Episode 39: Meet Personify’s New President and CEO, Scott Collison

Over the last 25 years, Scott Collison has held CEO and General Management positions at some of the world’s leading technology companies. Most recently he was CEO at Anaconda, a market-leading data science and AI company, where he rapidly grew product revenue and helped build a great company culture that was recognized as a Top Ten Employer in Austin by local media. He was also named one of the Top Ten CEOs among companies in the Data Science and AI space in 2019. He has led organizations at large software companies and startups, including Microsoft, VMware, Salesforce and SourceForge. He has been a founder at three startups. One of them, Signio, was acquired by VeriSign in 1999 in a transaction exceeding $1 billion.

He is a Fulbright scholar and holds a Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts with special honors from the University of Texas, Austin. Scott continues to serve as a board member, investor and advisor for a number of early stage start-ups. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family and cycling the Texas Hill Country on the weekends.

What you’ll learn about in this episode:

  • Scott shares his background and what attracted him to Personify.
  • What he’s excited about with his new role and things that he’s looking to tackle in the near future
  • The lessons he’s learned so far in the pandemic
  • Scott’s perspective on the power of data and having a single source of truth, and how data can enable organizations to have a customer-obsessed culture
  • His approach to prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and DEI initiatives that he’s implemented at previous organizations
  • Why transparency is so important right now and how our clients can embrace it when navigating difficult times
  • How Scott defines culture within an organization and why it should be a priority for an organization’s staff and its members or constituents
  • His advice for association and nonprofit professionals who are attempting to build their plans for the coming year without knowing when we’ll be able to resume in-person events

Additional Resources: