Rob Gonda
Rob Gonda is the CEO of Dakia Digital, a company driving social impact at scale and set to disrupt music, hospitality, entertainment, and health industries. Rob started and sold five companies and has led three large digital transformations at privately held, PE-backed, and public fortune companies; among others at McDonald’s, where he was chief digital officer and during his leadership the company tripled their market cap.
As a global executive with proven success leading innovation, growth, and transformation in companies ranging from startups to fortune 100, he focuses on digital transformation, impact of technology and shifting consumer behavior, and brings an entrepreneurial management style to corporations driving business outcome through business modeling, product innovation, technology modernization, and process reengineering.
Over the last 25+ years, he has started and sold five digital businesses, led three large-scale digital transformations, served as senior executive for fortune companies, and as a strategic advisor to the c-suite of top fortune corporations including McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Unilever, Diageo, Target, and others in the areas of digital experience, data & analytics, business management, branding, and advertising.
As the EVP & CDO at Catalina Marketing, Rob led the company vision for all digital go-to-market strategies enabled through platforms and technology, playing a key role in the company’s digital transformation journey by bringing a fresh vision to initiatives across the company’s cloud platform, in-store, data science, and technology ecosystems. He was responsible to run the world’s largest addressable in-store media network, powering the most advanced shopper intelligence, and blurring the lines of Physical and Digital by creating Catalina’s marketing cloud.
Prior to Catalina, Rob led the digital transformation for one of the world’s most iconic brands, McDonald’s Corporation. In this role, he pioneered the company’s movement from mass marketing to mass personalization for 70 million customers a day, by building state-of-the art interfaces and globally scalable integrated digital solutions. Rob helped define and introduce new business capabilities, a digital product lineup, direct-to-consumer communications, e-commerce capabilities, and digitized kiosks and menus boards resulting in billions of incremental revenue and tripling the company’s stock and market capitalization.
Rob is a global multi-cultural executive who has lived and worked in five countries, four continents, and speaks five languages. He’s a dynamic thought leader, faculty as the prestigious Singularity University, published author, Forbes columnist, frequent public speaker, former digital chair for the 4A’s and the ARF, and featured in TV at Reuters and Bloomberg innovator series.