Our History

Zignal Labs was founded by industry pioneers who realized the massive potential of turning data into intelligence.

Since 2011, Zignal has helped customers instantly see conversations and stories taking place across media.

Originally conceived as a tool for political campaigns accustomed to the media “war room,” Zignal now helps private and public sector organizations visualize and contextualize the global digital media environment to solve some of the world’s most challenging problems.

Leadership Team

Zignal’s leadership is composed of industry veterans with depth and diversity of experience.

Andy Ballard

Board Member

Andy Ballard, Zignal Labs Vice Chairman, is the founder and managing partner of Figtree Partners, an investment firm focused on digital media; he is also the CEO and co-founder of Wiser Solutions.

Adam Beaugh

President

Adam is the Co-Founder & President of Zignal Labs. Intuitively combining the creative and the technological, Adam has led the development of Zignal's real-time intelligence platform, which helps the world's largest companies and the public sector discover and manage the narratives that can help or harm them. Prior to Zignal, Adam directed digital comms for Jackson Family Wines and the Texas Office of the Governor.

Alex del Castillo

CRO

As Zignal's Chief Revenue Officer, Alex leads all revenue generation processes while ensuring accountability and alignment with product development, marketing, and customer success. A former Chicago prosecuting attorney, enlisted Marine turned naval officer, and Booz Allen Hamilton consultant to U.S. Special Operations Forces, he brings more than 20 years of experience across multiple critical disciplines to Zignal Labs.

Guy Churchward

CEO

A five-time CEO with over 30 years of experience leading and transforming companies in security, cloud computing, and data orchestration, management, and protection, Guy now leads Zignal as CEO. He was most recently CEO of Datera, and previously served as President of the Core Technologies Division at Dell EMC. Hailing from Britain, Guy and his wife Jo now call California home, along with their clown dog and co-conspirator cat.

David M Coit

Board Member

David is the co-founder and former Managing Director of North Atlantic Capital, headquartered in Portland, Maine, and has spent decades investing in growth technology businesses across the United States. He has served as Chairman of the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies (now the Small Business Investor Alliance) and on the boards of numerous public, private and not-for-profit organizations.

Jennifer Granston

CMO

As Chief Marketing Officer, Jen directs the company's marketing and communications efforts ensuring alignment of platform strategy with go-to-market. With more than 20 years of industry experience consulting some of the world’s largest public and private sector organizations in their approach to real-time intelligence, Jen also serves as a company spokesperson to the media on a wide range of emerging narratives.

Deb Hoffman

CHRO

As Zignal's CHRO, Deb is responsible for ensuring that the company's HR and business goals remain aligned. Deb has been in human resources for the past 20 years, holding progressively senior positions at Intel, Data Domain/EMC, Barracuda Networks, and, most recently, Datera. She has also held various positions in sales, marketing, and operations. She lives in San Jose with her husband, and dog Kona.

Jim Hornthal

Board Member

Jim is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of Zignal Labs, Triporati, LaunchPad Central and M34 Capital. He sits on several boards including KIND Snacks, Revinate and Via.com.

Chris Krook

CFO

Chris serves as Zignal’s CFO, managing the financial strategy of the company along with the accounting, legal, facilities, and IT functions. During his 20+ years as a CFO, Chris has grown the internal operations for several successful enterprise software and venture-backed SaaS companies, such as GuideSpark, InQuira, Comergent, Connectify, and NetGravity.

Gal Perl

CPO

Gal is Zignal’s Chief Product Officer, overseeing the strategy, roadmap, and execution of the company’s next-generation real-time intelligence platform. Gal has 20 years of experience in the SaaS industry, previously leading product direction at Fitbit, PayPal, Reltio, Better Place, and SAP, among other companies.

Mark Torrey

SVP, Customer Success & Operations

Mark heads up Zignal's Customer Success and Operations teams, ensuring a consistently excellent experience and return on investment for every customer. He has more than 20 years of experience leading professional services teams at high-growth cloud infrastructure and SaaS providers, including VMware, Navisite, and Servercast.

Yousef Yacoub

SVP, Engineering

As SVP of Engineering, Yousef leads the software development team to enable the delivery of real-time, actionable insights to Zignal's customers. A Silicon Valley veteran, he has 30+ years of experience leveraging next-generation analytics processing and machine learning to drive innovation at global organizations. He has held leadership roles at Picarro, Symantec, Narus, Sun Microsystems, and Apple, and holds several U.S. patents.

Advisors

Zignal is honored to have some of the world’s sharpest minds as part of its advisors.

Charles Cleveland

LTG (Ret.) Cleveland served in the U.S. Army for 37 years, primarily in Special Forces. As Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, he drove the modernization of special operations training, command structures, and irregular warfare capabilities to enhance force effectiveness. Today, he regularly lectures on leadership at Notre Dame’s Mendoza Business School and has co-authored several publications on military strategy.

Chris Fussell

Chris Fussell served on U.S. Navy SEAL Teams, leading SEAL elements in combat zones around the globe for 15 years. An expert in interagency collaboration and intelligence sharing processes, Chris has authored two bestselling books on agile teamwork and now consults private and public sector organizations as President of McChrystal Group.

David Maxwell

David Maxwell is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, specializing in North Korea and East Asia Security Affairs and irregular, unconventional, and political warfare. He is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel, with command and staff assignments in Korea, Japan, Germany, the Philippines, and CONUS, and served as a member of the military faculty teaching national security at the National War College.

John Rendon

John Rendon is President and CEO of The Rendon Group. He has pioneered the use of strategic communications and real-time information management as an element of national power, serving as a consultant to the White House, U.S. National Security community, including the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as several Fortune 500 companies.

Stephen Rodriguez

Stephen Rodriguez is the Managing Partner of OneDefense, a Visiting Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, a Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council, and a Life Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has published expert commentary on national security in Foreign Policy, WarOnTheRocks, National Review, and RealClearDefense.

P.W. Singer

Peter Warren Singer is a Senior Fellow at New America, Professor of Practice at Arizona State University, Principal at Useful Fiction LLC, and a New York Times bestselling author. Peter has written seven books on national security and technology, including LikeWar, which explores how social media has changed war and politics.

Dr. Rand Waltzman

Dr. Waltzman has 35 years of experience performing and managing research in Artificial Intelligence applied to domains including social media and cognitive security in the information environment.  He is currently an Adjunct Senior Information Scientist at the RAND Corporation, and previously served as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

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