Leadership

Christian Chabot, CEO & co-founder

Christian Chabot is CEO of Tableau Software, the fastest growing analytics company in the world. Christian co-founded Tableau and has led the company to seven consecutive years of record sales and customer growth. Prior to Tableau, Christian was an Associate Partner at Softbank Venture Capital, a $2.5 billion venture capital fund, where he specialized in enterprise software. Before Softbank, Christian was CEO and co-founder of BeeLine Software, a pioneer of next-generation digital mapping technology. BeeLine was acquired by Vicinity Corporation (NASDAQ: VCNT). Christian started his career as a data analyst at Cornerstone Research, an economic consulting firm, where he first became a bona fide data geek. He is the author of Understanding the Euro: The Clear and Concise Guide to the Trans-European Currency (McGraw-Hill, 1998) - a business bestseller. He holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Engineering from Stanford University.

When asked why he co-founded Tableau, he answers simply, “Making data easy to see and understand is one of the great opportunities of our time.”

Pat Hanrahan, Chief Scientist & co-founder

Pat Hanrahan is Tableau Software's Chief Scientist. He is also the CANON USA Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Pat's research has included visualization, image synthesis, and graphics systems and architectures. He was also a founding employee of Pixar (NASDAQ: PIXR), where he was the chief architect of the RenderMan™ Interface - a protocol that has revolutionized the modern graphics and entertainment industries. Prior to Pixar, Pat directed the 3D computer graphics group in the Computer Graphics Laboratory at New York Institute of Technology. Pat is the winner of two Academy Awards, the Spirit of America Creativity Award, the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award and the SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Lifetime Achievement Award. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

When asked what makes Tableau unique, Pat answers, "Tableau’s center is really about answering questions with data. A lot of data visualization research is really about making pretty pictures, but we worked with psychologists and graphic designers to understand how people deal with visual data and process it. We create pictures that answer questions, but we do it for businesses that want to know things about their own metrics."

Chris Stolte, CDO & co-founder

Chris Stolte is Tableau Software's Chief Development Officer and is responsible for product strategy, product design and engineering. Prior to co-founding Tableau, Chris spent six years researching the analysis and exploration of multidimensional databases at Stanford University, culminating in the Polaris system which was the basis for Tableau’s first products. This research resulted in fourteen landmark research publications and two large-scale visualization systems. Chris was also the CTO and co-founder of BeeLine Systems, a visualization software company that developed a revolutionary map rendering system and was purchased by Vicinity Corporation (NASDAQ: VCNT). Chris is a co-inventor on five software patents related to information visualization. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University.

Chris’s early career as a database programmer helped him see the problems with existing analytical tools. “I remember writing programs that helped people get data directly in just a few minutes, where they used to wait a few weeks. I was astounded by their responses – they were shocked at being able to get the data so quickly and grateful they could do it themselves. I’ve never forgotten that.“

Tom Walker, CFO

Tom Walker is Tableau Software's Chief Financial Officer. He is responsible for finance, operations, administration, human resources, and IT functions at Tableau. Tom brings over 17 years of experience in finance, operations, strategic planning, and acquisitions. Prior to joining Tableau in 2004, he held finance positions at private and public companies including Time Warner and IDG Books (since acquired by John Wiley and Sons). He holds a bachelor's degree in finance from Arizona State University, and a master's degree in business administration from Baruch College.

Tom was Tableau’s first customer. “When I saw how Tableau helped my previous company with it data analytics challenges, I knew I had to be part of this company.”

Kelly Wright, Executive VP, Sales

Kelly Wright leads worldwide sales for Tableau Software. Kelly brings 20 years of experience in leadership and sales roles, including four years at Tableau selling the company’s award-winning applications. She has previously held positions at a number of high profile companies, including VP positions at At Hoc, a major venture-backed software company in Silicon Valley, and sales and management positions at Southwestern, Inc., Dale Carnegie and Bank of America. With an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree from Stanford University, Kelly has also spent time at strategic consulting firms Bain & Company and McKinsey & Company, helping executives solve strategic questions about organizational structures, channel conflict, operations, pricing and international expansion.

In fact, it was during her time as a consultant that Kelly saw the need for software like Tableau’s. “Tableau is so easy to use. As a management consultant, I spent hours through the night iterating on charts and graphs. Tableau would have allowed me to spend more time answering questions and driving value, instead of spending hours formatting the charts."

Elissa Fink, CMO

Elissa Fink is Tableau Software’s Chief Marketing Officer. With 20+ years helping companies improve their marketing operations through applied data analysis, Elissa has held executive positions in marketing, business strategy, product management, and product development. Prior to Tableau, Elissa was EVP Marketing at IXI Corporation, now owned by Equifax. She has also served in executive positions at Tele Atlas (acquired by TomTom), TopTier Software (acquired by SAP), and Nielsen/Claritas. Elissa also sold national advertising for the Wall Street Journal. She’s a frequent speaker and has spoken at conferences including the DMA, the NCDM, Location Intelligence, the AIR National Forum and others. Elissa is a graduate of Santa Clara University and holds an MBA in Marketing and Decision Systems from the University of Southern California.

Elissa first discovered Tableau late one afternoon at her previous company. Three hours later, she was still “at play” with her data. “After just a few minutes using the product, I was getting answers to questions that were taking my previous company’s programmers weeks to create. It was instantly obvious that Tableau was on a special mission with something unique to offer the world. I just had to be a part of it.”

Daniel Jewett, VP, Product Management

Dan Jewett is Tableau Software’s Vice President of Product Management. Dan has more than 20 years of product management and development experience in a variety of technical and marketing positions particularly for business intelligence software companies. Prior to Tableau, Dan was an early employee at Brio Software where he served in numerous senior roles including VP, Business Intelligence and VP, System Architecture. Dan helped build Brio to hundreds of employees and thousands of customers and continued through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Hyperion Solution. At Hyperion, he played a key role in market positioning, strategy decisions, and the overall product strategy. Dan holds a master’s degree in business administration from California State University, Long Beach, and a Bachelor’s degree in business (management information systems) from California State University, Sacramento.

Dan’s motivation for joining Tableau is clear. “I want to change the way people think about data. Data analysis doesn’t have to be hard, scary, and left to specialist. Everyone has a thirst to understand and a desire to explore. And add to that making it so easy to share and weave data-centric stories, and Tableau is really helping people to further their understanding and get the (data) stories out. Those stories can change the world.”

Andrew Beers, VP, Engineering

Andrew Beers is Tableau’s Vice President of Engineering and is currently responsible for the development of Tableau’s product line. Andrew brought seven years of hands-on and leadership experience in software engineering. He applied this experience at Tableau initially by developing major components of the Tableau Desktop product, then leading the creation and delivery of the Tableau Server product. Prior to coming to Tableau, he held leadership positions in the engineering groups at Align Technology, a medical device company in Silicon Valley, CA. He holds an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking and photography.

Andrew joined Tableau in October 2004. “At a previous job, I found myself trying to analyze multi-dimensional data and fighting much more with poor tools and overly centralized reporting structures than doing the analysis that would help us improve the business. I saw an early demo of Tableau and knew the founding team – both of which were so exciting I had to join.”

Jock Mackinlay, Director, Visual Analysis

Jock Mackinlay is Tableau Software's Director of Visual Analysis. Jock has a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University, where he pioneered the automatic design of graphical presentations of relational information. He joined Xerox PARC in 1986, where he collaborated with the User Interface Research Group to develop many novel applications of computer graphics for information access, coining the term "Information Visualization." Much of the fruits of this research can be seen in his book, "Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think" (Morgan Kauffman, written and edited with Stuart K. Card and Ben Shneiderman). Jock is a co-inventor of numerous software patents related to information visualization.

With such a rich background in information visualization, Jock sees that Tableau can change the world. “Thinking and storytelling with data makes us more effective employees, citizens and parents, which can have a very positive effect on the world.”