About PR Newswire

Global Leadership Team

With more than 15 years of accounting and finance experience working in consulting and corporate, Prasant Gondipalli oversees Cision's finance and accounting functions as Chief Financial Officer. 

Prior to Cision, Gondipalli was Senior Vice President of Portfolio Operations at Platinum Equity. He was also Senior Vice President Transformation at Key Energy Services, and Vice President, Corporate Controller/Treasurer/Business Transformation at BlueLine Rental. Before moving to corporate, Gondipalli worked in Alvarez & Marsal’s restructuring practice.

Gondipalli is a CPA and received his Bachelor of Business Administration from Emory University. He resides in Chicago with his wife and children.

Channing Ferrer is President for Brandwatch. Over the course of his career, Channing has had the privilege of being a revenue leader, advisor, and early stage investor to numerous global technology companies in various phases of growth, and has enjoyed building revenue teams and improving processes across many of the companies he's worked with.

Prior to joining Brandwatch, Channing held roles as Chief Sales Officer for Semrush, and Chief Revenue Officer for Built In. He also led the growth of HubSpot from $200m to $1.5b in revenue over a 6-year period, building the GTM operating system, KPIs, processes, and tools they continue to leverage today.

Channing earned his BS in Business Management from Villanova University, and currently lives in Wayland, Massachusetts, with his wife, son, and daughter.

Elgar Welch is President of CisionOne and leads the company's global media monitoring division. Elgar joined Cision in April 2022 from Streem where he served as co-founder and CEO, leading the business from start-up to funding and through to acquisition, and overseeing an operation that grew to 150+ staff and over 700 customers across the APAC region. Before founding Streem, he was an adviser in the Office of the Prime Minister (Australia), an experience that served as a driving force behind the creation of Streem for the PR and Communications market.

Today at Cision, he is charged with the global roll-out of CisionOne, our market-leading media monitoring, analytics, and reporting platform. He oversees the Sales, Product, Engineering, Upgrades, and Media Data functions of CisionOne, enabling them to build out a highly-tuned, customer-driven platform – a philosophy that has been carried through from the success of Streem in the APAC region.

He resides in Sydney, Australia, travels often, and in his downtime spends a great deal of time either sailing on his city's harbor or skiing at the nearest ski field depending on the season or where he's located.

Matt Brown is President of PR Newswire. He has spent his career leading businesses and teams in the information services, FinTech, and news industries, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Matt joined PR Newswire from Signal AI, where he served as President, Americas & Asia-Pacific. Prior to that, he held commercial leadership and GM roles at Thomson Reuters and Nasdaq, where he was Global Head of Sales of the Corporate Solutions business unit. He also enjoys an active interest in the early-stage tech ecosystem where he has had the pleasure to invest in and advise numerous exceptional, high-velocity businesses.

Matt graduated with a BA in Philosophy from Trinity College in Connecticut, is an active traveler and hiker, and lives in New York with his son.

Carrie Parker is Cision's Chief Marketing Officer. She joined Cision in September 2022, bringing a rich B2B marketing background to the company with a 20+ year track record of scaling marketing operations at companies ranging from high-growth martech startups to global enterprises.

Prior to Cision, she held marketing leadership roles at American Express, Kantar, Valassis, and Cordial. She not only brings an array of experience and perspective, but she also has a consistent track record of driving demand and leading marketing teams to consistently deliver outsized business growth.

Carrie earned her B.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. She is an avid runner and enthusiastic world traveler with her husband and two daughters.

Amanda Schmidt is an accomplished talent and operations professional with a track record of delivering progressive and creative solutions that drive business growth. She has comprehensive experience leading every area of global human resources including strategic HR, recruitment, workforce planning, learning and development, comp and reward, and employee experience.

In her most recent role, she was the US Chief People Officer at Edelman where she led a large-scale business transformation project. Prior to that, she was Global Chief People and Culture officer at a digital tech and creative marketing agency owned by the Carlyle Group, where she helped grow the company by 48% and led the B-Corp Certification. She also served as the Global Chief People Officer of WPP’s Essence, where she created new reporting capabilities that ensured the same data-centric approach that informed client work and also informed business strategy and decision-making.

Amanda studied Human Resource Management and Development at New York University, Strategic Human Resources at Cornell University, and Psychology at Rio Salado College.

Stephen Boyes is a growth leader with over 25 years of global FinTech, MarTech and Media experience providing enterprise data, SaaS technology platform & marketing solutions to many of the world’s most successful organizations.

Steve is best known for delivering transformative growth in both mature and startup environments. Notably, Steve has led the Global Sales and Service support functions of a $6BN enterprise, initiated a Solutions business at Thomson Reuters rapidly scaling it to $1BN in revenue, and founded a startup in the digital media business growing it multi-million-dollar annual revenue and millions of daily visitors.

Steve has also sat on numerous Operating Committees and boards. A leader and a coach at his core, Steve was recognized as a top 50 Leading Light in the UK for kindness in business leadership in 2018.

Dylan Marvin is a proven performance-driven operator with extensive experience working in B2B and B2C Technology and Media companies.

Over the course of his career, Dylan has held leadership positions in the US, the UK and EMEA. Notably, Dylan was the Chief Legal and Administrative officer of Brandwatch prior to its successful acquisition by Cision.

In his role at Brandwatch, Dylan developed and led diverse functions including legal, privacy, risk, compliance, HR, IT, facilities and Sales Operations.

Dylan has a BA from Occidental College and Law degrees from both Thomas Jefferson School of Law and University College London.

Andy Bhojwani serves as Cision’s Chief Information Officer. He is a recognized leader in the private equity and privately held business sectors and is known for his expertise in large-scale digital transformation and enterprise modernization. With extensive international experience in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, he brings a global perspective to his role.

Before joining Cision, he served as the CIO at Transcendia, a company owned by Goldman Sachs. During his time there, he played a key role in streamlining enterprise resource planning (ERP), optimizing operational processes, aligning technical solutions with business objectives, and designing cloud computing infrastructure. These efforts significantly improved the company’s operations and application efficiency. His career also includes senior technology positions at Composites One, Essendant, and W.W. Grainger. 

Andy earned his M.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and he lives in Chicago alongside his three children. Outside of work, he is an avid fan of basketball and passionate about music.