Brent Wood, Formerly Head of Consumer Web and Mobile Engineering at Bloomberg, Joins Leading Video Technology Company as Chief Technology Officer; Rick Okin Joins as Head of Data Engineering
NEW YORK – Oct. 20, 2015 – JW Player, a leading digital and mobile video platform and player company, today announced it has hired Brent Wood, a highly experienced consumer technology expert, as CTO. Wood joins JW Player’s team alongside Rick Okin, who has come aboard as Vice President of Data Engineering. The hires come as publishers around the world increasingly adopt JW Player 7, the newest version of the company’s flagship video player, in order to meet quickly expanding consumer demand for the highest quality video experiences.
“As JW Player continues to grow, one of our top priorities is to add world-class management talent to our team in order to help drive new initiatives and secure our company’s data-driven future in the online video ecosystem,” says Dave Otten, CEO and Co-Founder of JW Player. “The deep technology and data experience Brent Wood and Rick Okin bring to the JW Player team shows the extensive progress we have made towards this goal.”
As Head of Consumer Web and Mobile Engineering at Bloomberg, Wood was responsible for leading the engineering and R&D efforts for Bloomberg’s consumer media properties, which include Bloomberg.com, Businessweek.com and Bloombergview.com. A highly experienced executive with over 20 years at global brands like Disney and Amazon, Wood joins JW Player as online video becomes an essential strategic focus for companies of all sizes. In his new role with JW Player, he will oversee the company’s development of innovative video technologies and spearhead its continuing efforts to offer the best possible video experience across any platform.
“Over the past decade online video has undergone a transformation. Now consumers have exceedingly high standards for the video quality and accessibility of the content they consume. It is JW Player’s job to deliver on those expectations for both our customers and their viewers,” said Brent Wood, CTO at JW Player. “It is my mission to build upon and expand JW Player’s already superior video delivery platform and maintain its position as the fastest and highest-quality player on the market.”
Wood joins the executive team with Rick Okin, a data-driven technology expert who most recently served as CTO for Integral Ad Science, a provider of actionable advertising intelligence. As Vice President of Data Engineering for JW Player, Okin will further emphasize video data analytics, powering industry and customer level insights for the evolving online video space.
“JW Player is at the forefront of the data-driven online video revolution,” said Rick Okin, Vice President of Data Engineering. “Today is a really exciting time to join the company, as JW Player continues to develop products that strategically leverage a multitude of available data. I will work with the team to transition big data from buzzword to action for our customers.”