Ascend Assembles Executive Advisory Council to Explore the Data-Driven Transformation of Business, Technology, and Society

Visionary Leaders from Microsoft, Google and More to Join Summit

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Dec 10, 2019, 08:00 ET

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascend, provider of the world's first Autonomous Dataflow Service, today announced it has established the Ascend Executive Advisory Council – a network of trusted, forward-leaning CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs who aim to build enduring relationships and shape the transformation of companies through the democratization of data-driven insights. Inaugural members of the Executive Advisory Council include visionary leaders from some of the world's most transformational businesses today, including Google, Microsoft, Blue Shield, BP, Fitbit, Gap, Subway, and more.

Ascend will host the inaugural Executive Advisory Council Summit in Half Moon Bay, California on Dec. 13. The semiannual summits will host high-profile leaders at inspirational venues to track the ongoing transformation of business, technology, and society, and develop guidance on how organizations can evolve to provide leadership in their industries.

"Our summits are distinctive opportunities to assess the impact of emerging technologies on today's enterprises with some of the titans of digital industry," said Sean Knapp, founder and CEO of Ascend. "We're excited to expand our network with some of the world's most forward-leaning executives to learn from their unique business perspectives and the emerging challenges they face."

Topics for the summit include:

Trending technology topics that can result in leadership mistakes;
Harnessing the data tsunami with technology, people, and strategy;
Fueling the development of disruptive industry innovations;
Balancing status quo business with speedier product innovation;
Shaping enterprise culture to unlock hidden potential and leadership.

"Today's pace and impact of change demands that leaders constantly gather insights and seek out the art of the possible in relationships with customers, partners and vendors," said Martin Graf, an Ascend Executive Advisory Council member and VP of Cloud and Digital Services at Swisscom. "The modern enterprise can only thrive as part of an ecosystem, powered by a web of data and analytics, and committed to customer excellence. This summit promises to go beyond the generalities of the large conferences and delve into more gritty details of technology-driven innovation."

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About Ascend
Ascend provides the world's first Autonomous Dataflow Service, enabling data engineers to build, scale, and operate continuously optimized, Apache Spark-based pipelines with 85% less code. Running natively on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, Ascend combines declarative configurations and automation to manage the underlying cloud infrastructure, optimize pipelines, and eliminate maintenance across the entire data lifecycle. Ascend is backed by leading venture capital firms, including Accel, Sequoia Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners; and supported by notable advisors, such as Kevin Scott, CTO of Microsoft; Maynard Webb, Board Member Salesforce, Visa; Scott McNealy, former Sun Microsystems CEO; Luanne Dauber, former CMO at Confluent and VP Marketing at Pure Storage; and Deep Nishar, Senior Managing Partner of Softbank Vision Fund. For more information about Ascend, visit www.ascend.io.

Media Contact
Greg Wise
Bhava Communications for Ascend
[email protected]
(512) 213-9899

SOURCE Ascend