CAUSALITY LINK - Key Persons


Allen Ginsberg

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Leadership Team
After serving as a lead Natural Language Processing engineer with the IBM Watson project for the last four years, Allen Ginsberg comes to Causality Link with a rare combination of skills, perspectives, and work experience. He earned PhD's in both Computer Science and Philosophy from Rutgers University, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and the Philosophy of Physics. Allen has a demonstrated ability to apply analytical thinking with outside-the-box insights to produce practical solutions to complex problems. As a member of the technical research staff at Bell Labs, his work focused on machine learning, expert systems, advanced information retrieval, and collaborative virtual environments. As a contractor for a U.S. federal intelligence agency, he developed an enterprise-scale application that saved human translation time by quickly identifying similar text across vast collections of documents. Before that, he was a member of the IBM Watson organization, where he played a central role in getting Watson's cognitive services to perform effectively in a business context. He also worked on adapting cognitive technology for use in oil exploration as well as in government-related applications. At Causality Link, Allen is extending his outstanding track record of finding workable solutions to complex problems.

David Wetter

David has a long track record of success and a wealth of experience in the institutional financial services segment. He has held senior positions in both the asset management and private banking areas within large financial institutions based in London and Zurich. David holds a BSc in Management from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and a MSc in Banking and International Finance from Cass Business School in London, and he is a CFA Charter holder.

Dr. Jean Tirole

Job Titles:
  • Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics
When Dr. Tirole won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2014 for his research on understanding and regulating markets, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences described him as "one of the most influential economists of our times". Dr. Tirole presently serves as chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. He is also affiliated with MIT, where he holds a visiting position, and with EHESS, and is a member of the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques. He has published over two hundred articles in international reviews, as well as twelve scientific books, including his latest, entitled Economics for the Common Good. He was president of the Econometric Society in 1998 and of the European Economic Association in 2001. He holds honorary Doctorate degrees from eleven universities, and is an honorary member of a number of learned societies, including the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has received many honors, including the Yrjö Jahnsson prize from the European Economic Association, a gold medal from the CNRS, the inaugural BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in economics, finance and management, and the Nemmers prize.

Dr. Thomas M. Strat

Job Titles:
  • Leader
Dr. Strat is a recognized leader in computer vision, artificial intelligence research, and unmanned vehicle technology. He is currently CEO of DZYNE Technologies, a provider of intelligent, autonomous aircraft for the military and commercial markets. Previously he was Program Manager at DARPA, where he was responsible for programs involving video surveillance, unmanned vehicles, and UAV sensor exploitation. He also served as Deputy Director of DARPA's Grand Challenge for Autonomous Ground Vehicles, a race across 150 miles of desert terrain for self-driving cars and trucks. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Eric Brisson

Eric has over 25 years of technology industry experience developing sales and marketing organizations for companies from their inception, through funding and rapid phases of growth to IPO or acquisition. Using a strong background in artificial intelligence, analytics and big data, Eric has held C-level positions at Alation, ccGenie, Living PlanIT, and ILOG (acquired by IBM). Beyond those leadership roles, Eric invests in early-stage companies in both France and the U.S., with more than twenty companies in his current portfolio. He is also passionate in his support of non-profits that focus on addressing the problem of plastics polluting our oceans.

Eric Jensen - CTO, Founder

Job Titles:
  • Co - Founder
  • CTO
  • Member of the Leadership Team
Eric Jensen is passionate about building software solutions that strengthen how people learn and collaborate. As a graduate student at the University of Utah's School of Computing, Eric contributed significantly to the design of a curriculum that evolved into the Master Games Studio which became the #1 undergrad program in its category nationwide as rated by Princeton Review. After earning his master's degree, Eric joined Truenorthlogic, an educational technology start-up focused on making improvements to public education. As CTO of that company for six years, he led the technical team that hosted and scaled solutions for dozens of large state and district-wide implementations. Capitalizing on that success, Eric played a key role in the acquisition of Truenorthlogic by Weld North Equities in 2014. After his Truenorthlogic and Weld North tenure, Eric followed his entrepreneurial spirit and co-founded Causality Link in 2016. As CTO for Causality Link, Eric oversees a range of key functions, including overseeing the company's technology strategy, managing the growth roadmap, and building and coaching its technical team.

Jeanette Haren

Jeanette has more than 20 years of experience leading teams within startups including product design, implementation and deployment of SaaS software. She co-founded Truenorthlogic, a highly successful Human Capital Management SaaS company in the education sector. She developed the company's product, marketing and sales strategies and oversaw their implementation. She also played a central role in the company's acquisition in 2014 by Weld North Equities. She also guided the company's integration into what is now Performance Matters, where she serves as Chief Product Officer. Jeanette holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

Ken Nickerson

Ken has a successful track record as a technologist and innovator in financial services, transportation and other industry sectors. From the mid-90's until 2006, he was the technical lead for Morgan Stanley's highly successful PDT proprietary trading group (now PDT Partners) where he architected their statistical arbitrage trading system. Earlier in his career, Ken was a co-founder of the Princeton Transportation Consulting Group which created logistic software for the nation's top motor carriers. He earned a Master's in Operations Research from Stanford University and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Princeton University.

Olav Laudy

Job Titles:
  • Chief Data Scientist
Olav Laudy earned Ph.D. and Masters degrees in Program Methodology and Statistics from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Prior to joining Causality Link, Dr. Laudy worked for nearly a decade at IBM and SPSS as a data scientist. Most recently he was the Chief Data Scientist for IBM Analytics, Asia-Pacific. In that role, he helped IBM clients identify and quantify analytic opportunities. Dr. Laudy has a unique ability to articulate complex analytical concepts in layman's terms and in a business context. He is also known for his ability to accelerate analytic deployments. Throughout his career, Dr. Laudy has led many analytic projects in a variety of industry segments and in many countries around the world. For example, he helped a large Canadian retailer build its analytic supply chain model. He also helped a premium German car manufacturer with many analytics projects, including development of a guided diagnostics system to help engineers quickly determine any issues with a car. He also led the creation of a roadmap for a large Thai conglomerate looking to create synergies across their businesses through the use of analytics. Dr. Laudy is passionate about analytics-based data monetization and the ethical use of data science results, which he brings to his work at Causality Link every day.

Pierre Haren - CEO, Founder

Job Titles:
  • CEO
  • Co - Founder
  • Member of the Leadership Team
Pierre Haren is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique in France, and holds MS and PhD degrees from MIT. He led a research team at INRIA on the design of expert systems in the 1980s. He created ILOG in 1987, took it public in 1997 and led its sale to IBM in 2008. He subsequently joined GBS, the consulting arm of IBM where he served for two years as VP of Advanced Analytics and Cognitive. After leaving GBS, Pierre co-founded Causality Link. Throughout his career, Pierre has led diverse teams of researchers, developers and consultants. He has brought several industry-leading products and technologies to market, including expert systems, advanced GUIs, and operations research, as well as Watson technologies during his tenure with IBM. He is passionate about Explicit Artificial Intelligence at the convergence of knowledge engineering and advanced software, where knowledge representations can be understood by experts and leveraged by computers. He is especially excited about how the Causality Link Platform embodies these concepts, and its potential in the financial services industry.