Stacey has kept her finger on the data industry’s pulse for more than 17 years, helping clients across industry verticals determine how data can be incorporated into new and pre-existing marketing solutions. Stacey and her team help clients leverage hundreds of unique data variables to paint a detailed portrait of their customer base and identify high-value prospects for acquisition and growth.

Stacey’s approach is to find unique data assets to bring to Epsilon’s customers and this past year she launched a new data offering called Marketview, which is another transactional data asset that can be used stand-alone or in combination with other data sets. Stacey also has her team focused on incorporating AI and more machine learning into Epsilon’s data offerings as well.

Elevated to her current role in October 2016 after serving as Managing Director, Data Sales, Stacey joined Epsilon in 2007 and has been instrumental in driving the success, growth and evolution of Epsilon’s data offerings by pioneering the digital evolution of Epsilon’s data assets to meet the changing demands of marketers. Epsilon’s industry-leading data can now be activated in any channel including email, display, social, addressable and direct mail.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Stacey works across the organization training associates to integrate Epsilon’s proprietary data assets into the company’s industry-leading email and loyalty platforms, activating data across channels and often partnering with Epsilon’s digital media arm Conversant to make offline data actionable online. Under Stacey’s leadership Epsilon’s data business is a highly profitable and reliable growth business and a very strong contributor to Epsilon’s 7 percent revenue increase to $529 million for the first quarter of 2017, its strongest organic growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2015; and to Epsilon’s 5 percent revenue increase to $544 million for the second quarter of 2017.

A champion for female representation and leadership in the data industry, Stacey has promoted five women in the Data Practice to VP roles over the last 18 months and mentors “up and coming” female executives each year. Stacey was named a 2017 Ad Age Women to Watch for her contributions to the data industry and in driving women forward in business. Stacey is also an active participant on the IAB Data Council and is based out of Epsilon’s Lafayette, Colorado office.

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Jason Bier

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Jason Bier, EVP, General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer, Engine

"His work has constantly put the consumer at the forefront of how consumer data is used by intermediaries in the online advertising industry."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
A veteran in the data space, Jason’s experience has focused on the development of compliant technology architecture and data use strategies – strategies that have and continue to result in outcome-based successes for marketers and publishers. His work has constantly put the consumer at the forefront of how consumer data is used by intermediaries in the online advertising industry. Jason’s understanding of technology and how data science can combine with creativity to generate consumer relevancy in the digital advertising framework has proven to be his greatest asset to the organizations he has had the pleasure of serving.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Jason’s long history of leading the development of unique pseudonymous infrastructure for ad technology has given him insights into how integrated databases and data science combine to activate relevant data on programmatic platforms. He has been instrumental in creating compliant pseudonymous deterministic matching across platforms, establishing data onboarding structures for data science teams, and helping develop processes for offline and online convergence of data to guaranteed returns on ad spend for marketers.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
In an effort to better the industry, Jason served on various boards and committees through self-regulatory organizations like the Digital Advertising Alliance, Network Advertising Initiative, and the Trust and Accountability Group. Jason was awarded for IAB Service Excellence at the 2013 IAB Leadership Conference for his work.
Additionally, Jason’s internal leadership has created systems that ingest data both offline and online to create monetization strategies through deployment of data science, while decreasing regulatory risk by designing robust data minimization, pseudonymization and retention practices well before they were widely known in the industry. This coupling of smart policies that protect consumers with the fostering of innovation has unlocked opportunities to not only help marketers with smarter ways to leverage data, but also enabled data to be used for saving lives with an organization he helped found called the Federation for Internet Alerts (FIA).

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Bill Michels

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Bill Michels, SVP Product and Partnerships, Factual

"Bill has a rare combination of product vision, deal making expertise and charismatic leadership."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Bill joined Factual in 2009 and is responsible for all product management and business development functions. Prior to Factual, Bill worked at Yahoo!, where he was most recently Senior Director of Product Management Yahoo! Search. In this capacity he was the GM for Yahoo! BOSS, which under him grew from inception to over +1B queries/month. Prior to that he was the Director of International Search Business Operations and Product Strategy, a +$1B P&L with 500+ employees across 15+ countries. As SVP of Product and Partnerships, Bill heads up Factual’s product roadmap, requirements gathering, spec writing, as well as launching execution across team of 70+ engineers, product managers and designers. Bill also lead negotiations and closed API and data partnerships with Apple, Facebook, Uber, Twitter, Bing, Qualcomm, AOL and several others.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Bill has a rare combination of product vision, deal making expertise and charismatic leadership which he brings to the full team at Factual. He is an excellent product leader with the business chops to match his technical fluency.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Bill was instrumental in building and closing some of the biggest deals in location data today, including Factual’s partnerships with Apple, Facebook, Snap and Uber. He’s led the development of every one of Factual’s products, from our core Global Places dataset that powers all of our offerings, to our Geopulse suite of products for marketers, to our newest offering, Engine, a mobile SDK for developers to integrate location data into apps and digital products.

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2017 Data Rising Star

Dorothy Advincula

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Dorothy Advincula, Research and Insights Lead, Samsung

"A storyteller at heart."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Dorothy is truly a storyteller at heart. She has been instrumental in utilizing our smart tv data set to help our narrative and sales positioning.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Dorothy has helped shaped our data to that creates a solution for our clients. She is able to look at the data in a unique lense and put us in a the best light possible.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Dorothy has helped shaped our data to that creates a solution for our clients. She is able to look at the data in a unique lense and put us in a the best light possible.

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2016 Data Rockstars

Prasad Chalasani

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Prasad Chalasani, Senior Vice President, Data Science, MediaMath

Prasad’s work is central to MediaMath’s vision for every addressable interaction between a marketer and a consumer to be driven by Machine Learning optimization

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Data Science and Machine Learning

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Prasad developed a highly efficient, distributed, extreme-scale, single-pass online logistic regression learning system in Scala/Spark, using variants of Stochastic Gradient Descent, capable of handling hundreds of millions of sparse features and billions of training observations. His system incorporates a number of state-of-the-art techniques that do not exist together in any other machine learning system, including adaptive feature-scaling, adaptive gradients, feature-interactions and feature-hashing.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Prasad’s work is central to MediaMath’s vision for every addressable interaction between a marketer and a consumer to be driven by Machine Learning  optimization against all available, relevant data at that moment, to maximize long-term marketer business outcomes. His innovative work on ad-measurement drove the release of MediaMath’s much-anticipated ad-measurement product.

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Angelina Eng

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Angelina Eng, Vice President, Media Platforms and Operations, Merkle, Inc.

"Angelina’s digital media knowledge and experience ... has really helped reshape the definition of the role of an ad agency ad ops team."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Agency Ad Operations

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Angelina consolidated platforms across media platform partners (ad servers, DSPs, paid social, media tools, etc.) to strengthen Merkle’s Agency Services team and expand capabilities to a more addressable/people-based approach. Improved and streamlined operations, reporting, insights and optimizations. Standardized data to enable simplified data categorization process.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Angelina reshaped the definition of the role of an ad agency ad ops team and developed team of media tech experts who can consult, implement, and manage all aspects of media operations.

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Kelly Leger

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Kelly Leger, Vice President, Publisher Addressable Marketplaces, Merkle, Inc.

"Kelly has continually been ahead of the curve, acting as an adviser to many partners and start-ups along the way."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Data-driven solutions for premium publishers and Fortune 100 brands.

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Kelly took offline data to build a full match network to harvest and monetize the data to over 100 DSPs, trading desks, and agencies.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Kelly created entire digital data taxonomies, built match networks with independent publishing networks, managed costs, and developed relationships with all buyers across the data landscape.

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Madhusudan Therani

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Madhusudan Therani, Chief Technology Officer, Near

"Madhu has led the team positively with his immense experience towards building the data systems and making it scalable."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Data Science and Data Engineering

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Madhu has developed Near’s location intelligence platform, products and team by understanding future eco-system requirements as well as fulfilling current needs as data-driven marketing and advertising strategies continue to evolve at a rapid pace.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Madhu has led the development of Near’s location intelligence platform and the Allspark SAAS product.  Key focus has been on developing state-of-art spatio-temporal models by fusing heterogeneous spatial data that can power future advertising and media management strategies for brands and publishers.

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Evan Wallach

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Evan Wallach, General Manager, Online Data, Epsilon

"Evan's ability to bridge the gap between the online and offline teams has been critical to the success of this business and will continue to be important as we grow for the next many years to come."

Main field in the data ecosystem:
Online data product and real-time bidding partnerships owner for TotalSource PlusTM Online and MarketView Online

Demonstrated excellence, creativity, and/or forward-thinking approach to solving problems in data-science:
Evan has expanded Epsilon’s assets from a few hundred data segments to thousands of targetable audiences over several quarters. He’s helped develop internal segment creation and QA tools, codify online data governance policy, and has worked tirelessly to formalize internal and external delivery processes. Evan’s success is a testament to his ability to solve complex problems, with an eye on the customer, and juggle competing stakeholders in a large organization like Epsilon.

Data Rockstar’s contribution to the industry and/or company product and strategy:
Evan has transformed Epsilon’s digital data strategy since taking over the product, yielding dramatic growth in partnerships, end-client usage, and overall revenues. Evan has also championed digital initiatives and cross-functional product development in partnership with the Epsilon offline data team. Evan’s ability to bridge the gap between online and offline has been critical to his, and Epsilon’s, success.

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