A longtime executive of Procter & Gamble Co.'s digital business has been named to the C-suite of one of Cincinnati's fastest-growing companies.
Kent Oldham, a 30-year veteran of P&G who rose up to become its global digital transformation and operational leader, has been named chief operations officer of Blue Ash-based digital analytics firm InfoTrust LLC. The roles was created specially for Oldham.
Oldham joined InfoTrust in summer 2019 as its head of data governance. InfoTrust CEO Alex Yastrebenetsky said that as the coronavirus pandemic has made it clear that workers can effectively work from everywhere, he would be competing against tech giants for talent.
He said that his company evolved amid the pandemic, and as it continues to grow, it became clear that it would need someone to help manage and oversee that growth.
"The way the world is going and how people now want to work, it calls for a next-level skills set. Our business will be so different once we're in the new normal," Yastrebenetsky said. "I woke up one day and realized, oh my God we have the perfect person. Kent, with his background of managing extremely complex organizations, is it."
Oldham began his new position on Oct. 1. He told me that he views his role as embracing the complexity of the organization, distilling it into simple concepts and rallying people to drive its continued growth. InfoTrust was named to the Inc. 5,000 at position No. 2,573 with 159% growth between 2016 and 2019.
"Information technology is growing in leaps and bounds – how do we continue to accelerate that?" Oldham said. "There are natural breaks and pain points where the way you did things in the past have to change."
InfoTrust, like nearly all companies when the pandemic hit, instituted a hiring freeze in an effort to stabilize amid the novel disruption of Covid-19. But the company took a unique stance, inspired by Silicon Valley tech giants, and instituted a no-layoff pledge, inspiring dozens of other local firms to join.
But now, InfoTrust is starting to grow again. Oldham said that four new employees will start with the tech firm on Nov. 2.
InfoTrust's founders – Yastrebenetsky and Michael Loban – have also recently released a book, which Oldham contributed to, titled "Crawl, Walk, Run: Advancing Analytics Maturity with Google Marketing Platform" which has become an Amazon best-seller.
Yastrebenetsky said that with many of InfoTrust's clients being Fortune 500 firms, he can't talk about the work it does for them. But the book is a way to share what they've learned along the way.
"By putting a lot of experience in the book, it will help us educate a lot more people and share the message," he said.
