Course5 Compass

Leah Weiss

Partner, Data Culture

Gabi Steele

Partner, Data Culture

Rajneel Kumar

Business Head – Expansion Projects & Head of Products, ZEE5 India

Rajneel comes with a robust body of experience spanning almost two decades across Digital, Telecom and Media and Entertainment sectors. He holds a management degree from Symbiosis Institute of Foreign Trade. Prior to joining ZEE5 India, he has worked with industry leaders including Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd., Balaji Telefilms, Mobile2Win Pvt. Ltd and so on, while also testing entrepreneurial waters.

He has been championing the cause of digital innovation and growth through his participation in industry forums such as IAMAI, DMAi, etc. and speaking at major Indian & International forums such as IBC, MWC, NAB, etc.

At ZEE5, Rajneel is leading the charge on the Product Management Function as also building on the Expansion Projects on the platform. As Product Head, Rajneel is responsible to make sure that product is leading in terms of features and functionality in the market. Customer experience and optimised journey is something which is of utmost importance to him, along with making sure that business KPIs are met. Along with working of product development, Rajneel is focussed on working on innovations, to make sure ZEE5 is preferred partner to rollout various new initiatives with companies like Google, Apple, etc.

Anees Merchant

EVP – Applied AI & Digital, Course5 Intelligence

Anees leads the Applied AI and Digital business and brings over 23 years of experience to Course5 Intelligence Pvt. Ltd. He has worked with numerous global Fortune 500 clients across various industries, including Retail / eTail, Travel and Hospitality, Telecommunications and Technology and Media. Last year he was recognized as 40 under 40 by a premium India publication house to honor his digital initiatives. Anees serves as an Advisor for the WIAC (Wiley Innovation Advisory Council). For two years in a row he has co-authored the Wiley Black Book (2019 and 2020) with other esteemed industry leaders in partnership with Wiley.

At Course5, Anees has led and launched industry-recognized and leading solutions and products (Compete and Discovery). His work at Course5 revolves chiefly around setting go-to-market strategy for Applied AI, scaling global business (sales, operations, and solutions), engaging with Executives at Fortune 500 companies and building the strategic partner ecosystem.

Anees has worked with clients across industries to drive impact on their business by enabling them with innovative AI-led solutions and practices. He is currently focusing on leveraging artificial intelligence to disrupt the space of digital and insights. Anees is also certified on Lean Six Sigma with an MBA from NMIMS, Mumbai.

Brent Dykes

Author

Brent is a 15 year veteran of the enterprise analytics industry, including roles in data strategy and analytics consulting at Omniture, Adobe, and Domo. He is a regular Forbes contributor on data-related topics and recently published his new book, Effective Data Storytelling: How to Drive Change with Data, Narrative, and Visuals. In 2016, Brent received the Most Influential Industry Contributor Award from the Digital Analytics Association (DAA). He has been a popular presenter at multiple conferences such as Strata, Rise, Web Summit, Shop.org, Adtech, and Pubcon. Brent earned his MBA from Brigham Young University and his BBA (Marketing) degree from Simon Fraser University. Follow him on Twitter @analyticshero.

Nigel Beighton

, Camelot Group

Nigel has worked as a CTO/CIO for over 20 years, in both B2C and B2B businesses, covering industry sectors such as: media, online-retail, security, hosting, cloud services, travel and gaming. This has included key enterprises: Lastminute.com, Rackspace, Photobox, DailyMail Group (DMGT,) Symantec, Atcore Technology. He based in London and has held regional and global roles. For the last five years he has been working with Private Equity companies, specialising in technology investments and building SaaS/cloud products. Currently working with Camelot Group in the UK.

James Oliver

Director – Data Empowerment, Rakuten Rewards

James Oliver has been in the analytics space for nearly a decade and is currently the director Data Empowerment at Rakuten Rewards. In this role James oversees internal data education (think Snowflake, SQL, Tableau) through hands on workshops, Udemy courses, and creating a culture where using data smartly is at the core of critical business decisions. His goal is delivering the right data to the right stakeholders at the right time. In his free time, James enjoys riding his bike and exploring new roads in the Bay Area.

Alex Robertson

VP – Enterprise Data and Analytics, David's Bridal

Alex has more than a decade of experience helping companies achieve their goals through data-informed decisions. Alex recently began work at David’s Bridal leading their data and analytics efforts, and prior to that he worked in various analytics leadership roles at Comcast. His career has spanned the retail, technology, media, and advertising domains. He holds an MBA from the University of Utah and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Brigham Young University. Aside from data, he also loves good pizza, travel, and his family (not necessarily in that order).

Nate Anderson

Director – Marketing Research, Data & Analytics, FS Investments

Nathan Anderson is Director of Marketing, Data and Analytics at FS Investments, a leading asset manager dedicated to helping individuals, financial professionals and institutions design better portfolios. His 15 year tenure in the marketing analytics industry also includes stints at Google, Ally Financial and Comcast. Nathan brings a technical depth to his marketing technology work, which allows him to push the envelope of what is possible with data and analytics. Nathan’s educational experience includes an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth and a Marketing Certificate from Wharton. He resides in the Philadelphia area.

Sameer Dhanrajani

CEO, AIQRATE

Sameer is Chief Executive Officer at AIQRATE. A bespoke global AI advisory & consulting firm.

Sameer is a globally recognized AI advisor, business builder, evangelist and thought leader known for his deep knowledge, strategic consulting approaches in AI space. Sameer has consulted with several Fortune 500 global enterprises, Indian corporations, GCCs, startups, SMBs, VC/PE firms, Academic Institutions in driving AI led strategic transformation and innovation strategies. He has a rich and proven experience of building and scaling AI businesses and practices, securing large AI engagements & deals and creating significant client impact.

Sameer is a renowned author, columnist, blogger and four times Tedx speaker. He is the author of bestselling book – AI and Analytics: accelerating business decisions published by Wiley and series editor for Wiley innovation black book 2019 & 2020 editions; writes regularly for Forbes, YourStory, Telengana Today, Businessworld and is a prolific blogger with trendsetting, topical coverage on AI strategy & consulting spectrum.

Previously, Sameer was Chief Strategy Officer at Fractal Analytics and was responsible for curating strategic planning roadmaps, driving strategic investments, M&A, incubating new AI capabilities and geographies, marketing & branding and led high-priority growth initiatives to enable Fractal clients on AI-led transformation of their businesses. In his previous assignment, Sameer was Global Business Leader at Cognizant analytics and data sciences business unit at Cognizant Technology Solutions. Under his leadership, Cognizant Analytics became a leading market player in the analytics market space with 3400 analytics professionals serving 180 global clients and executed 3000 plus consulting projects and engagements. As an accomplished professional, Sameer provided the pivotal strategic direction and execution led insights to galvanize Cognizant Analytics run better & run different. Prior to Cognizant, Sameer was the Country Head at Fidelity National Financial and pioneered India’s first Global Capability Center(GCC) to be based on non-linear growth model with platform-based value propositions and developed Fidelity India into a hub of customer delight, delivery innovation, and operational dexterity. Before Fidelity, he worked as Vice President, Analytics at Genpact.

Sameer completed his management education from IIM Calcutta and also studied Strategic Management program from London Business School and Digital Innovation & Design program from MIT.

Elea Feit

Assistant Professor of Marketing, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University

Elea McDonnell Feit develops data analysis methods to inform core marketing decisions such as designing new products and planning advertising campaigns. Recently, she has focused on how marketers can use randomized experiments to measure advertising incrementality. She has also published research on conjoint analysis and data fusion. Methodologically, I am Bayesian with skills in MCMC sampling, hierarchical models, missing data and decision theory.

Her research is inspired by the real decision problems that marketers face and she has spent most of her career at the boundary between academia and industry, first as a research scientist at General Motors R&D, then as a methodologist at The Modellers and most recently as the as the Executive Director of Wharton Customer Analytics.

Elea enjoys teaching marketing analytics at all levels and have developed courses at Drexel in data-driven digital marketing (undergraduate), marketing experiments (masters), and Bayesian and causal inference (PhD). She has also developed several workshops and online courses on marketing analytics and wrote R for Marketing Research and Analytics with Chris Chapman, which has been translated to Chinese, Japanese and Korean and adapted to Python.

Sushant Ajmani

VP – Product Management, Course5 Intelligence

Sushant is a digital transformation evangelist who has guided large global businesses in their digital transformation charters and has helped drive enterprise-wide initiatives around Downstream Analytics, Audience Profiling & Segmentation, Experiential Testing, Audience Journey Mapping & Activation, Building Recommendation, and Decision Engines, Integrating Cross-Channel Marketing Initiatives and Data Discovery using ML and AI.

Sushant has over 20 years of experience in the digital industry with deep expertise in Retail/E-commerce, Telecom, BFSI, and Media. Before joining Course5, Sushant ran his own $2.5mn consulting business that provided Marketing Analytics and Experience Optimization to online retailers in North America, Western Europe, and APAC and led the multi-million dollar program for building the Digital Analytics capabilities on eBay Marketplace platform. At Course5 Intelligence, Sushant is the product head for an Augmented Analytics platform called Course5 Discovery and drives Product Development, Delivery, and Marketing operations for the Retail, CPG, and Technology customers.

Joseph Sursock

SVP – Client Services (Europe), Course5 Intelligence

Joseph Sursock is a highly knowledgeable and progressive sales and marketing professional with over 20 years business experience. As Senior Vice President of Course5 , Joseph is responsible for strategies and growth for the company’s solutions in omnichannel marketing, customer and market intelligence, and big data analytics across Europe. As a strategic manager working with enterprise solutions in leading vertical industries, Sursock previously led multi-region business units in both software and services organizations. He has delivered complex, process-based solutions in areas such as marketing analytics; customer relationship management; ecommerce management; competitive benchmarking and analytics for Retail, eTail, Technology, and FSI; higher value process outsourcing; business systems application development; Anti Money Laundering (AML) for banking and telecommunications; and intelligence-based investigation solutions. Most recently, Joseph continues to support FTSE500 clients with their digital transformation programs. He comes with a multi-cultural background, can speak several languages and holds a Bachelor of Science from Leeds University and an MBA from Bradford University School of Management.

Megha Chaudhry

Global Head Of Marketing, Course5 Intelligence

Megha has over 14 years of marketing experience spanning across Information Technology, Digital Analytics, Cable and Telco, Financial Services and Market research with extensive exposure to global markets – US, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. She has a solid background in conceiving, planning, executing and evaluating integrated digital marketing programs that drive results. Her focus is towards brand awareness, brand interaction, and top-line revenue/profitability growth leveraging channels like social media, SEO/SEM, email marketing, nurturing campaigns, new business development through sales and marketing efforts.