Manchester technology company, DigitalBridge has appointed two digital industry heavyweights Steve Furber CBE and Vikas Shah MBE as advisors ahead of a period of significant growth, including international expansion and product innovation. The recruitment comes on the back of a £3 million funding round with Maven Capital Partners earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Ezequiel Cura (VP of Engineering) and Glenda Balekjian (VP of Product) both join AI-driven room rental place Badi as they focus on building the best-in-class customer-centric platform designed to be a world-leading marketplace for room rental across major global cities.

Furthermore, James Patterson returns to London to take on the newly-created role of VP of Client Services at The Trade Desk having spent two years in the company’s New York office, where he served as VP of Global Operations. He’ll continue to oversee client operations at a global level alongside his new role, in which he will manage the client services organisation across EMEA.

Elsewhere, Telaria has expanded its EMEA team with the appointment of Jenny Antoniou as Publisher Account Director, Ad Operations. Reporting to Bill Swanson, VP EMEA, and based out of Telaria’s London office, Antoniou is responsible for the growth of Telaria’s EMEA Publisher and Broadcaster business. 

News UK has unveiled changes in its senior leadership team as it continues to focus on driving long term sustainable growth. Following the move of Chris Duncan to the new role of MD, Platform Partnerships, The Economist Chief Operating Officer and Publisher Michael Brunt has been appointed to the new role of General Manager, Times Newspapers Limited. At the same time, Jo Bucci, currently Chief Operating Officer of News UK’s audio business Wireless, was appointed to the new role of General Manager, The Sun

Over at Adform, the integrated advertising platform has announced the appointment of Phil Acton as UK Country Manager. Acton will be responsible for further expanding Adform’s innovative vision of an integrated advertising platform, drawing on his expertise in sales, new business development and account management to head up the UK team. 

Data-driven performance marketing agency Merkle has promoted Ben Gott to lead its rapidly expanding analytics practice across EMEA. Bringing together the existing analytics teams from Merkle’s performance media agency and customer analytics business across EMEA, Gott’s new role responds to the increasingly sophisticated and fast-changing data and technology landscape.

BrandVerity, which protects the world’s leading brands online, announced the appointment of Van Chappell as EMEA General Manager, based in London. Prior to BrandVerity, Chappell founded software company 5IQ, which he then sold to the digital marketing platform Impact. As BrandVerity continues to invest in the European and international markets, Chappell brings his deep expertise in the affiliate industry to lead growth across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Tealium, the trusted leader in real-time customer data orchestration, has recruited Heidi Bullock to the role of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Bullock previously served as CMO at Engagio, and prior to that as Group Vice President of Global Marketing at Marketo.

Dianomi, the advertising platform for financial services announced that Rachel Tuffney has been named EVP of US Operations. Under this role, Tuffney will be charged with leading Dianomi’s North American business growth.  

Over to Tagger Media, the influencer marketing SaaS platform has named Ana Thorsdottir as Head of Business Development & Partnerships. In this role, Ana will be responsible for driving existing and new partnerships with European brands and agencies, while assisting overall sales development in the area. Ana reports to Hannah Monds, Managing Director EMEA for Tagger.

Leading Instagram influencer marketing service Takumi  announced three new appointments to its non-executive board of director and has hired a new chief revenue officer. Mary Keane-Dawson, co-founder of medical technology start-up MyHealthPal, Sarah Speake, who has worked with brands such as Google and ITV, and Rob Forshaw joins the board. Also joining Takumi as chief revenue officer is Carla Faria, who has been operating in the media and content world for more than 20 years. 

As a result of continued growth, PromoVeritas, the promotional compliance specialists, announce the appointment of Shelley Davies as Managing Director with Jeremy Stern, the founder, transitioning to Chief Executive.

Elsewhere, Kantar has confirmed that Sarah Wait, Director of Forward Planning Services, has been appointed by the Company of Communicators to the position of Master for the year 2019 to 2020. In her year-long tenure as Master, Sarah will be responsible for leading the agenda of the Company, leading stakeholder engagement, raising its profile, as well as sharing best practice throughout the communications industry.

Adjust has revealed two new senior appointments to its UK team. Andy Chandler joins as General Manager, UK & Ireland, and Isabel Ferreira as Sales Director. They will be working out of Adjust’s London office, building on the existing team’s success. 

Meanwhile, Rob Lenois has joined agency VaynerMedia as Chief Creative Officer. In this role, he will oversee the agency’s global creative product, reporting to CEO and co-founder Gary Vaynerchuk.

Furthermore, Encore Digital Media has welcomed Olivia Rainford as Commercial Manager for it’s B2B vertical and Francesca Ramsey, Commercial Manager for its Finance vertical — following the announcement of the company’s 70% growth in 2019.

Upon returning to the UK, Emily Trenouth has joined MediaCom as Head of Influencer Marketing Strategy – an important hire within the fastest growing division within content marketing for the agency. She’ll be working with the agency’s unrivalled roster of clients such as Coca Cola, Sony Playstation, Sony Mobile, NBC Universal, Bose, Direct Line Group, DFS, Tesco, LVMH and many more. 

Lastly, Panoramic, an enterprise SaaS company, has appointed chief technology officer, Mike Christopher. Based in its Los Angeles headquarters, Christopher will oversee the company’s product strategy and development, as well as leading the engineering, product and data, science teams.

Email content@performancein.com if you’d like to feature yourself or a colleague in next month’s Movers & Shakers column.