About Us
Crimson Hexagon empowers you to overcome the limits of traditional market research by delivering a real-time view of how engaged online consumers truly think and feel about a brand or issue.
Management Team
Patricia Gottesman 
President and Chief Executive Officer
Patricia Gottesman is a senior business executive with a long track record of building and leading successful, high-growth businesses.
Prior to joining Crimson Hexagon, Gottesman advised media and technology companies on profitable growth strategies in both the content and distribution arenas as principal of her own consulting firm, Omnibus PG. Her client roster included the largest US cable MSO, as well as a variety of online, TV and print content and distribution brands. Gottesman also advised domestic and international technology start-ups on business and product strategy. MORE
Gary King
Chief Scientist and Co-Founder
Gary King is the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University one of only 22 with the title of University Professor, Harvard’s most distinguished faculty position. He also serves as Director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has won “MORE” than 30 “best of” awards for his articles, books, conference papers, and software, among others. MORE
Julian Ray, Ph.d.
Senior Vice President, Data, Technology and Innovation
Julian Ray is a serial entrepreneur bringing over 20 years of experience designing, developing and deploying large-scale, data-intensive decision support systems. He has a history of delivering innovative technology and information management solutions in both public and private sectors. Before joining Crimson Hexagon, Dr. Ray led the engineering and research teams at several life science and logistics-focused software companies with a recurring theme of delivering computationally intensive analytics working over massive amounts of data. MORE
Curt Bloom
Senior Vice President of Sales and International Business Development
Curt Bloom brings more than 30 years of international sales, marketing and business development experience to Crimson Hexagon. He was most recently Interim CEO and Board Director for smartFOCUS, a UK public company and provider of marketing analysis, campaign management and digital marketing solutions, where he led the sale of the company to Emailvision. During his 6-year tenure at smartFOCUS, he also served as both Managing Director of EMEA and President of North American Operations. MORE
Edward Finn, CPA, CFA
Senior Vice President of Finance
Edward Finn brings more than 14 years of financial and operational experience to lead Crimson Hexagon’s finance, accounting, human resources and administrative efforts.
Most recently, Finn was the Vice President of Finance for Gazelle, a VC-backed pioneer in the reCommerce space for consumer electronics. Prior to that, Finn ran the finance department at GetConnected, a software platform that enabled the sale of subscriptions services (e.g. broadband, wireless, video) at the point of sale for major retailers, OEMs, etc. MORE
Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez
Vice President of Business Development
At Crimson Hexagon, Melyssa Plunkett-Gomez is responsible for identifying, executing, and managing strategic partnerships with clients, channel partners and complementary technology companies. Plunkett-Gomez also helps develop the overall sales strategies for the company’s go-to-market effort as well as defined sales channels. Both of these tasks drive revenue through direct sales and partner channels. MORE
Megan Costello
Vice President of Client Services and Operations
Highly respected for her wealth of knowledge in advancing clients’ success and best practices, Megan Costello leads Crimson Hexagon’s world-class client services and operations teams. Since joining the company in 2008, Costello has focused on driving successful customer engagements with the Crimson Hexagon platform and through the company’s team of services professionals. MORE
Wayne St. Amand
Vice President of Marketing
Wayne St. Amand is a veteran marketing leader with a track record of significantly accelerating the growth trajectory and valuation of technology businesses. At Crimson Hexagon, St. Amand is responsible for driving business expansion through the company’s global corporate and product marketing efforts. MORE
Jan Craige Singer
Vice President of Media
Jan Craige Singer is an award winning media executive with deep experience in distinguished content brands within the television industry. At Crimson Hexagon, Singer is responsible for spearheading the creation of platform based media products in private and social data analysis correlated with traditional measures, for the film, television and digital entertainment industries. MORE
Aykut Firat
Senior Director of Research and Analytics
Aykut Firat is responsible for advancing the technology at Crimson Hexagon and innovating new products by leading research at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and big data.
Prior to joining Crimson Hexagon, Firat held senior management roles at two MIT start-up companies, as a founding member of IAggregate, a Web software provider that was acquired by ArsDigita; and as a chief scientist at Affinnova, an innovation technology company using evolutionary algorithms and crowd-intelligence. MORE
Hua Ye 叶桦
Senior Director of Product Management
Hua Ye is responsible for defining vision and strategy, and drive innovation for Crimson Hexagon’s platform and products, with an acute focus on customer experience.
Ye brings with him more than 12 years of software development and technology consulting experience for various verticals. Prior to joining Crimson Hexagon, Ye was a pre-funding employee at Humedica Inc., a leading healthcare informatics company with a $30 million dollar Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, et al. MORE
Over a 28-year career with Cablevision Systems Corporation, Gottesman’s team created and managed the Optimum TV, iODigital TV, Optimum Online Broadband and Optimum Voice consumer and business products with P&L responsibility for a $5 billion revenue business. During Gottesman’s tenure, Cablevision’s Optimum brands achieved the highest domestic and international product penetrations and share for TV, broadband and voice products in the cable, satellite and telecom industries. Gottesman also served as a Cablevision SVP, Operations for the NY market, as well as the head of US Cable (formerly Multivision,), including 100+ systems in nine states.
Gottesman has received many industry acknowledgements, including two NATAS Emmy Awards for Interactive Television (2003, 2004); the 2007 NCTA Vanguard Award for Marketing (nominated by Cisco CEO John Chambers and Cablevision Chairman Charles Dolan;) Advertising Age, Cable World, WICT and Multichannel News designations as one of the Ten Most Powerful Women in Cable, a Wonder Woman and a Woman to Watch. Her TV profile of award-winning dramatist Joseph Papp and artist Elizabeth Swados is in the Library of Congress (1981, Patricia Falese.)
Gottesman holds a Bachelor of Science from Hofstra University.
King develops and applies empirical methods in many areas of social science research, focusing on innovations that span the range from statistical theory to practical application. His “MORE” than 125 journal articles, 15 open source software packages, and 8 books span most aspects of political methodology, many fields of political science, and several other scholarly disciplines. The statistical methods and software he developed are used extensively in academia, government, consulting, and private industry.
King received a B.A. from SUNY New Paltz (1980) and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1984). His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the National Institute of Aging, the Global Forum for Health Research, and centers, corporations, foundations, and other federal agencies.
Dr. Ray has sat on data committees in Washington D.C., has designed and created national databases for the DOT and DOE, and has worked with several international agencies on decision support projects in India and Africa. He has also presented over 30 papers at international and regional conferences. Dr. Ray has also taught Management Science and Information Technology classes at several prominent business schools.
Dr. Ray holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Reading in the UK, and an MSc. and Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee.
Prior to joining smartFOCUS, Bloom served as managing director of EMEA for Unica, a leading provider of enterprise marketing management software that went public and was subsequently acquired by IBM. He has also held senior international executive positions with other well-known technology companies including Kronos, Bachman Information Systems and McCormack & Dodge.
Bloom holds an undergraduate degree from Boston University and an MBA in International Management from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.
As an investment banker with Stonebridge Associates in Boston, Finn engaged with small and middle market companies in an M&A advisory capacity as well as assisting with debt and equity fundraising. Finn was also an auditor with Ernst & Young in New York City, where he primarily focused in the financial services sector.
Finn received his undergraduate degree from Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he majored in Accounting and Finance.
Plunkett-Gomez brings broad experience in the enterprise, marketing, and CRM software and services sectors to Crimson Hexagon. She has a demonstrated ability to drive revenue and successfully scale an organization’s business development and sales practices.
Plunkett-Gomez has led global strategic alliances for companies including newScale, Unica, and KANA, where her leadership resulted in significant revenue growth. At KPMG, she contributed to the design and implementation of eBusiness strategies for several leading high tech companies.
Plunkett-Gomez holds a B.S. in industrial engineering and operations research from Cornell University and an M.S. from Georgia Tech in industrial systems.
Costello has spent her career with start-ups focused on transferring the benefits of new technologies and innovative practices to the marketplace. Previously, Costello served as a staff advisor to CodeRyte, Inc. (funded by Polaris and Venrock) as well as an international market entry strategy consultant for Advanse International.
Costello holds a BA in political science & Spanish from Wheaton College (IL), an MA in international relations & international economics from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and an MBA from the Saïd Business School, Oxford University (UK). In addition to the US, she has lived and worked in Canada, Japan, Spain and the UK.
Most recently, St. Amand was the director of marketing for ExaGrid Systems, a fast-growing, multi-award-winning developer of advanced data storage and back-up appliances. Before ExaGrid, St. Amand ran Electronic Vaulting product marketing for Iron Mountain (NYSE: IRM), helping to grow the product line from $12 million to $100+ million in revenues. Prior to Iron Mountain, he managed product marketing as well as corporate communications for Connected Corporation, a provider of PC data protection services and software, which was acquired by Iron Mountain in 2004 for $120 million. Prior to Connected, St. Amand managed global corporate communications for SilverStream Software, helping the company navigate a successful IPO (NASD: SSSW) and an acquisition by Novell in 2002 for $212 million.
Earlier in his career, St. Amand led successful communications campaigns for a number of well-known technology companies including HP, Motorola and Texas Instruments, while working for several of the Boston area’s most influential marketing services firms.
He holds a B.S., with honors, in Communications and Marketing from Boston University’s College of Communication.
Prior to joining Crimson Hexagon, Singer headed her own company Big Blue Dot LLC specializing in brand strategy, design and trend research for the top entertainment companies for children and young adults including Disney, Nickelodeon, National Geographic and PBS Kids as well as major consumer brands including P&G, Hilton, Unilever, and USAA.
Singer’s list of credentials includes Gold Quill, AEP, BDA, PROMAX, EMMYs, International Monitor, New York Film and Television Awards, Golden Ace nomination among many.
Before joining Big Blue Dot, Singer held executive positions with Hearst Broadcasting and was a VP with Discovery and TLC. She started her career in network affiliate television working for station groups including Times Mirror, Gannett, Gillet Broadcasting, Hobby and Group W.
Jan holds a BS in Secondary Education from the University of Southern Maine and an Ed M from Harvard University.
Firat also had a five-year stint as a professor at Northeastern University.
A native of Istanbul, Firat holds engineering and science degrees from Bogazici (BS), Miami (MS), and MIT(PhD).
Working with senior leadership, Ye successfully ideated and launched Humedica’s first enterprise business intelligence products. Prior to Humedica, Ye was a consultant for Keane’s Architecture Services group, and Deloitte’s Enterprise Application practice.
Ye holds a B.A. in Computer Science from Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences, and an M.B.A. from Bentley University’s McCallum Graduate School of Business. Ye is an internationally certified Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do, an avid snowboarder, and a bilingual with native proficiency in Mandarin Chinese.