ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Leading shopper intelligence and omni-channel media provider Catalina has appointed accomplished industry veteran Sean Murphy to the role of EVP, chief data & analytics officer. As a member of the company’s executive leadership team, Murphy will report to president and CEO Wayne Powers.

Sean Murphy

With experience spanning the technology, media and marketing sectors, Murphy most recently held a series of senior roles, including SVP of analytics, at Vericast, the marketing solutions company that owns Valassis and Harland Clarke.

 “Sean brings more than 25 years of forward-thinking, entrepreneurial leadership, nimble innovation, and analytic process development to Catalina, as well as a demonstrated commitment to developing people, differentiating business strategies, and sustaining customer prosperity,” said Powers.  “Sean believes that data is only useful if it is helping drive effective decisions, and his primary focus will be on partnering cross-functionally to leverage our unparalleled shopper intelligence to help our customers do just that.”

While at Vericast, Murphy led the data science, marketing science and business analytics teams, launching a new Insight Consulting Team to expand the company’s sales and service strategy. He also led the integration of three organizations representing $1.8B in revenue, scaling the company’s analytics and insight processes to launch five new products across six vertical markets.

Murphy has also held a series of senior leadership roles for Vendavo, Inc., culminating with his role as VP of pricing science, leading the team leveraging pricing data to help businesses drive critical decisions impacting top-line margin. Before that he spent several years as a marketing and product strategy executive for technology companies in and around Silicon Valley, including Peoplesoft, and Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com), where, in the early days of the search business, his team created search data-based solutions for customers.

“The opportunity to join a leading market innovator like Catalina, and head a global team of some of the world’s premier data & analytics experts to drive business for many leading and emerging CPG brands and retailers, was simply too great to pass up,” said Murphy.

After earning both a B.S. and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, Murphy received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School. He is also a patent holder and a former international world-class swimmer, NCAA champion, Olympian, and Masters World Record Holder.