GumGum names Patrick Gildea as new CFO

GumGum yesterday announced that it has named Patrick Gildea to lead as Chief Financial Officer. Gildea, who fills the CFO position previously held by Schraeder, joins GumGum with experience leading finance and strategy departments at several retail, e-commerce and media businesses, including Incentium, M-GO/Technicolor, Gracenote and, most recently, Joybird, which he led to a successful exit as acting CFO.

“A few months ago, we resolved to refocus our corporate strategy on the lines of business on which we were built––serving the advertising ecosystem,” said GumGum CEO Phil Schraeder. “Today’s announcements––Patrick Gildea’s addition to our executive team in particular–– mark our commitment to that strategy. Patrick is a widely respected, high caliber executive, who knows what it takes to get the build on the success of global, tech-enabled businesses like GumGum. We’re all extremely pleased to have him on board.”

Along with Gildea’s hiring, GumGum also announced several promotions and role expansions.

“The leadership moves we’re making are aimed at aligning our sales and marketing efforts, leveraging our leaders’ talents by expanding their responsibilities, and bringing perspectives to the executive table that reflect expertise in segments like programmatic and supply side technologies whose importance is surging,” Schraeder explained. “They will allow us to accelerate our pace of innovation, increase our client focus, and multiply our profitable growth now and into the future.”

The change in GumGum’s leadership

According to GumGum, Ben Plomion has been named Chief Growth Officer, a newly created executive role responsible for creating value for clients, ensuring product-market fit, developing go-to-market strategy, and elevating customer experience. Plomion will now lead GumGum’s Planning and Sales teams in addition to the marketing team that he has led for the past several years as Chief Marketing Officer.

Adam Schenkel has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Commercial Development, a new leadership role responsible for maintaining and growing global advertising partnerships and integrations. In his previous role as Vice President of Programmatic, Schenkel established and grew GumGum’s overseas programmatic business. GumGum says this new role answers the need for additional executive level support for GumGum’s growing international business.

Travis O’Neil has been promoted to Senior Vice President of Operations, where he will continue to lead GumGum’s Account Management, AdOps, Design, and Business Intelligence team as he did during tenure as Vice President of Operations.

Ken Weiner, GumGum’s Chief Technology Officer, will now oversee Publisher Development in addition to his Engineering and Product team leadership functions. Weiner has worked to develop products with publishers in mind since he joined GumGum as its first employee in 2008 and GumGum is now placing increased emphasis on productizing solutions for publishers.