Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Karen Jean-Francois is Analytics Manager at Cardlytics, Women in Data Podcast Host and Producer, Twenty in Data and Technology Awardee 2020. Whilst studying to be a Maths teacher in 2010, Karen fell in love with Data Science and opted for a career change, switching to an MSc in Applied Statistics studying at Université Paris Sud 11. Eight years later she started working for Cardlytics as a Senior Analyst / Manager. Now, as a woman working in data, Karen has experienced the lack of female role models in the industry and keenly supports Women in Data for the quest to change this.  Cardlytics is an advertising platform in banks' digital channels. They partner with financial institutions to run their banking rewards programs that promote customer loyalty and deepen banking relationships. They have a secure view into where and when consumers are spending their money. They use these insights to help marketers identify, reach, and influence likely buyers at scale, as well as measure the true sales impact of marketing campaigns. During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Karen to discuss her interesting route into the world of Data, struggling with imposter syndrome with some advice for how to overcome it, the issues surrounding the Data Science job title, and we hear about what's coming up in Women in Data.

Derek Lee Bronston is Senior Director of Mobile Engineering at Freshly. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Derek to discuss the culture within Freshly, the benefits of choosing a quality over quantity approach in code, and Derek's process-driven development and how this fits into the organisation. Derek moved from an engineering role into a leadership role, and spend a lot of time dealing with systems and processes around how we work as humans, we hear how Derek has tailored his approach when leading large teams to leverage their capabilities. Freshly is a direct-to-consumer subscription meal company, and is one of the most popular of the prepared meal subscription services.

Angad Salaria is Senior Director of Engineering at QOMPLX - an AI/ML data analytics and risk platform to help clients solve challenges in cybersecurity, insurance & finance. QOMPLX makes it faster and easier for organizations to integrate disparate data sources both inside and outside the enterprise into a unified analytics infrastructure to make better decisions at scale. This broader analytics infrastructure is provided through QOMPLX OS, an enterprise operating system that powers QOMPLX’s decision platforms in cybersecurity, insurance, and quantitative finance. Headquartered in Reston, VA, QOMPLX also has offices in New York and London. Angad started his career in a multinational technology consulting firm with 120k employees at the time, realising that making moves in this scale of business was difficult, he joined a start-up to become closer to the decision making, therefore enabling to implement ideas at speed. The philosophy that Angad has followed throughout his career is to be a self-starter and always look to solve problems. Ben sat down with Angad to discuss his career in tech, and to find out how he has navigated that to become a leader in this field. They also discussed some of the most important aspects to consider when becoming a leader and how to empower your team to become the leaders of tomorrow.

Chris Sewell started his career at Just Eat, and after working in Australia for a few months went down the path of being self-employed back in the UK before joining Build Circle, where Chris is now Head of Engineering,  Build Circle is a software engineering consultancy with experience across both e-commerce and financial technology, specialising in high-volume scaled systems. During this Podcast episode, Ben sits down with Chris to hear how he has navigated his career, with advice for fellow engineers in the industry. They also discussed Data Residency, how Fintech is transforming international payments and what we're likely to see in the future of this space.

Conor Jensen is an experienced Data Science executive with over 15 years working in the analytics space. He is VP of Data Science for the Americas at Dataiku, helping customers with their biggest and most ambitious AI and Data Science projects. Previously he worked in Customer Success after taking his lumps building out data science teams and platforms at multiple large enterprises. In prior lives, Conor was a Weather Forecaster in the Air Force, a Starbucks Store Manager, an Emergency Management Technician in the Air National Guard, and taught archery and rock climbing. He also earned a Bachelor’s in Mathematics from UIC. Dataiku is an artificial intelligence and machine learning company which was founded in 2013. In December 2019, Dataiku announced that CapitalG - the late-stage growth venture capital fund financed by Alphabet Inc. - joined Dataiku as an investor and that it had achieved unicorn status, valued at $1.4 billion. During the podcast episode, Ben sat down with Conor to discuss building and maintaining data science platforms, especially as MLOps becomes more mature. How Conor structures and builds a data science team, especially at scale, and some of the pitfalls to be aware of when doing so.

Ben Ziomek is CTO at Actuate. Actuate works to mitigate the costs of gun violence. They build firearm detection systems using computer vision software and artificial intelligence, turning any security camera into a smart camera. Their aim is to accelerate security response time and improve safety outcomes during active shooter situations, protect organizations from COVID-19, and help manage buildings more effectively. Ben is a Forbes 30 Under 30 recognized entrepreneur focused on AI product development and the commercialization of technology globally. With experience across product management, AI/machine learning, sales and marketing tech, M&A, and commercial partnerships. He has led teams of FTEs and contractors distributed across EMEA, APAC, and the Americas, and now is CTO at Actuate. During the podcast, Ben sat down with Ben to discuss hiring in the security industry, selling the business to candidates, empowering engineers, and we discuss why there may be so few AI product companies in the market.

Eric Dreshfield is currently Partner Marketing Manager at ActiveCampaign, his primary responsibility is to drive awareness of ActiveCampaign in the Salesforce ecosystem through various methods including co-marketing with Salesforce, creation of customer success stories, thought-leadership blogging, webinars, etc. He is also responsible for maintaining the company’s listing on the Salesforce AppExchange and representing ActiveCampaign at Salesforce and Salesforce community events. Eric was first awarded the title of Salesforce Community MVP in Spring, 2013 and has been honored with the title every year through 2019. In 2020 he was named to the Salesforce MVP Hall of Fame! ActiveCampaign is a cloud software platform for small-to-mid-sized businesses and is based in Chicago, Illinois. The company offers software for customer experience automation, which combines email marketing, marketing automation, sales automation, and CRM categories. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Eric to discuss how Eric has navigated his career and how having built a personal brand has aided this process, we hear advice for others who are looking to make themselves more marketable, with tips and avenues to make this a less daunting process. Ben and Eric also touch upon the different ways we can raise awareness for diversity, equity and inclusion. Whilst you're here, check out Eric and Deepa Patel's Podcast: Untold Stories - No Longer Untold, a podcast highlighting the challenges and successes of many diverse individuals so that others will have hope for the future and so their stories will no longer be untold.

Dr. Judith Beyrle is Head of Analytics at Cheil Germany GmbH with a background in media research and sociology.  Cheil is one of the world’s leading marketing solutions companies. Established in 1973 with headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Cheil's thousands of global employees create ideas that move brands, products and people from its 44 offices and 7 affiliates in 37 countries. Cheil delivers innovative communications strategies that drive business results through full-service advertising capabilities and beyond, with specialties in shopper marketing, experiential retail design, PR, sports marketing, and special events. Cheil's creativity is world-renowned, as the network is highly awarded by international festivals including Cannes Lions, CLIO, Spikes Asia, Dubai Lynx, AdFest and Effie Awards.  Dr. Judith has led a very interesting career in data, having always had a deep interest in analytics, she has followed her ambitions to navigate her career successfully to become the Head of Analytics at Cheil GmbH. During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Dr. Judith to discuss her career in data, the often overlooked hard and soft skills required to have a successful career in data, and how to look at data objectively without unconscious bias.

Joeseph Allen is a Manchester-based Data Scientist and Front-end Developer. Joe currently works as a Research Associate at the UK Data Service, the UK's largest collection of social and economic data. The UK Data Service is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council to meet the data needs of researchers, students and teachers from all sectors, including academia, central and local government, charities and foundations, independent research centres, think tanks, and business consultants and the commercial sector. The UK Data Service collection includes major UK government-sponsored surveys, cross-national surveys, longitudinal studies, UK census data, international aggregate, business data, and qualitative data. In his spare time, Joe organises PyDataMCR, teaches mathematics amongst many other sidelines. He also writes blog posts about agile working, recruitment and more. During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Joe to discuss how Joe has navigated his career, the pitfalls of job searching in the data science industry and how to stand out from the crowd when applying to roles.

Michael Hamrah has more than fifteen years of software engineering expertise across a variety of languages and platforms. Experienced leader helping individuals, teams, and companies grow, delivering sustainable value through impactful technology. Michael is hands-on with AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, databases/streaming platforms, and CI/CD/PD pipelines. Extensive product delivery with rich web and mobile experiences. Focus on security and operational efficiency. Strong preference for statically-typed languages and automation. At Bluecore, Michael and his team oversee Bluecore's Platform and Infrastructure (PI) teams. They maintain multiple Kubernetes clusters, Datastore, BigQuery, PubSub, network and several other systems running on GCP managed with Terraform, and support 100's of millions of events per day and hundreds/terabytes of data with an event-driven, microservice-based architecture. Bluecore is a marketing technology company that’s reimagining the way retailers communicate with shoppers. Working with the world’s fastest-growing retail brands, Bluecore intelligently connects casual shoppers to the products that transform them into lifetime customers. During the Podcast episode, Ben sits down with Michael to discuss how people in tech tend to view their careers and what you can do differently to maximize the chance of success. And what managers can do to help their team on their career journey.