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

Cliff is the CTO at Stash Originally a physics major, Cliff did his degree in 1997. He has always dabbled in code and wrote programs at home when growing up. He learnt by programming his own choose your own adventure games. After college Cliff started working for the department of defense and worked as a civilian scientist. During this time the use of computers in Cliff’s everyday life really started to ramp up. He found himself learning different coding languages after work and building websites for people. Around 2006 Cliff re-enrolled in graduate studies and he got a Masters in Computer Science. He moved to Jersey to work at a startup which was his first real programming job. After this he moved to several different companies before heading to Stash, one of the fastest-growing investing and banking apps in the U.S.

Stuart is a serial startup entrepreneur, mentor at Launch22 and founder of The Cult London. Stuart has always had an entrepreneurial streak. He always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. When he was 16 he received £300 in birthday money and over three years he invested it and grew it to £30,000. This was the capital for his first startup. From here Stuart has built several startups and has also worked at large corporates like Deloitte and PwC. His experience in both large and small companies has proved invaluable in his mentoring work. He is currently a mentor at Launch22 and is the founder of entrepreneur community The Cult London.

Ian is the CEO at Digiterre. Originally Ian had nothing to do with software. He did his degree in economics and econometrics. Despite the fact he didn’t like maths and didn’t want to do maths after his A-levels Ian went to university ended up on a statistics course when the business studies department was full. After this, he got a scholarship to a university in Canada where he found out he was going to do more applied maths. After vowing never to do maths again he found himself doing 4 more years of it. This did set him up very well for his career though. He worked for Proctor & Gamble after university as a brand manager. He started working in the brand management department but eventually ended up running it. After this, he moved to Rich Tea and Digestive where he did the same role before founding Digiterre.

Brendon is the Head of Data at Shawbrook Bank Brendon’s journey into data isn’t your typical one. He hasn’t risen through the ranks to his current position from a technical background. Brendon was originally an accountant. He worked for a while as an auditor. He learned a lot in that position but was happy when he was able to move on. He spent a long time working at RBS and Credit Swiss undertaking large-scale financial transformation pieces. These experiences let Brendon see the insides of tier one banks very well. After this, he moved into the consulting space and led some of the business intelligence offerings at a construction firm and after that built out the international analytics function for a movie company. This was probably Brendon’s first introduction to the data space. He’s now head of data at Shawbrook.

Jules is the CTO at Equals Group With a keen interest in computers from an early age, Jules has been constantly coding since childhood. His undergraduate degree in Mathematics and his Ph.D. in Computer Science saw him secure a role as a research assistant and teacher at Queen Mary, University of London. Once he was done with university Jules moved to FairFX and has been with the company for 13 years. In that time he’s seen two major acquisitions and a restructuring of the company into Equals Group. This transformation and its challenges are the subjects of this show.

Bryan is the Head of Technology at Forestreet First and foremost Bryan is a data strategist. His background is in building data systems, he’s been doing that for around twenty years. Around ten years ago he transitioned to data strategy where he now supports business strategies with data strategies. Bryan joined Forestreet a couple of years ago. Before Forestreet Bryan was building an AI and automation solution that tracked every IT company in the world. The idea behind that was: as a technology advisor Bryan could know exactly which companies he could recommend to solve a company’s business problem. He now does this for Forestreet.

Ross is the chief strategy officer at Somo Global In the past 25 years, Ross has been a founding member of 6 digital media companies. Currently working at the digital product accelerator Somo he is specialised in C level business, financial and marketing strategy. He was also voted for three years as one of the Top 100 Digital Media Digerati and Top 50 Most Influential People in Mobile by the Drum.

Ryan is the Senior Director of Talent at Pendo.io Ryan went to university at Brigham Young in Utah where he studied history whilst working as a systems administrator. His job at uni gave him experiences fixing computers and maintaining networks etc. After his bachelor's, he got a Masters in Business and he started working in HR where he worked at American Express. American Express took Ryan to England and he worked in their Brighton HR office. He realised he wasn’t a big company person he wanted to work for smaller businesses. From there he moved careers and went to work at LinkedIn as their HR lead. As LinkedIn got bigger he left HR and became a salesperson for a year. After this, he moved to a startup called Mobile Iron where he was the Head of Recruiting. It was in this role, he found that recruiting was his true passion. Ryan spent a few more years working as the Head of Recruiting at various Startups before landing at Pendo.io.

Renna is the Engineering Manager at iTech media Renna is a developer, entrepreneur, cat lover, planner & dreamer. She has taken part in a number of hackathons a couple of years ago, and her teams mostly end up in awarded positions. She enjoys the energy, creativity, and ideas flowing around in such events.

Giles is the CEO & Co-founder of Ksubaka Giles is a serial entrepreneur in mobile games, mobile advertising and global OTT platforms. He has over 20 years experience advising, leading, growing, acquiring and investing in companies from start-ups to multinationals. Prior to his current role as CEO and Co-Founder of Ksubaka, he was the Founder and Head of Libon, a skunk-works operation within the Orange Group. Here he built an award-winning mobile/OTT platform with over 4 million active users in 100 countries. Giles has also served as an advisor to BBC Mobile, CEO of mobile virtual network operator Echosphere and led the building (and sale to Microsoft) of France’s first mobile ad platform. Giles founded Ksubaka with his brother Julian initially as a new way for brands to advertise to shoppers in stores at mass scale. But working with retailers, they came to understand the need to improve the in-store experience and so shifted their focus to help physical retailers revitalise by providing in-store digital interface products and services.