Team
US Team:
John Simpson - CEO & Founder
Rune Jensen - Sales Director
Hazel Jaramillo - Market Research Manager
Allen Suzuki - Controller
UK Team:
Mike Mather - Director - Highland Business Intelligence
Company Advisors:
Tony Hayward
John Simpson - CEO & Founder
The Black Dog Group's CEO and Founder, John Simpson, is an international sales and service director with over 20 years experience, achieving outstanding revenue growth within the Financial Information and Publishing Industries. He has managed and developed sales teams and structures for both large organizations and small dynamic fast growth companies around the world—running sales teams in the UK, Continental Europe, Asia and the United States..
Immediately prior to founding The Black Dog Group, John was a Regional Managing Director for Reuters (now part of Thomson Reuters) where he was based in San Francisco. John joined Reuters through the acquisition of Multex for whom he was based in London and managed sales and service for the UK, Continental Europe and Asia.
John has also enjoyed sales and sales management roles at Telerate, Knight-Ridder Financial & Bridge Information Systems.
Rune Jensen - Sales Director
Rune comes to The Black Dog Group with over 15 years of technology sales experience with some of the premier and most innovative players in the industry.
Rune initially honed his sales trade with successful stints at respected firms Lanier Worldwide and Cable & Wireless before specializing his career into SaaS and business intelligence software applications. Rune was part of the amazing growth story at Salesforce where he was a consistent top performer for 5 years as the company grew in dramatic fashion. He continued his success into early start-ups where he helped companies like Clickshift, now Webtrends, build an effective sales model.
Hazel Jaramillo - Market Research Manager
Hazel brings a disciplined market research approach to the team. “By surveying our clients to ask them what they need to address their specific business challenges and goals, we can guide our partners to develop applications that provide our clients with targeted solutions.”
Hazel completed her market research studies at UC Berkeley Extension and Burke Institute for Marketing Research while working in the Strategic Marketing Department at Autodesk, Inc. She went on to conduct international qualitative and quantitative research for Autodesk, Inc. and other Bay Area companies.
Allen Suzuki - Controller
Allen, a graduate of the University of San Francisco, brings 30 years of expertise through a diverse involvement in industries such as advertising, leasing, retail, architecture and engineering.
He has performed accounting, finance and operational tasks as an Accounting Manager for Davis, Johnson, Mogul & Colombatto (Davis Elen Advertising), Controller for Mandelbaum Mooney Ashley, Controller for Larsen/Colby, Project Accountant/Audit Liaison for DMJM and Financial Manager for DMJM International.
Most recently, Allen is the Owner and President of Finance Logistics, LLC where he offers outsourcing of full service accounting and operational consulting to small businesses.
Mike Mather - Director - Highland Business Intelligence
Mike is a dynamic, results and process driven entrepreneur, with a broad experience of information & technology sales, web marketing, business & commercial process trouble-shooting. Having developed and managed sales teams internationally, while at the same time nurturing strong relationships at senior levels in the target markets, Mike has evangelized the product and associated services and delivered revenue through the sale of both software and services (a true multi-tasking bloke).
Created in 2007, Highland Business Intelligence was started with the goal of helping our clients solve their business challenges and turn their business vision into a practical reality. By understanding your processes before suggesting a solution, we work to ensure the solution fits real life and not the perceived problem. With extensive experience in both Business Intelligence and data technologies we feel well placed to deliver the services and solutions that you need to support your organisation's decision making needs.
Tony Hayward
Tony is a 30+year veteran of the IT industry and a serial entrepreneur. An experienced leader and builder of companies, Tony provides business leadership, team building and internationalization skills focused on growth and business development.
Most recently Tony founded and ran AIM Technology. Incorporated in 1998, AIM was acquired by Aspect Software in December 2008. AIM Technology was a leader in analytical and process applications focused on Performance Management in the Call Center.
AIM Technology achieved a return of 3x+ for short term and 4x+ for long-term investors.
Currently Tony is involved on a number of initiatives:
- Working with Aspect Software to ensure a successful integration.
- Veeple – An intelligent Interactive Video Platform.
- Cazneau Group - Development of early and mid stage software and services companies.
Prior to AIM, Tony was a senior member of the team that built Holistic Systems, a business intelligence company. Seagate Technology acquired Holistic in 1996. He was a fundamental part of the team that created Seagate Software IMG merging Holistic and Crystal Reports and then holding a senior management position in the IMG group.
Tony’s corporate experience includes entrepreneurial product development, company expansion across new territories and a dedicated tenacious work ethic that was demonstrated in Holistic, Seagate and AIM Technology.
Tony also held senior sales positions with Tandem, was educated in the UK and currently resides in Sausalito, California.