Joanna Catalano

Joanna is an accomplished executive in growing and scaling businesses, building customer relationships and high-performing, multidisciplinary teams. She acquired a depth of expertise in strategy-led transformation (operational, commercial and digital), new business development, product development (software, hardware and digital products) and end to end employee experience, while working cross-culturally in America, EMEA and APAC. Over the last 20 years, Joanna’s worked for, and with, Fortune 500 B2C and B2B businesses, including leading global consumer brands, technology platforms, software businesses, and multi-sector services businesses. At present, she leads HR and people strategy for Uber's Delivery business in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Prior to Uber, she served as Chief Growth Officer at Piano.io, a series-c funded SaaS business. Tasked with building a new function, she collaborated with c-suite peers and delivered 6x partnerships channel revenue and incremental new product revenue of $30M. She is known for her capacity to embrace ambiguity and to operationalise disruptive strategies. She did this at Google, building the inaugural go-to-market function and inking large annual deals with blue chip brands like Hilton, P&G, Citibank, Expedia and many others, and at American Express and Starwood Hotels, partnering with CEOs and COOs to deliver global transformation initiatives.

As CEO of iProspect Asia Pacific, a digital marketing agency of $500+M billings operating across 14 countries with a 1000+ employee base, she re-positioned the brand for a second wave of growth. She led M&A for the brand, acquired four new businesses, achieved double-digit revenue and profit growth for three consecutive years; her comprehensive people strategy improved employee engagement (+5%) and purpose (+4%).

Joanna has 25 years of ESG experience, specifically Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [DE&I]. Her career commenced in economic development, partnering with the Ukrainian government on market reform education and micro-lending for female start-ups, as Ukraine transitioned to a capitalist economy. She chaired DE&I Asia Pacific for Dentsu Aegis Network (DAN), ran Female Foundry (a female tech entrepreneur accelerator that scaled globally), and launched Women@DAN, leveraging her experience running Women@Google, a highly successful employee resource group, sponsored by the CEO. In partnership with Shell’s clean energy transition, she mentored accelerator start-ups for two years.