June 23, 2021
South Bend-based Vennli, a content intelligence platform, has appointed Great Blue Ventures Managing Director Christopher Clapp to its board of directors and PR firm Weber Shandwick Chief Operating Officer Frank Okunak as a board advisor.
Before his time at Great Blue Ventures, Clapp served as president and CEO of disaster recovery leader, Bluelock. Under his leadership, he led the company to become an industry leader in the Disaster Recovery as a Service market receiving recognition as an accomplished provider with mentions in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for DRaaS as a visionary and in the Forrester DRaaS Wave as a leader. These accolades led to InterVision’s acquisition of Bluelock in March of 2018. With more than 35 years of executive leadership experience for technology organizations, Clapp has a successful track record of developing successful teams.
Okunak’s career at leading global communications, public relations and engagement firm, Weber Shandwick started more than 20 years ago, when he joined the company as CFO. Now, as COO, Okunak maintains global management of the agency’s financial and administrative operations.
The appointment of Clapp and Okunak adds to Vennli’s significant growth and momentum over the past couple of quarters. Vennli’s Q318 bookings performance is 173% against plan. Also, Vennli’s forecasted FY18 bookings performance represents 180% growth YoY.
With the appointment of Clapp, Vennli’s board consists of seven members, including: Bryan Ritchie, vice president of innovation at Notre Dame; Marty Muse, CEO at Vennli; Gary Gigot, co-founder of Vennli and benefactor of the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Notre Dame; Robert Dowdell, current advisory board member of Notre Dame Business School; Kevin Keleghan, president and CEO of URS; and James Thompson, former executive vice president at Leo Burnett and current president of CrowdMetrix.
