Virtual DA Hub, May 2020 - Huddle Leaders
June Dershewitz has spent her career driving analytics strategies for major businesses. In her current role at Amazon she guides strategy and execution across Amazon Music's portfolio of data science, machine learning, analytics, and business intelligence initiatives. As an analytics practitioner she has built and led teams that focus on marketing analytics, product analytics, data engineering, and data governance. In her prior life as a consultant she was a member of the leadership team at Semphonic, a prominent analytics consultancy (now part of Ernst & Young).
As a long-standing advocate of the analytics community, she was the co-founder of Web Analytics Wednesdays, and she currently serves as Board Vice President of the Digital Analytics Association.
She holds a BA in Mathematics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Shane oversees the Data & Insights Group (DIG) and is responsible for the disciplines of data analytics, data science and data governance at The Times. DIG's role within the business and newsroom includes using data to understand the audience for our journalism, informing more dynamic and personalized product experiences, and evolving our business model through experimentation.
Alongside these responsibilities, Shane leads the Data Platforms mission, where we are supporting the enterprise with business intelligence, machine learning, targeting and testing platforms, while continuing to improve the governance and utility of our data environments.
Prior to joining The Times, Shane was an optimization and analytics consultant at Accenture, working with financial services, eCommerce and telecommunications companies to build and scale test & learn programs within their organizations. During this time, Shane actively contributed to the methodology and development of multivariate testing software and led optimization delivery teams focused on the execution of test & learn programs.
Ashish Braganza is executive vice president of Data, Analytics, and Innovation at LPL Financial, where he’s responsible for transforming data into a strategic firm asset, developing a strong data quality/governance plan, and integrating analytics-based solutions into LPL’s DNA.
Mr. Braganza has more than a decade of experience building and running impactful data analytics teams at Fortune 500 companies in asset management, technology, and media/telecom. Most recently, he was senior vice president and head of Client Insights and Analytics at OppenheimerFunds Inc., where he was responsible for developing and applying advanced methods within data science, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and computational computing.
Prior to OppenheimerFunds, Mr. Braganza held analytics leadership roles at Lenovo and Comcast Corp. At Lenovo, he scaled advanced analytics across the enterprise and managed cross-functional technology teams to support firm initiatives.
Mr. Braganza has published numerous case studies on data analytics and is frequently invited to speak at leading industry events. He’s been nominated for multiple awards and is an active member of the Digital Analytics Association. Mr. Braganza received a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s degree in marketing from the University of Pune in India and a master’s degree in marketing management from Fox School of Business at Temple University.
Amy Sample has been analyzing digital consumer behavior for nearly 20 years. As VP Business Intelligence at PBS, she and her team support analytics and digital research initiatives for PBS.org, PBSKIDS.org, and PBS mobile and OTT apps.
Her team also provides analytics and SEO consultations for PBS member stations. Prior to PBS, she conducted primary research and audience analysis at AOL for 8 years. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Digital Analytics Association and co-leader of the DAA Washington DC chapter.
Amy holds an MBA from Georgetown University and a BS in Marketing from DePaul University.
Rusty has over 17 years of experience driving digital strategy, technology program planning, and delivery in financial services and health care. Since 2013 Rusty had been leading enterprise class digital intelligence programs responsible for designing and delivering modernized MarTech platforms, building out and leading digital community of practice and Digital Centers of Excellence, and helping the enterprise sustainably transform its operations around the digital marketing and automation capabilities. Rusty is also is an active member of the DAA’s Corporate Membership Advisory Council.
Considered one of the leading digital measurement experts in the world, Gary leads Digital Mortar's product, sales, marketing and operations strategies.
Previously Gary led EY’s digital analytics practice. EY acquired Gary’s consultancy Semphonic in 2013. As President, Gary led Semphonic’s growth from a 2-person practice to one of the leading digital analytics practices in the U.S. Voted the Most Influential Industry Contributor by the Digital Analytics Association, Gary writes the influential Measuring the Digital World blog, has published more than twenty whitepapers on advanced digital analytics practice and is a frequent speaker at industry events.
Paula oversees Hilton’s multi-platform Digital Optimization efforts, including the collection of both quantitative and qualitative feedback. Paula oversees Hilton’s multi-platform Digital Optimization efforts, including the collection of both quantitative and qualitative feedback.
She created Hilton’s optimization program in 2010, which has now grown to a team of nine. The A/B / MVT testing program produced over 120 campaigns in 2017, and multiple user surveys. On the qualitative side, the program managed multiple large in-person qualitative usability studies and dozens of online feedback sessions. The group has also begun to support some agile product families through lean user-testing and design sprint validation.
Prior to joining the Digital team, Paula spent 14 years in the Market Research group, where she ran the hotel performance metrics program; launched the first social media listening platform; and migrated the enterprise’s customer satisfaction tracking system to an online tool.
Paula received a BA in Business Administration from Rhodes College, and an MBA from the University of Memphis. She lives in Memphis with her ever-busy family of five.
As the Senior Director of Analytics, Growth and Consumer Insights, Asif Rahman is responsible for all digital analytics, user acquisition and consumer insights efforts across Accuweather’s digital organization. Previously, he was Director, Digital Analytics and Insights at Univision Digital. Asif has spent 15+ years in digital roles within media, telecom, and eCommerce in both B2B and B2C industries; in a wide array of functions, ranging from digital product management, web, mobile and app analytics, project management, online and digital marketing, user acquisition, website, and app design and development.
At Accuweather, Asif, and his team are responsible for using data and insights to drive user acquisition efforts, product development, and marketing effectiveness and understanding audience behavior.
As Associate Director in Disney Media Distribution, Amber is responsible for shaping analytics team priorities, and leading staff education and professional development. Her team drives linear and digital measurement integrations with distribution partners across The Walt Disney Company's portfolio of media networks (Disney Channel, Disney Jr., Disney XD, ABC, Freeform, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3, ACC, SEC, ESPNU, ESPNews, ESPN Deportes, FX, FXX, FXM, National Geographic, and Nat Geo Wild).
Amber has moderated/presented at various analytics conferences including the DA Hub and several Digital Analytics Association Symposia. She has also featured in the Genetics in Medicine and Applied Marketing Analytics journals.
Amber holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MBA from George Washington University.
Puja Ghosh is a Digital Product Owner, VP, at JP Morgan & Chase and has helped stand up their Optimization program. In the process of doing so worked with Vendor Support, Contractor Support and In-house teams. She currently uses analytics to drive mobile strategy.
Puja holds a BA in Political Science from Rutgers.
Michelle is the Director of Data & Analytics at Billie, a female-first shave and body brand. She was one of the first employees and built the data infrastructure from the ground up. Prior to joining Billie, she led product analytics at a range of media and e-commerce startups, including Thrillist, Casper, and theSkimm. She is passionate about building scalable data solutions and self-service data platforms.
Michelle holds a BSc degree in Psychology from the University of Maryland.
Fred Smith serves as both Team Lead for the Technology Team and Digital Metrics Lead in the Digital Media Branch in the Office of the Associate Director for Communication for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA.
His professional background spans various capacities throughout the governmental, private, non-profit and academic sectors. He has led multiple student exchange groups to the Soviet Union and continued to work in student exchange programs in Russia and the New Independent States. Mr. Smith has taught Russian at the University of Kentucky and worked in the Kazakh-American Studies Center. After that, he spent three years with the Eurasia Foundation in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and the countries in Central Asia where he developed and managed the offices for 5 countries and awarded over $3 million in grants for economic and democratic reform projects. His duties included overseeing program outreach and marketing as well as running national advertising campaigns in multiple countries.
Returning to the US in early 1997, Fred co-founded a small company that specialized in database-driven dynamic web applications, where he led development efforts in interactive web sites, mobile applications, and database projects. In 2005 he settled in Atlanta, Georgia and began working at the CDC doing web and application development, working with their new media efforts to find ways to effectively communicate health protection and promotion messages to the public through new channels, such as podcasts, content syndication, open data and APIs. He enjoys the on-going challenges of translating technical ideas and solutions to non-technical audiences while expanding the vision and reach of CDC’s messages through emerging technologies.
Fred is a certified Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) trainer for CDC and deployed to Sierra Leone in October 2014 for the Ebola in West Africa outbreak where he applied his CERC and digital communication knowledge into non-digital communications campaigns. From August to November 2016 he served as the Lead of the Joint Information Center for CDC’s response to the Zika Virus outbreak.
Fred hails from Corbin, KY and earned BA in Russian Language and Literature from the University of Kentucky, and an MA in Russian Literature from the Ohio State University.
Chris O’Neill is a full-stack web developer who has been in the analytics space for the past three years. As a Solutions Engineer at ObservePoint, Chris helps large enterprises set up automated testing of their analytics scripts with ObservePoint so they can verify custom website tracking is always up and running.
Scott Breitenother is an investor and advisor who specializes in building data driven organizations. He currently leads Brooklyn Data Co., a consultancy offering full-stack data and analytics team as a service.
He was employee #16 at direct-to-consumer mattress start-up Casper and founded the company’s industry-leading Data & Analytics team. In a former life, Scott was a Management Consultant at L.E.K. Consulting (which is probably where he developed his love of frameworks and structure).
He has a BS in Business Management from Babson College and a MSc in International Management from London School of Economics. When he’s not blogging about analytics trends at LocallyOptimistic, you can find him walking around Brooklyn with his wife and children.
Caitlin is the Head of Analytics at Trove Recommerce,which powers resale marketplaces for partners like Nordstrom, Patagonia, and REI. At Trove, Caitlin is responsible for building the data analytics, data science, and data infrastructure capabilities to scalably support both internal stakeholders and partner brands. Prior to joining Trove, she led analytics at Indiegogo, a leading crowdfunding platform, and spent 6 years in private equity.
Caitlin holds a BA in Economics and Women's Studies from the College of William and Mary.
Jason is an Evangelist at Fivetran and works to serve the data community within Fivetran. He's a former DBA, report developer and code monkey; and now represents Fivetran as a community organizer and advocate. If you haven't seen him in person yet, you will likely soon at a data event (or webinar) near you..
