Sanjay Sood

CDW is a leading multi-brand technology solutions provider to business, government, education, and healthcare organizations, generating ~$22B in annual revenue with operations across the U.S., UK, and Canada. As CTO, I lead a global technology organization of 1,200+ coworkers and contractors spanning software engineering, enterprise infrastructure, data and analytics, information security, and enterprise architecture. I am responsible for CDW's end-to-end technology strategy, platform modernization, and AI agenda — including driving the company's efforts to become an AI-native enterprise across customers, partners, coworkers, and internal operations. Since joining in 2020, I have led a multi-year transformation of CDW's technology capability — moving from a fragmented, legacy-heavy environment to a modern, cloud-enabled, product-oriented organization. This includes large-scale platform modernization across CRM/CPQ (Salesforce), ERP (Workday), and customer-facing digital experiences, as well as transitioning the organization to an agile operating model to improve delivery velocity and investment transparency.

In early 2016, HERE established a new product division to consolidate autonomous driving efforts across the organization. I was appointed to lead the division with end-to-end accountability for strategy, execution, and commercialization of a new product line for self-driving vehicles. HD Live Map (HDLM) is a critical component of autonomous vehicle systems, providing a high-fidelity, globally consistent representation of the roadway. My responsibilities included: • Built and scaled a growing organization of hundreds of engineers, product managers, and researchers; launched two new engineering sites to recruit specialized talent • Developed the product and technical strategy for HD Live Map — a critical enabler for self-driving vehicles — including the business case and go-to-market strategy • Led the team that built the first scalable production pipeline for mass-producing an HD Map covering the highway network across North America, Western Europe, and beyond • Drove real-time perception initiatives, including redesigning HERE's terrestrial capture systems to span high-end industrial, mid-range industrial, and consumer-grade approaches • Established a center of excellence for cloud learning, leveraging OEM vehicle data to continuously maintain and update the HD Map • Served as a key contributor to strategic customer and partner engagements at the global level, representing both the HAD division and HERE at large

Joined HERE to build and lead the Core Map Engineering organization through a strategic transformation of the company's map-making and delivery capabilities. • Led a 300+ person multinational engineering organization across Chicago, Frankfurt, and Mumbai — responsible for the technology underpinning nearly all company revenue • Developed and deployed Map2020, a product and technology strategy focused on increasing the efficiency and automation of map creation • Drove an innovation agenda across the team, launching multiple data analytics and machine learning initiatives that delivered significant product improvements • Architected and executed a strategy to modernize a proprietary legacy platform, reducing maintenance costs and accelerating development velocity • Partnered with operational teams to re-engineer map tools and workflows, achieving a 10x increase in automation

YP (formerly AT&T Interactive) was one of the largest local search and advertising companies in the U.S., with digital revenues exceeding $1B in 2013. The company operated an extensive publisher network for local advertising, a ComScore top-30 destination in YP.com, and a 4.5-star-rated mobile app on Android and iOS. As SVP of Consumer Platforms, I owned the end-to-end product and technology strategy for YP's consumer-facing properties — including YP.com and YPMobile — leading a team of 160+ engineers, designers, QA engineers, and product managers serving 70M+ monthly unique visitors. • Partnered with senior leadership to develop a new strategic roadmap repositioning YP beyond a legacy directory service into a modern local search destination • Led a comprehensive redesign of YP's mobile and web consumer properties, driving both strategy and execution • Directed complete overhauls of legacy search and local data management systems, improving consumer experience and yield optimization • Built and scaled a high-performance cross-functional organization; significantly improved collaboration and velocity across engineering, product, marketing, sales, strategy, and business development

Allvoices.com was a provider of user-generated news content. As CTO, I architected and built the Allvoices News Analysis Platform, applying machine learning and information retrieval techniques to validate, rank, and augment user-generated content. I helped raise $9M+ in venture capital and scaled the platform to 4M+ monthly unique visitors and 170K registered users, managing a distributed team of engineering, QA, and operations personnel. Allvoices was acquired by Datran Media in May 2011.

BuzzLabs was a seed-funded startup incubated at Northwestern University. I architected and built novel technology that mined and analyzed blog posts for sentiment, using those signals to generate "virtual performances" via a text-to-speech and 3D rendering pipeline. The system produced thousands of videos per day, published to the content destination buzz.com.

Graduate student, information retrieval, machine learning, frictionless information systems, tagging, emotional analysis, low-fidelity location based systems, context aware technology

Media River was a venture-funded startup incubated at Northwestern University. I developed core algorithms powering the first generation of contextual search technology. The flagship product, Watson, was a desktop application that integrated with productivity tools (Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and others) to automatically surface contextually relevant content from online and offline sources. Media River was acquired by Perfect Market (an IdeaLab company) in 2009.