The new leaders of the innovation unit at Umpqua Holdings in Portland, Ore., are no strangers to each other, having worked together previously at two data and analytics firms.
Shawn Ahmed has been named president and CEO of Umpqua’s Pivotus, while Troy Molander is its new chief technology officer, the $26 billion-asset Umpqua said Thursday.
Ahmed succeeds Oren Goldschmidt, who served as the president of Pivotus until March, and Ray Davis, who was CEO of Pivotus until his retirement in December. In 2016, Davis stepped aside from his longtime role as CEO of Umpqua, but stayed on as CEO of Pivotus, which he founded.
Ahmed and Molander come from Splunk, a software developer specializing in big data analysis. At Splunk, Ahmed was senior director of business analytics, “internet of things” and machine learning.
Ahmed “is an exceptional leader and strategist whose successful track record leading enterprise software companies will further advance Umpqua’s human digital banking strategy, while helping us make it available to other like-minded banks around the U.S.,” Cort O’Haver, Umpqua’s president and CEO, said in a press release.
Molander was director of innovation engineering, business analytics and internet of things. The pair were part of an incubation team within Splunk.
The two were also colleagues at NarrativeWave, a startup focused on analytics for industrial internet of things that Ahmed founded and headed as chief executive. Molander was the company's chief technology officer.
“Umpqua and Pivotus are at the forefront of a new, collaborative approach to banking that will power institutions across the country to better connect and retain customers,” Ahmed said in the press release.
“I’m excited by the opportunity to collaborate with Troy again to advance Umpqua’s mission of using technology to make banking more personal, consultative, and scalable,” he added.
Umpqua is the parent company of Umpqua Bank, which has branches in Oregon, Washington, California, Idaho and Nevada.
