Usama Fayyad

Executive Chairman, OASIS500

Dr. Usama Fayyad is Executive Chairman of Oasis 500, a regional early-stage fund and entrepreneurship initiative based in Jordan and aiming to create an early-stage/angel stage investment base in the region along with funding up to 500 start-ups in technology (ICT and interactive media focus). He is also Chairman of d1g.com, a new generation Internet community and rich media content sharing site focused on Arabic Speaking online audiences.

In the U.S. he is CEO of Open Insights, LLC, a data strategy, technology and consulting firm he founded to help enterprises understand data strategy and deploy data-driven solutions that effectively and dramatically grow revenue and competitive advantages. Until September 2008, he was Yahoo!’s chief data officer and EVP of Research; Strategic Data Solutions. The industry’s first chief data officer, he was responsible for Yahoo!’s global data strategy, architecting Yahoo!’s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company’s data analytics and data processing infrastructure. He also founded and managed the Yahoo! Research organization globally. Yahoo! Research is the premier scientific research organization to develop the new sciences of the Internet, on-line marketing, and innovative interactive applications.
Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy consulting and technology company that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004. DMX Group International still operates in the Middle East and is headquartered in Dubai. In early 2000, he co-founded and served as CEO of digiMine Inc. (Audience Science/Revenue Science, Inc.), a data analysis and data mining company that built, operated and hosted data warehouses and web analytics for some of the world’s largest enterprises in online publishing, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications and financial services.