Today, Sanoma Digital announces the appointments of John Heseltine as Chief Innovation & New Business Officer and Matthew Roach as Director Strategy & Execution. Heseltine and Roach will both join the Sanoma Digital Leadership Team, reporting to CEO Digital, Arthur Hoffman.
The two new appointments will play a key role in the ongoing development of Sanoma Digital. The business unit was set up in 2014 to drive Sanoma's digital growth and development in Finland and the Netherlands and harbours Sanoma's venturing, Big Data analytics and innovation ('Sanoma Lab') initiatives.
With key development programmes around Mobile, Video and Big Data taking shape, the appointments of both Heseltine and Roach are welcomed by Arthur Hoffman:
"Both John and Matt are very experienced digital professionals who both have worked on an international level and combine this with a great entrepreneurial spirit. I am looking forward to our co-operation and expect this will give a great push to the implementation of our digital business strategy."
In his role as Chief Innovation & New Business Officer John Heseltine will take charge of the Sanoma Lab, as well as focus on bringing in new concepts. To foster closer co-operation between Sanoma Ventures and the Sanoma Lab, Heseltine and Herman Kienhuis (Head of Sanoma Ventures) will both be part of the investment committees of these two units. Heseltine joins Sanoma after a successful career as a serial entrepreneur. A Harvard University graduate, he has founded, grown and exited several businesses across a number of industries in both the UK and the US. In recent years he has become an active seed investor and plays a key role in the startup community.
As Director Strategy & Execution Matthew Roach will be providing Sanoma Digital with strategic advice and analysis. He will focus on implementing strategic initiatives, most notably the new mobile strategy. Roach, a qualified chartered accountant with an MBA from Columbia Business School, New York, has over twenty years of commercial experience working for leading professional firms in finance, business planning and strategy consulting roles. For the last four years he has been building and running his own digital business in London, and advising other digital startups.