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

Alex Harman is President of TOCA Social. TOCA Social is the world's first interactive football and dining experience, combining immersive gaming and world class food and drink - bridging the physical and digital worlds together in a way never seen before. During the Podcast episode, Ben sits down with Alex to discuss what spawned the idea of TOCA Social, what life was like in the early start up stage of the business, the challenges launching a business during a pandemic, and the importance of good UX in the hospitality and leisure industry. Check out the video podcast here: https://youtu.be/P6cFITpfQgE

Anika Sierk is Lead Data Scientist at Unmind with a PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience/Psychology. Unmind is a London-based startup that empowers organisations and employees to measurably improve their mental wellbeing. Their data science team draws actionable insights and valuable information through the application of data mining techniques, predictive models and other related methods to better understand their users' behaviour, and to drive change and improvements across the platform. Anika's background lies in research and holds extensive experience in data analysis and statistical inference through conducting research projects in London (UCL), Berlin (Charité), Cologne (Max Planck), and New York (CUNY). During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Anika to discuss Anika's career in data, what it was like moving into a team lead role after just 18 months, imposter syndrome and how to overcome it, and the resources Anika relies on to stay ahead of the curve in the data space.

Javaad Abdul-Rasool is VP of Talent at Habito, a start-up advisor and mentor. Habito was founded in 2016 with the aim to give people the tools, knowledge and expert support they need to help them buy and finance their homes. Javaad is currently working in the leadership team at Habito to provide the vision, drive and direction of Habito's talent agenda. During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Javaad to discuss how we can keep flying the flag of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, and why it should be important to all of us. As well as how to build on what we already have, and the things we can do to be successful in the DE&I space.

Ken Hunter is an accomplished technology leader with a credible history of success building and transforming state-of-the-art technology systems from conception to completion. Ability to align technology strategy with business needs, vision, and standards. Adept at spearheading top-notch organizations, involving migration to balanced cloud infrastructures, legacy systems modernization, and mobile application strategies execution. He's a transformational technology leader with the ability to build and lead high performing teams across multiple business lines and geographies. Refined communicator; expert in cultivating and strengthening professional relationships with teams, clientele, partners, stakeholders, and management. In Ken's role as Vice President of Technology at The Michales Companies, he directs development of modern eCommerce marketplace, finished goods third-party retail platform; act as cornerstone for organizational growth. He also acts as Interim Technology Officer to monitor and manage Mercha

Fast-forwarding the Future of Healthcare @ Livi | George Jones by Venturi Group: CTO, Data, Development, Cyber Security, Business Intelligence, Infrastructure, Cloud

Rachel Murphy is the CEO at Difrent, a professional services partner to ‘tech for good’ organisations delivering business efficiencies by challenging the status quo for tech-enabled business transformation and Difrent has recently been recognised as overall winner of the Leading Healthcare Awards 2021. Rachel also led the transformation programme of all patient facing, self-care and prevention activities within the Paperless 2020 Programme in the NHS, a £270m digital transformation of all patient-facing services across the NHS. Rachel has an exceptional record defining and executing strategy at top level to deliver change, improve performance and ensure first-class digital/technology services and solutions for blue-chip organisations across multiple sectors. During the podcast episode, Ben sat down with Rachel to discuss the motivation to start Difrent, her journey within the NHS to then building and selling Difrent. They also touched upon a new business Rachel is advising which is bringing cutting-edge te

Rhian Atkins is an experienced Data Analytics Business Consultant and has experience in identifying, scoping, and leading large-scale multi-million pound projects that create value by using data more effectively. Rhian has led large teams working across many clients in several sectors including FMCG, gaming, the NHS and the Ministry of Defence. Rhian is also the Co-founder of Women in all things Data, and is currently Client Director in Data & AI at Avanade. Women in all things Data is a catalyst for positive change, since their beginnings in 2019, they have been driven by the same ideas initially founded their Women Empowerment Non-Profit Organization upon: support, empowerment, and progress. During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Rhian to discuss Rhian's Career in Data, how Women in all things Data was founded, what we can expect for the future of their platform and this space and how you can get involved.

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 market

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

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 ma

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

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 Gm

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 t

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

Ben Simonds is Head of Analytics at Contino, with responsibility for internal analytics and reporting as well as consulting with clients on BI, Analytics, and Cloud FinOps engagements. Contino is a leading transformation consultancy that helps large, heavily-regulated enterprises to become fast, agile and competitive. Ben has an incredibly interesting career path, starting out his journey by setting up his own successful 3D animation studio (Gecko Animation) and then moving into the world of Analytics. During the podcast episode, Ben discusses the correlation between data analytics and 3D animation, as well as the often overlooked hard and soft skills required to be successful in data.

Jennifer Agnes is Managing Director at Cynozure, a people-led data and analytics strategy consultancy, that creates data-guided organisations. Jennifer is a strategically focused and execution-biased senior executive with extensive global experience in increasing business value through comprehensive data, analytics, and team transformation strategies. Known for designing and delivering business solutions with a pragmatic, hands-on approach to meet strategic goals of the customer and company, provide value to shareholders, and ensure employee success. During the podcast episode, Ben sat down with Jennifer to discuss all things Data; What is 'good' Data? Is Data more important than code? and how to look into Data objectively, and how to extract the true value of Data to maximize its potential for your business. Thanks again to Jennifer for taking the time to come on the show and providing such a brilliant conversation.

Ian Venner is CTO and Co-Founder of Hurricane Modular Commerce. Ian is a highly analytical, technically savvy C-level exec and consultant with extensive experience in delivering best-in-class, cutting-edge solutions to clients from diverse industries. He is passionate about technology, about defining, implementing and managing solutions that offer immediate value and also support business growth, both organic and planned. What drives and inspires Ian is designing bespoke solution architecture that meets exact requirements within operational and financial constraints. Through Ian's career, he has worked with industry leaders from media, financial services and the telecoms sectors, providing high-quality solutions such as application architecture, mobile technology and more traditional system solutions that have spearheaded the implementation of technologies. He has worked on projects such as the launch of Samsung’s Media Hub platform in the US, the first system to globally utilise the Ultraviolet/DECE model.