Zartico Invests in New Hires in Product and Innovation to
Support Partners and Growth
Over the course of my career, I heard the phrase many times that people are the most valuable asset for the company and that we need to invest in people. I’ve seen some better than others at doing that, and I found myself thinking about what exactly that looks like here. My answer? With Zartico’s current growth, we truly have continued to invest in innovation and product team members. We believe that you don’t build a business. Rather, you hire, mentor, train and enable people and those people build the business.
And so, Zartico, creators of the world’s first destination operating system, announces the signing of five new specialists in response to rapid client growth and expanded services to existing and new partners. Zartico’s newest team members will further strengthen the company’s proven product and innovation offerings, while enabling the development of a diverse and integrated team and greater expansion in the tourism industry. Zartico is a movement in this industry and if we’re to have a global impact for good, it must be part of those who join us, not just those who lead us.
When I first interviewed with our CEO, Sarah Lehman, she asked me “what do you want to do?” I paused. I don’t think anyone had ever asked me that question before in an interview. It has stayed with me, and now I carry on that tradition and ask everyone the same question (and their initial reaction appears to be the same!). Here are some of the people that answered...
Introducing the new Zarticans.
Ayine Ayeta joins the team as a Senior Data Engineer. Ayine is coming to us from the semiconductor industry. His impressive career at Samsung (since achieving his BSEE from NYU) has resulted in many major achievements. He will bring his expertise in data and yield analysis, and has designed real-time data pipelines and processes. His understanding of source data and data transformation will be critical to Zartico’s building new data pipelines and ensuring quality control.
Chris Patino is another Senior Data Engineer at Zartico. Chris has had a career at Lockheed Martin analyzing complex flight simulation data providing Measurements of Performance. He has developed tools to provide visualization of data analytics to LM customers. This, coupled with his strong background in software development and machine learning, will enhance Zartico’s best practices for data engineering and integration with our partners.
Raina Palta is Zartico’s new Director of Statistics.- Zartico is proud to support the careers of working mothers during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re thrilled that Raina has reentered the business community after taking time with her two young children to become a Zartican. Raina joins the team with a Master of Science in Epidemiology with a concentration in Biostatistics. Her impressive experience has been with the Arizona Department of Health where she evaluated the efficacy and outcomes of non-WIC (nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children) public health programs, primarily focusing on Arizona, Guam, American Samoa, Navajo Nation, and the Mariana Islands. Prior to that, Raina was a research associate at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, collaborating on study design, data collection, and protocol regulatory management. Raina will be working on the design, validation and improvement of data-driven decision-making processes and strategies, as well as building a higher level of key metrics and benchmarking in collaboration with our partners.
Matt Brown joins Zartico as a Geospatial Technician working within the Implementation Team. His recent experience has been working for Apple as a GIS Analyst working on their maps products. He has expertise in extracting and analyzing data while prototyping new automation processes. Prior to Apple, Matt worked as a GIS Technician for DrillingInfo in Austin in the development of new commercial pipeline data products and for the City of San Marcos for optimizing City GIS data. At Zartico, Matt will be building our geospatial expertise and relationships with points of interest.
Ying-Jung (Helen) Deweese is Zartico’s first (and not only!) Geospatial Information Scientist. Helen resides in the Bay Area of California and has a Ph.D. in Geography from UC Santa Barbara. Her impressive career includes working as a Postdoc research associate where she produced seasonal trend maps for NASA researchers to examine 20% of decreasing groundwater in the Himalayas. Her most recent position with The Climate Corporation was as a Data Scientist where she developed new research strategies for computer-vision-based strategies for crop growth models from geospatial data sets. She also produced field health maps for horticultural crop growers to monitor field health and growth performance. Helen’s role at Zartico will be to determine how location data relates to customer spend and events within a destination.
I’m excited to be a part of this growth at Zartico. Not just for the growth in the company, but there is such a rich diversity of backgrounds and experience, from aerospace to semiconductor to public health, and spanning organizations such as Apple and NASA. People may ask what does that have to do with DMO’s. Everything. This brings new ways of looking to solve problems, different personal backgrounds that shape critical thinking, and every one of these individuals is so incredibly brilliant and talented at what they do. Their careers have been based on data quality being mission critical. This will provide the most robust product and insights for our partners. This is what investing in people looks like.
Our motto here is “this changes everything.” At Zartico, in addition to creating the premier ultimate destination operating system, we also are creating an experience that enables all Zarticans to do their best work and live their best lives...to change everything we know about the People Philosophy of the company. This is what makes Zartico the wonder that it is.
