Zalando strengthens management team

Zalando has announced the appointment of Barbara Daliri-Freyduni to the newly created role of Senior Vice President, Demand, while Ralf Herbrich is set to join the German retailer as SVP Data Science and Machine Learning in January 2020.

Barbara Daliri-Freyduni will lead Zalando’s markets organisation and its marketing teams across 17 countries. She took up her new role on October 1, and reports directly to co-founder and co-CEO Robert Gentz.

Prior to joining Zalando, Daliri-Freyduni spent over 12 years working in marketing at companies including Google, Netflix and Microsoft. At Google, she led all consumer and commercial marketing initiatives in Central and Northern Europe, including launching and growing YouTube in seven countries. At Netflix, Barbara Daliri-Frey was co-responsible for the launch of the streaming service in Central Europe and contributed significantly to brand awareness and growth.And as Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft in Western Europe, she was responsible for marketing in 12 countries with a focus on commercial marketing, driving awareness, thought leadership and demand generation.

“We are thrilled to welcome Barbara, a true creative marketeer at heart,” said co-CEO Robert Gentz. “She is a highly respected leader who brings massive experience in digital companies and a broad international perspective to Zalando.”

“Zalando is one of the rare European companies that has managed to set the tone in an industry and is poised to redefine how we express ourselves through fashion. Marketing is more important to Zalando than ever, and I’m excited to work with the teams to further evolve the brand and drive market growth,” Barbara Daliri-Freyduni added.

Ralf Herbrich will become the e-tailer’s new Senior Vice President, Data Science and Machine Learning on January 1 2020. He will report directly to Chief Technology Officer Jim Freeman.

Ralf Herbrich will provide scientific leadership to a number of departments and initiatives that rely heavily on research methods, data science, and machine learning, Zalando said.

Herbrich was most recently Managing Director of Amazon’s Development Center in Germany and has been Director of Machine Learning at Amazon in Berlin since 2013. Previously, he led Facebook's Unified Ranking and Allocation team and served as Director of the Microsoft Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Lab. Prior to that, he spent nine years at the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge.

“As we continue to use AI to understand the fashion space, match customers with fashion they love, and optimize our supply chain, Ralf’s expertise will help us greatly in getting the most from our strong partnership with AWS,” said Chief Technology Officer Jim Freeman.

Zalando strengthens management team

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