DataStax, powering the Right-Now Enterprise with the always-on, distributed cloud database built on Apache Cassandra™, announced the appointment of Kelly Battles, chief financial officer (CFO) at Quora and a member of the board of trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation, to its board of directors.
“Kelly brings a wealth of tech, business, and finance experience to the DataStax board,” said Billy Bosworth, chairman and CEO, DataStax. “Now that we have passed the $100M revenue mark while experiencing strong growth, Kelly’s experiences at industry titans like HP and Cisco, to scaling startups like IronPort and Host Analytics will help us make the most of our market potential and better serve the enterprise customers who fuel our success.”
“DataStax has distinguished itself as the leading contributor to Apache Cassandra™ and the undisputed leader in making Cassandra enterprise-ready for a wide range of companies tackling the biggest tech challenges of our time: cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning,” said Kelly Battles. “Joining the board of directors of DataStax at this time is very exciting–and I’m thrilled to work with my colleagues on the board and Billy as CEO to bring DataStax and its customers continued success.”
Battles is currently the CFO at Quora, a company whose mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge, and a member of the board of trustees for the Wikimedia Foundation. Prior to joining Quora, Battles was CFO of Bracket Computing for three years and CFO of Host Analytics, Inc. for four years. She was also the first finance hire at IronPort Systems and ran finance and operations for that company as vice president of finance as the company evolved from a small startup to an enterprise generating hundreds of millions of dollars in bookings, and before IronPort was acquired by Cisco. Battles was also a Director of Corporate Development at HP, and started her career at McKinsey & Company and JPMorgan Chase & Co. Battles has an M.B.A. from Harvard University and a B.S.E. in Operations Research/Systems Management from Princeton University, both with honors.
Jim Baum, chair of the board’s Nominating and Governance Committee and a respected independent board member of several tech companies as well as a former CEO and senior executive of Symbotic, Netezza (now part of IBM), Endeca (now part of Oracle), and others, noted, “We are enthusiastic about Kelly’s contributions to the DataStax board and our Audit Committee. We welcome her strong financial background and operating experience as powerful complements to the group and as vital to our growth.”
With the appointment of Battles, the DataStax board has seven members.