TMCNet: TrendKite Expands Executive Team to Support Product Development and Rapid Growth

[April 20, 2016]

TrendKite Expands Executive Team to Support Product Development and Rapid Growth

TrendKite, a public relations technology company for brands and agencies, announced the hire of John De Oliveira, Russ Somers and Jennifer Cantu to support the company's rapid growth. TrendKite has seen 600 percent year-over-year sales growth, expanded its office space and quadrupled the size of its workforce since the start of 2015.

On the heels of raising $10.7M in October of 2015, TrendKite is investing in the product and technical skills needed to transform the public relations industry through technology.

De Oliveira joins TrendKite as vice president of product. In this role, he will drive innovative solutions for TrendKite's customers by bringing expertise in big data, natural language processing, machine learning and information products to the world of public relations technology.

De Oliveira has more than 20 years of experience in managing products and technology. He has previously held product management leadership positions at Sprinklr, Dachis Group and Dun & Bradstreet (News - Alert). De Oliveira also serves on the advisory board for Texas A&M University's Masters in Analytics, is the founder of Semantic Web Austin and led the team that published the OpenCyc common sense knowledge base and ontology, a foundational platform in machine learning and artificial intelligence.

As vice president of marketing, Somers will bring TrendKite's continued innovation to market by leveraging 20 years of marketingexperience ranging from high-growth startups to Fortune 500 companies. In addition to having led teams at Invodo, SonarDesign, Dun & Bradstreet, and Dell (News - Alert), Somers serves as an adviser to a number of Austin-based companies, including eyeQ and Edgecase.io.

Cantu, vice president of people, has more than 18 years of experience recruiting and managing talent for corporate teams. She will manage recruitment and culture for TrendKite's fast-growing employee base. Prior to joining TrendKite, Cantu led talent and culture for nine years at Spiceworks (News - Alert), where she helped grow the team from a 30-person company to more than 500 employees.

Together, the three new executives bring expertise to support the product, market and team expansion needed to transform the public relations technology space.

"Every other area of marketing has developed a robust technology and measurement stack, but PR technology has seen very little innovation-until now," TrendKite CEO Erik Huddleston said. "John's leadership in product will help us accelerate that revolution, while Russ and Jen bring the skilled passion needed to tell that story and continue to grow TrendKite's world-class team."

About TrendKite

Founded in 2012 in Austin, Texas, TrendKite provides comprehensive PR software to agencies and corporate brands to help measure and analyze the impact of their PR efforts across multiple channels with minimal effort. TrendKite recently won a 2015 IMPACT award for "Solution of the Year" from the Internet Marketing Association, as well as a 2015 "Most Promising IT and Web Company" award from Rice Alliance IT and Web Venture Forum.

For more information, visit www.trendkite.com.


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