Catherine Lorah leads strategic marketing to high-tech solution providers and end-to-end CX journey for SageCircle as Head of Marketing and Customer Experience. Throughout her career, Catherine has honed her skills of communicating, distilling information, project management, creating compelling stories, and making strategic decisions. Catherine holds a BS in Speech Communication/Public Relations and a BA in Philosophy from Millersville University and is a member of the Project Management Institute.

Derk is a co-founder of Kea Company and supports startups and scale-ups creating mutually beneficial relationships with key industry analysts. As a former industry analyst himself, he thoroughly understands what makes analysts tick. Derk is also a startup mentor in two leading startup accelerators: Techstars and Rockstart, and is an executive advisor to senior executives at enterprises, startups and service providers focusing on strategic challenges around emerging digital services and products, digital business transformation, supplier relationships, contract negotiations, governance, commercial models, and technology. Derk is fascinated by the creation of ecosystems, building bridges between organisations and people to form true partnerships, the role new technologies play in the way we organise our businesses and societies. His aim is to be a positive factor in these transformations, as an entrepreneur, an advisor to startups and corporates, a collaborator and sharer of knowledge.

Duncan Chapple helps analyst relations teams to realign their resources to meet meet goals. A former analyst at Ovum (now Omdia), Duncan has held senior analyst relations roles at firms including CCGroup, Deloitte, Kea Company and Omnicom. He has an MBA from London Business School.

Ekta Gulyani is an experienced consultant to analyst relations programs for start-ups, mid-size companies, and large organizations. She is especially interested in helping clients assess the ROI of their ongoing engagements with Gartner, Forrester, Everest, IDC & others and maximize the actual value of research firms. With over 12 years of diverse experience in the tech industry, she has been associated with brands including Adobe, Gartner, Microsoft, and Oracle. Ekta understands the perspectives of both tech solution providers and end-user clients. At Gartner, she worked with analysts and helped generate client value, especially for mid-size solution providers. In recent years, leveraging all her knowledge and best practices, she has put what she has learned into action through the AR role. She has managed and worked on many AR activities for clients in Europe, the US & India across varied AR initiatives.

Ian Scott is one of the rare market research leaders with deep business consultancy experience. He has played a significant design and analysis role at both the Analyst Observatory and Loudhouse Research for the AR community’s two longitudinal studies: the Analyst Advocacy Study and Analyst Value Survey. He graduated with a Masters in Social Research Methods at the University of Surrey, a pre-doctoral training program supported by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council.

Jasmine Richards is key organizer of our ARMastwerind groups and leads SageCircle’s research and training library, both commissioning new resources and updating content from the Kea Analyst Relations Portal. Jasmine also created SageCircle’s video training series for analyst relations teams. She has previously worked as a radio presenter and news reporter, and graduated with a 2:1 BA (Hons) degree in Broadcast Journalism, with BJTC accreditation, from Nottingham Trent University.

Puja Patra is a sales consultant focused on SageAnalysts analyst advocacy studies and ContractRoI analyst contract optimization projects. As an advocate for SageCircle’s customers, she ensures that client acquisition and faster client response go hand in hand. Puja was previously a Milan-based intern at SageCircle, researching the challenges facing large analyst relations teams. She has a Master’s in International Business from SDA Bocconi, studying at their Milan and Mumbai campuses.

Sarah Shamouelien joined SageCircle in January 2021 from the Analyst Observatory, where she led the Analyst Advocacy Study. She has developed significant partnerships with clients, investors and resellers at Informa, Oxford Economics and Bombora. Sarah has worked on transforming numerous start-ups and mature businesses, providing services in information technology, media, data, sales and marketing. She has an MBA with Merit from the Alliance Business School at the University of Manchester.

Sven is a Managing Partner at Kea Company and as CEO heads the global Kea Management Team. Having worked with many start-ups and vendors, both in his time at Gartner and as an executive, he has accumulated a broad knowledge of the IT industry. This not only covers the various areas of the IT-market (software, hardware, services and consulting), but also provides a “multi-angle view” of the IT-business from a channel, vendor, analyst and consulting perspective. Sven has more than 20 years experience in sales, marketing and general management. Sven received a Master of Science degree in Business Management and Marketing from the Westfälische Wilhelms-University Münster.

Teea Palo is our lead researcher, heading methodologies and data collection for SageAnalysts and SageAdvisors. Dr Palo is a principal investigator and project leader for primary research, including a UK government study of 5G adoption and a British Academy project studying strategic market creation. As a faculty member at the University of Edinburgh, she heads the final year of the Business School’s MA programs. She is an adjunct professor and Doctor of Science graduate of the University of Oulu.

Chris Germann is currently the Global Head of AR & Influencer Marketing for Spryker Systems, an enterprise digital commerce platform vendor out of Berlin Germany. Chris worked for over 18 years at Gartner, Inc., in both analyst research and client retention operations, and has a unique skill set that spans all parts of the analyst, enterprise client (CIO), and tech supplier ecosystem. In addition to working as an analyst and managing 3 different Magic Quadrant research projects, he also was a co-founder and content strategist in the original SageCircle Analyst Relations Advisory firm in the early 2000s where he advised small, midsize, and F1000 technology suppliers on improving analyst ratings and market presence. His operational experience includes a long stint as Regional VP in the Gartner CIO research program, where he led a team of up to 24 executive partners to YOY revenue growth for 9 consecutive years. The team analyzed customer CRM data to produce prioritized engagement plans and retention strategies. Chris most recently spent time as a Partner at ISG Research, and with Oracle in SaaS application sales and marketing enablement. He is based in Austin, TX.

Efrem Mallach has been involved in analyst relations since the late 1970s when he represented Honeywell to the then-nascent industry analyst community. Since 1987, when he wrote the first book on Industry Analyst Relations: Win them Over, he has held leading roles in AR consultancies such as Kensington Group, Lighthouse Analyst Relations and Kea Company. Efrem has a PhD from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eveline Oehrlich is an independent Research Director at Research In Action where she conducts research on topics focusing on IT Automation. She held the position of VP and Research Director at Forrester Research, where she led and conducted research around a variety of topics for 13 years. She has advised leaders and teams across small and large IT enterprises and IT Automation software vendors on strategy and challenges. She is the author of many research papers and thought leadership pieces and a well-known presenter and speaker within the IT industry. Eveline has more than 25 years of experience in IT. Eveline also is Chief Research & Content Officer at DevOps Institute where she researchers, authors and evangelizes key topics around modern operating models such as DevOps. Her passion is to help companies transform their IT organization, processes and tools towards high performing teams enabling their employees and customer experience improvements. She has helped some of the largest enterprises across the world to adopt new strategies, workflows, and automation tools within their journey towards a digital business.

Robin Schaffer guides AR and influencer relations teams in strategy, execution and value creation. She has led transformative analyst relations and marketing leadership for three decades, most recently with Kea Company, Alteryx, Glassbox, and the Analyst Observatory. Her prior experience in the technology industry includes Collibra, Unit4, NICE Systems, and AT&T. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from William Paterson University of New Jersey with a bachelor’s degree in English.

Sneha works with Kea Company as a Managing Director for MEA and APAC. In the past, Sneha served as a seasoned consultant, strategic growth advisor, and successful leader for numerous banks and financial services, advising them on the adoption and success of technology. She also advised numerous start-up and large technology product and service companies, advising them on go-to-market strategies and execution for rapidly expanding their revenue and market reach in the Asia/Pacific region. Sneha brought a unique leadership and management experience in driving business growth, building business transformation roadmaps, growing partnerships and alliances, and creating new technology use cases and workloads for Intelligent Automation, AI/ML, RPA, and cloud. She has over 16 years of experience in digital transformation, new market development, and innovation. She has a long history of collaborating with CEOs, Managing Directors, Chief Strategy Officers, COOs, CIOs, and CTOs, among other CXOs and decision makers.