Hires Former Valassis CEO Cali Tran, and Adds Executives from Wirecutter and Realtor.com

Centerfield, a technology-driven marketing and customer acquisition company, today announced that it has named Cali Tran, chief business officer; Jaimie Clark, vice president of SEO; and Kuntal Shah, executive vice president, Technology.

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Cali Tran

Tran joins Centerfield as chief business officer, managing growth for the company’s core business lines. Prior to Centerfield, as President and CEO, Tran led Valassis, a $2B marketing services company, back to growth primarily by driving 5X digital revenue expansion over six years. He has more than 20 years of experience as an investor and operator, including SVP of Corporate Development at McAndrews & Forbes and was part of the early team at Ancestry.com.

“As a previous partner, I’ve always been impressed with Centerfield’s exceptional team, first-party data assets, and customer acquisition platform,” said Tran. “I’m thrilled to now be a part of this team and to help fuel the next stage of rapid growth.”

“Cali’s passion and successful track record for building scaled, world-class businesses is a tremendous addition to our leadership team,” said Centerfield Co-CEO Jason Cohen. “We now have the strongest team in Centerfield’s 10-year history, and I’m happy that Cali will help us chart our next phase of growth.”

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Jaimie Clark

Clark joins Centerfield as vice president of SEO. Previously at The New York Times’ Wirecutter, where she helped to position the brand as a leading home and technology review destination, Clark will spearhead the expansion of the company’s owned and operated digital assets to millions of new consumers.

“Centerfield’s portfolio of digital brands provides excellent consumer value and utility,” said Clark. “I look forward to maximizing these brands’ exposure in major search engines and driving growth in organic readership.”

“We’ve long admired Jaimie’s work at Wirecutter and The New York Times,” said Centerfield Co-CEO Brett Cravatt. “Our portfolio of digital brands reaches 100 million Americans today. We believe Jaimie’s experience and leadership can help us reach an even larger audience of new in-market consumers.”

Kuntal Shah

Shah joins Centerfield as executive vice president of Technology. With more than 20 years of experience as an engineering leader at Realtor.com and eBay, Kuntal will be leading the company’s engineering, IT, data warehouse and data science organizations.

“Centerfield’s Dugout platform is already an industry leader in automated, end-to-end customer acquisition,” said Shah. “I am excited to accelerate investment in new initiatives, such as data science and first-party data assets to extend Centerfield’s industry lead.”

“Kuntal’s depth of experience in leading large engineering and data science teams is a great addition to Centerfield,” said Centerfield Chief Operating Officer and CTO Gary Pak. “Our engineering and data teams have grown considerably and will benefit greatly by Kuntal’s ability to scale teams and technology.”

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