Board of Directors

Board Chair

David McBride

VP, Retail Strategy, Quantum Metric

David McBride is a 16-year veteran of the analytics industry, having held analytics leadership roles in media, retail, and technology settings. David is passionate about helping companies achieve growth through data-informed customer relationships. He has led analytics teams at Comcast and American Eagle Outfitters and has created customer analytics products at IBM and Intel. David has also worked as a Solutions Consultant at Course5. He is currently VP of Retail Strategy at Quantum Metric, which helps organizations put customers at the heart of everything they do. David is a frequent speaker at analytics events and the founder of the Analytics UnSummit. He holds an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and resides in Bountiful, Utah.

President

Charles Davis

VP, Solutions, Blast Analytics & Marketing

As Vice President, Solutions at Blast Analytics, Charles leads the company’s sales, business development, and marketing efforts, helping to establish new client relationships and maintain consistent growth. Matching Blast’s solutions and expertise to each organization’s unique business challenges, Charles ensures the company is working with “the right clients in the right ways” for mutually beneficial success and results. An analytics industry veteran, he has helped establish Blast as experts in the analytics consulting space since it's entry in 2007. Within the DAA, he co-founded the San Francisco Chapter and helped organize and run many successful events and Symposia. A lifelong Californian, Charles graduated from CSU Sacramento with a degree in Biology and minor in Computer Science. Outside of analytics, he loves to talk backpacking, triathlon, and family.

Secretary
Mai AlOwaish

Chief Data Officer, Gulf Bank
 

Mai AlOwaish is the Chief Data Officer at Gulf Bank; She is a seasoned information systems and data analytics expert with 17 years of experience between Kuwait and the United States where she spearheaded a variety of data analytics and e-commerce initiatives and enabled digital transformation for financial institutions, retailers, airlines, and more.

Mai is an active member, mentor, and co-leader of the women in tech maturity model in DAA as she's an advocate of supporting and empowering the women in analytics and tech overall. Mai is a published author, speaker and an award winner; thought pieces on analytics models were featured in the Applied Marketing Analytics journal and the Analytics Interpreted book. Mai is also a certified PMP, CWA and is the recipient of the 2019 DAA President’s Awards.

Treasurer

Lynn Lanphier

Director of Digital Analytics, Ally Financial

Lynn is a strategic analytics leader with more than 20 years’ experience in data analytics, digital transformation and strategic business planning for Fortune 100 companies. Highly analytical and skilled at using data to drive strategy and business decisions, understand customer behaviors, improve customer experiences, optimize business performance and identify marketing opportunities. Proven track record of building best-in-class analytics teams, recruiting and developing data analytics talent, and motivating team members to achieve business objectives. Passionate about helping the business leaders connect the dots by transforming data and information into insights and recommendations that result in better decision-making and improved business results.

Executive Committee At Large

Kenya Davis

Data and Analytics Planning Program Manager, Microsoft

Kenya Davis is an experimentation and data enthusiast that has built her career on creative strategy and team development. She has spent most of her career focusing on building and optimizing enterprise programs that cultivate a culture of fast change, constant learning, and high rewards. Her experimentation community endeavors include previously speaking for VWO and serving as an ongoing participant in Experiment Nation's podcast series. In recent years, her work has led her to play an instrumental role across her clients as a leader in optimization, experimentation, personalization, and product development. 
 
When she is not supporting her clients she is working on training and development for new-to-the-industry peers and her Art & Design company of 8 years Artist Universe. 

Director

June Dershewitz 

Head of Data Strategy, Amazon Music

June Dershewitz has spent her career driving analytics strategies for major businesses. In her current role at Amazon she guides strategy and execution across Amazon Music's portfolio of data science, machine learning, analytics, and business intelligence initiatives. As an analytics practitioner she builds and leads teams that focus on marketing analytics, product analytics, business intelligence, and data governance. In her prior life as a consultant she was a member of the leadership team at Semphonic, a prominent analytics consultancy (now part of Ernst & Young). As a long-standing advocate of the analytics community, she was the co-founder of Web Analytics Wednesdays. She first served as a DAA board member between 2008-2012, and she returned to the board as Vice President in 2019. She holds a BA in Mathematics from Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Director

Sharon Flynn

Associate Director Data Strategy, Publicis Sapient

Sharon is a digital pioneer with 15+ years of experience as a digital practitioner in Finance, Brand and Media spaces, including BMO, (Sr. Manager Digital Analytics), Millward Brown (Director of Digital Strategy & Effectiveness), TVO (Director of Research), Astral Media (Head of Research & Director of Interactive Research), CBC (Research Manager), and The Canadian Media Fund (Statistical and Economic Analyst). Her experience also traces back to print media, sales, and academic roles in her native Dublin where she completed her degree in economics from Trinity College Dublin and master’s in media studies from the Dublin Institute of technology.

Conversant in multiple market research methodologies, Sharon has spent her career operationalizing data including digital data. She is particularly interested in overcoming cultural and institutional impediments that derail excellent implementations from becoming insights that drive ROI.

Working in Canada with traditionally smaller teams that require a multi-disciplinary approach, she offers real-world experience of both the grit to overcome silos and the empathy needed to forge meaningful alliances with other data providers - both inside and outside the organization. Sharon is a passionate believer in the immeasurable value of a digital analytics team from the shop floor to the c-suite. She balances the ethos of democratizing digital data with advocacy for the importance of digital SMEs.

Director

Kevin Hartman

Kevin Hartman is a devoted and artistic practitioner of data. He believes data must do more than simply supply insights that motivate creative thought. Rather, data must express insights in ways that are just as creative as the ideas they inspire. As Google's Former Chief Analytics Evangelist, Kevin is responsible for leading the design, implementation, and evolution of programs and approaches that help businesses worldwide realize the opportunities presented by data. Kevin has a proven track record of building large, global, high-functioning analytics organizations from scratch and deep experience in leading large profit & loss centers and cross-functional teams, identifying business opportunities, and creating effective marketing programs. In addition to his role at Google, Kevin teaches graduate-level courses in analytics at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Chicago, and the University of Illinois. He is the author of "Digital Marketing Analytics: In Theory And In Practice" (learn more at DMAbook.com).
 

Director

Sara Hoffman 

Sara has been in the digital development and measurement space for over 15 years across various consulting and in-house roles.
At Blast and Beaconfire RED, Sara worked on measurement and testing strategies within web builds, marketing, and fundraising campaigns for healthcare clients, non-profits, and professional associations.
Prior to agency work, they were the in-house analyst at World Wildlife Fund, building a digital measurement practice across the marketing and communications division.

Sara is a chapter leader for Washington, DC for the Digital Analytics Association.

Director

Valerie Kroll

Director of Optimization, Search Discovery

Valerie is passionate about data, like really passionate about data, and leverages that enthusiasm to help stakeholders make smarter decisions and mitigate the inherent risk that comes with digital experimentation. As an Optimization Director at Search Discovery, she spends her days crafting evidence-based hypothesis libraries, utilizing advanced AI features in testing platforms, and creatively solving tough problems to ensure long-lasting business results.

Prior to her current role, Valerie established and led the first Digital Analytics and Optimization programs at both UBS and the American Medical Association, and in 2014, her first year as a Digital Analyst, she was honored to be a finalist for the DAA “Rising Star” award. Always an active member of the digital analytics community, she currently serves as the President of the DAA Board of Directors and continues to provide new perspectives and insights on testing and optimization by frequently speaking on the digital analytics conference circuit and appearing on industry podcasts.

Director

Joe Miscavige

Joe Miscavige is the Director of Analytics within PBS’s Business Intelligence Group, where he oversees business intelligence platform development and deployment, local station analytics, capacity-building data literacy initiatives, and the project management of marquee annual data products. Prior to joining PBS, Joe managed cross-network digital platform analysis for AMC Networks and worked as an archivist at New York’s Hunter College.  He is a co-leader of the Digital Analytics Association, Washington D.C. chapter, a Steering Committee member of the DAA’s Media Special Interest Group, and the DAA’s 2018 Practitioner of the Year. Joe holds a Master of Science in Library & Information Science from Long Island University and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations from Susquehanna University. 

Director

John Pestana

CEO and Co-Founder, ObservePoint

John Pestana is the Co-Founder of ObservePoint, a software company based in Provo, Utah. ObservePoint provides web analysts with exceptional quality assurance tools to improve the quality and reliability of web analytics data and enabling companies to take confidence in their data-driven decisions.

Prior to ObservePoint John was the Co-Founder of Omniture, a software company based in Orem, Utah. John helped build and grow Omniture to a company of over 1200 employees. Omniture grew from a student-run business to a worldwide, publicly traded company in 2006. Omniture was sold to software giant Adobe for 1.8 Billion dollars in November of 2009.

A distinguished entrepreneur, John has been awarded many awards such as Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and Entrepreneur of the Decade by the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship.

Director

Nate Smith

Director of Product Marketing, Adobe

Nate Smith is the Director of Product Marketing for the Adobe suite of Analytics products. In his role, Nate oversees strategic marketing for Adobe Analytics and works with several of the top brands in the world regarding their analytics use cases, challenges, and business opportunities. He has been involved in digital marketing for the past fifteen years and holds a BS in Information Systems and an MBA from Brigham Young University.