EXPONEA - Key Persons
Ajay represents Bain Capital Ventures on the BloomReach Board. Ajay joined Bain in 2003 to focus on early stage mobile, internet, and software investments. Previously, he spent more than seven years at Trilogy Software. As head of sales and marketing, Ajay increased Trilogy's annual revenue to $300 million. He led product expansion into new areas, such as enterprise pricing and enterprise incentive management. Before Trilogy, Ajay was a consultant with McKinsey & Co. He has a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Amanda (Elam) Cole serves as Chief Marketing Officer, leading the execution of the Company's marketing strategy to drive further business demand and brand awareness. Amanda is a passionate marketing professional with more than 15 years of experience in helping SaaS companies build impactful brands, communicate differentiated value, and grow high-performing marketing teams. She previously served as the Company's senior vice president of global marketing, having joined in January 2021 through the acquisition of Exponea. Prior to joining Exponea, Amanda served as Vice President, Demand Generation at Blueshift, a Customer Data Platform, and before that served as Vice President of Marketing, Americas and Global Programs at Basware, a financial software company. Amanda also serves on the MACH Alliance Executive Board, helping the Alliance to remain true to its vision, mission, and values by providing strategic direction.
Anirban Bardalaye serves as Chief Product Officer, leading the development and execution of strategy to accelerate the growth of the company's product pillars - Discovery, Engagement, and Content. Prior to joining Bloomreach, Anirban served as Vice President of Product Management, Commerce Cloud, at Salesforce. Before joining Salesforce, Anirban served as Head of Product, Platform Ecosystem & Marketplace, at Guidewire, and prior to that, co-founded VaycayHero, a B2B2C travel company backed by prominent technology startup accelerator Y Combinator. Anirban also led product management at Serena Software, and earlier in his career held multiple roles as a software engineer. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a dual MS in Systems Science and Mechanical Engineering from Louisiana State University, and a BE in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela.
Prior to joining Sixth Street in 2018, Ben was a Vice President with Battery Ventures focused on venture capital & growth equity investments in the internet and software space. Previously, he was a Senior Equity Research Associate at Rutberg & Company and holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Chemistry from Duke University.
Christina serves as Chief Operating Officer, leading Bloomreach's efforts to arm customers with the tools and knowledge they need to successfully compete in demanding markets. She is a leading thinker in ecommerce, having been a manager at Bain & Co. focused on technology, retail, and strategy prior to joining Bloomreach in 2011. Christina is an experienced computer programmer who has concentrated on site search, merchandising, and payments. She helped found ecommerce teams at both Hewlett Packard and Walmart. Christina holds a BA in mathematics from Saint Mary's College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
An enterprise software veteran, Hilarie spent the last three decades at growth-stage technology companies in operating and board roles. Hilarie started her career at Oracle Corporation where she held a variety of roles over the course of 18 years, including senior vice president of Oracle Direct where she drove the company's rapid growth in both the technology and applications markets. Most recently, Hilarie was President at New Relic, responsible for New Relic's growth strategies as well as leading global sales, marketing, customer success, support, and business development. Prior to New Relic, Hilarie was at Salesforce, where she was named President and led the company's worldwide sales teams and focused on growing the business globally. Hilarie joined Salesforce from Intuit where she was vice president of direct sales for small business and a member of the executive committee. Hilarie joined NEA in 2017 as a Venture Partner on the tech team, where she focuses on enterprise software and services.
Hilarie has a master's degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree from Mills College.
Hugh Kimber serves as General Manager, EMEA, overseeing revenue efforts and continued growth in EMEA. With over 20 years in the digital marketing space, Hugh has a deep understanding of customer experience marketing, optimization, and customer engagement. Hugh is a dynamic and highly driven leader with comprehensive experience working with some of the largest household brands in EMEA, focused on best in class customer service, workforce development, and management of business operations.
Job Titles:
- Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas
Joel serves as Senior Vice President and General Manager, Americas, overseeing revenue efforts and continued growth in the Americas. Previously, Joel was Senior Vice President of Sales, Americas, at leading open SaaS ecommerce platform BigCommerce. In his time at BigCommerce, he oversaw revenue efforts in the Americas and scaled various business units in the company's sales organization. Previously, he held a number of sales leadership positions at companies including Accruent, CareerPlug, and CSIdentity.
Marcus, who co-founded Guidewire in 2001, is the company's president and CEO. He successfully led the company through an IPO and has built it into an enterprise that serves insurers in 25 countries. Before Guidewire, Marcus was vice president for strategy at Ariba and an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co. He serves as an independent director of Opower. He holds bachelor's from both Princeton University and New College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.
Ninos serves as Chief Financial Officer, leading Bloomreach's financial strategy and legal function. Prior to joining Bloomreach, Ninos was the Chief Accounting Officer at Amplitude where amongst other strategic initiatives he led them through a successful public listing. Prior to Amplitude, Ninos was a partner at PwC where he spent many years working with brand name multinational technology companies going through transformations, initial public offerings, debt / equity raises and M&A transactions. He also held operational leadership positions with a focus on high growth Software and SaaS companies. Ninos holds a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from the University College of London, a chartered accountancy (CA) qualification as well as a CPA from the state of California.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- Co - Founder
- Co - Founder and CEO of Bloomreach
Raj De Datta is Co-Founder and CEO of Bloomreach, a leading software platform for digital commerce experiences that powers brands representing 25% of retail Ecommerce in the US and the UK. Raj is a multiple-time entrepreneur. Raj is also the bestselling author of "The Digital Seeker" - a playbook for digital teams to win big.
Before launching Bloomreach, he was entrepreneur-in-residence at Mohr-Davidow Ventures, served as Cisco's director of product marketing, and was on the founding team of telecom company FirstMark Communications. Raj also worked in technology investment banking at Lazard Freres. Raj serves on the Council for Player Development for the US Tennis Association, the Board of RepresentUs, a bipartisan organization focused on democracy reform, and is a Founder Partner at seed-stage venture capital firm Founder Collective and an individual investor in over 20 start-ups.
Job Titles:
- Managing Partner at NewView Capital
Ravi is Managing Partner at NewView Capital. He serves on or has served on a number of boards, including Boulder Wind Power, Braintree, Deeya Energy and Desire2Learn. Before joining NewView Capital, Ravi worked at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Raychem Corp. He received an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Ravi also received a bachelor's in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ursula serves as Chief People Officer, leading the Company's human resources strategy and driving culture and development across its global footprint. She joined Bloomreach following its acquisition of Exponea, where she was Chief Operating Officer. Prior to Exponea, Ursula spent six years in leadership roles at T-Mobile, and before that, spent 10 years at McKinsey & Company working both in the US and Europe. Ursula is a board member of Aspen Institute Central Europe, a non-profit organization, which connects and inspires people who want to improve society. She holds an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a BA from the Comenius University of Bratislava.
Job Titles:
- C - Level Commercial Leader and Board Member
Vickie Bond Mrva is a C-level commercial leader and board member with more than 20 years of experience driving growth and digital transformation for both world class companies and new to the world brands, including Apple, Walmart, Lululemon and Willow. Vickie also serves as a board director at Brixton, a California-based lifestyle brand. From 2018 through 2020, she served as Chief Commercial Officer and CMO for Willow Innovations Inc., where she steered the new company from launch to category leadership. In her 10 years at Apple, Vickie built and managed the marketing and digital teams in the Americas, Europe, Australia and Japan and served as the Ecommerce global advisor. As a marketing leader, Vickie also launched and scaled walmart.com to $650MM and served as Strategic Advisor and interim SVP, Digital at Lululemon. Vickie received her MBA from UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business and her BA in Economics from UC Santa Barbara.
Xun serves as Chief Technology Officer, leading Bloomreach's global engineering and operations team. He is a veteran engineering executive with over 15 years of experience leading engineering teams. Xun is passionate about technology, complex engineering challenges, and building world-class teams. In the consumer space, he led the team that created the world's highest quality cloud gaming platform: Geforce Now. In the enterprise space, he led the team that built Medallia's cloud platform. Xun holds a Computer Engineering degree from the University of Waterloo.