Management Team

Dennis is our Head of Group Accounting. He leads Smaato’s accounting, tax, and treasury departments. As Head of Group Accounting, Dennis provides leadership for Smaato’s finance functions. Dennis oversees Budget and Financial Planning, Business, Procurement Services, Treasury Functions, Taxes, Accounting, Financial Systems and Audit Services. With his hands-on mentality and result oriented approach, Dennis gained efficiencies in our processes, ensured a responsible spending and automatized processes since he joined Smaato in 2019. Before joining Smaato Dennis held several leadership positions in the areas of accounting, tax, and treasury in large multinational corporations. Dennis holds a M.A. in Finance and Accounting from University of Applied Sciences Ludwigshafen am Rhein and a B.A in Business Administration from Hamburg University.

Carrie is Smaato’s Head of Marketing, overseeing global marketing initiatives, sales enablement and public relations strategies. Carrie champions a customer-centric approach for deeper insights into our customers’ biggest challenges in order to help them achieve their revenue goals. With over 15 years of experience across the entertainment, technology and games industries, she has promoted product launches at start ups as well as supported larger companies expand their tech offerings. Prior to joining Smaato, Carrie led marketing at digital therapeutics company Canary Health, and held positions on the marketing teams of EA Sports and Disney Online. She holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A in Film from Florida State University.

Dajana is our Data Protection Officer and Head of Legal. She oversees Smaato’s global legal matters and ensures that our technology and operations meet global privacy compliance requirements derived from privacy laws, regulations, and self-regulatory codes. With over a decade of experience in operationalizing data protection and privacy-related laws in international companies, she now leads Smaato’s Privacy Management Program. Dajana also represents Smaato in various IAB working groups, including the Steering Group for the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) to further develop an industry-standard GDPR compliance tool and the IAB Tech Lab’s CCPA/US Privacy Technical Working Group to standardize CCPA compliance for the ad tech industry. Before joining Smaato, Dajana led the GDPR implementation project for a global MedTech corporation in EMEA and served as the Group Data Protection Officer. Prior to that, she worked as the Deputy Data Protection Officer of a European ecommerce company where she advised on consumer data protection and coordinated the international privacy program. Dajana holds an LL.M. in Information Law with a focus on IT Law and Data Privacy and an LL.B. in Business Law.

Ajitpal is Smaato’s Chief Executive Officer. He is based out of Smaato’s headquarters in San Francisco and oversees global operations with a focus on mobile-first innovation for publishers. Ajitpal has nearly twenty years of experience driving digital advertising and ad monetization technologies during both new and high-growth phases. His previous tenure at Smaato as Chief Business Officer brought product, strategy, and sales together in a close-knit structure creating high growth and a market-leading programmatic mobile technology platform. Before joining Smaato, Ajitpal held leadership roles in sales and product strategy at OpenX, Adify, and DoubleClick.

Georg joined Smaato as the first non-founder in 2006. He now acts as the Chief Operating Officer, leading the company’s Operations, Market Quality, and Sales Engineering teams. During Georg’s tenure at Smaato, he has helped grow the company from less than ten employees in 2006 to over 190 in 2020. As part of this growth, Georg played a crucial role in the global expansion of Smaato’s offices in Singapore and Shanghai. He also played a leading role in launching the Indonesia Mobile Exchange (IMX), Smaato’s joint venture with Indosat. As the leader of Smaato’s Market Quality team, Georg has been key to securing the company’s mobile marketplace, ensuring the highest levels of brand safety and transparency for both advertisers and publishers to provide a safe place to transact mobile advertising campaigns at scale. In addition to building out Smaato’s expert in-house team, Georg has established strategic partnerships with industry-leading vendors for ad fraud detection, prevention, and certification. Prior to Smaato, Georg founded and managed Xplain, an internet and consulting agency company that was later acquired by Pixelpark. Georg studied business administration at Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany.

As General Manager, APAC, Phani leads the development and execution of growth strategy and sales for Smaato’s products and business in APAC. He focuses on solving the most pressing challenges at the intersection of product, technology, and strategic value for mobile-first publishers. A business-minded technologist with more than two decades of experience, Phani has held leadership roles in business innovation, sales and marketing, business operations, product management, technology innovation, and engineering. An accomplished innovator and data scientist, Phani is passionate about harnessing the power of applied data intelligence as a force for better experiences and results. Prior to joining Smaato, Phani founded a growing software and consulting company with a focus on product engineering, deep learning, business analytics, and data visualization. Before starting his data consulting business, Phani spent years working for various big five consulting companies as a sought-after senior executive. He successfully led large-scale execution of technology programs that drove quantum cost optimization while modernizing the technology landscape for a number of Fortune 500 clients from New York to London to Mumbai. Phani holds a Master’s of Science degree in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science.

Juan leads our demand teams globally. He is focused on providing remarkable customer service and strives to be each of our clients’ most valued business partner. Juan also plays a vital role in conducting quarterly business reviews with clients, developing and improving processes via discrepancy and optimization analyses, and mentoring Smaato’s regional demand teams. With over a decade of digital advertising experience, Juan had an immediate impact on the revenue contribution of Smaato’s existing relationships upon starting at the company in 2017, helping to develop methodical and repeatable processes with outstanding attention to detail and cooperation across all functions and regions. Prior to joining Smaato, Juan was responsible for Display Advertising for Pepperjam’s agency business, where he worked with clients such as Sallie Mae, Kate Spade, and Calvin Klein. Juan also led the Pre-Sales Planning team for the eBay Audience Platform and served as a Digital Director at MEC on the AT&T account, driving an evolution in their mobile media tracking and spending. Juan holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing Communications from Johnson & Wales University.

As Head of Programmatic Strategy, Umair is focused on identifying and executing new optimization opportunities. Umair has worked in the ad tech industry since 2010 during which he has developed a deep understanding of the programmatic landscape. Prior to joining Smaato, Umair worked at IDG where he increased revenues by applying optimization techniques to improve the CPM of their inventory. He also previously worked at LiftDNA (since acquired by OpenX), where he participated in the creation of header bidding technology and built optimization methods that resulted in publisher revenue increases of 20-70%. Since joining Smaato in 2014, Umair has played a key role in the continued evolution of Smaato’s global business, contributing to all regions and channels of revenue. His instincts and experience in programmatic strategy and optimization have resulted in consistent revenue growth. Umair holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from the West Chester University of Pennsylvania.