Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs
Dawn Lepore. (Amperity Photo)
Seattle-based customer data startup Amperity named veteran tech leader Dawn Lepore as its new board chair.
Lepore has more than four decades of experience in the tech industry, including board positions at eBay, Walmart, The New York Times, and AOL. She previously led Charles Schwab’s technology efforts and was CEO of drugstore.com for eight years, leading the company through its acquisition to Walgreens in 2011.
Founded in 2016, Amperity is a leader in the customer data platform sector, or CDP. It reached a billion-dollar valuation in 2021 after raising $100 million.
Amperity helps companies fine-tune marketing campaigns and understand buying habits by connecting data sources about individual customers via emails, purchase history, mobile app usage, website traffic, physical store visits, and more.
Lepore was an angel investor in Amperity. She said her experience as an operator and board member observing how companies struggle to deal with fragmented customer data initially drew her to the startup.
Amperity has a number of competitors, including Salesforce, Adobe, Tealium, Treasure Data, and Portland, Ore.-based Lytics, which was recently acquired by Contentstack.
Lepore told GeekWire she sees the AI boom as a major tailwind for Amperity.
“As data volumes explode and organizations generate unprecedented amounts of customer information, the need for highly scalable customer data platforms has become critical,” she said.
Lepore joins Amperity five months after the company named former Salesforce exec Tony Alika Owens as its new CEO.
Amperity, ranked No. 48 on the GeekWire 200, has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs over the past few years.
Owens told GeekWire in November that the company may have invested in growth too aggressively before a tech slowdown began in 2022.
Owens is the company’s third CEO since early 2022, when ex-CEO and co-founder Kabir Shahani abruptly departed.
Other board members include Owens; Amperity co-founder Derek Slager; Concur co-founder and Accolade CEO Raj Singh; Madrona Managing Director Matt McIlwain; Kevin Johnson, former president and CEO of Starbucks; and music superstar Ciara.
Amperity had 260 employees as of November. The company has additional offices in New York City, London, and Melbourne, in addition to its Seattle headquarters.
