Lepaya hires new CPO and Head of Data and doubles down on product-led growth strategy

Lepaya, Europe’s leading people development company, announces Jim Banister as the Chief Product Officer and Rob Winters as Head of Data. Both roles are created at the company to double-down on its product-led growth and enhance its capability platform, aimed at redefining how global organizations like ING, Dell, Maersk, KPMG, Freudenberg, and over 2000 other clients identify, close, and track skills gaps.

Six in ten organizations agree that their workforce is underprepared for change.  In the current uncertain business landscape, organizations and their leaders need more time and tools to identify and effectively bridge the workforce skill gaps and achieve business goals at scale. Lepaya has been growing fast over the last couple of years by addressing these challenges successfully. To continue to do so, Banister and Winters are appointed to steer the company into the next growth phase. 

As CPO, Jim Banister will lead the company’s product strategy, developing a fit-for-future cross-functional product team and product platform that catalyze Lepaya’s mission to become the core of its clients' upskilling DNA. His background in product management has been shaped through several impactful roles, including  Chief Product Officer at fintech unicorn Raisin,  Product Chief at innovative visual communications company Prezi, and Product Director for the massive loyalty program Clubcard at retail giant Tesco.

Rob Winters is an experienced data professional with more than seventeen years of experience in the Data Engineering and Business Intelligence fields. He previously led data teams at TravelBird, Navan and Miro. Data is a pivotal part of Lepaya’s product, hence in his new role, he will be working closely together with Banister, leading a team of analysts, data engineers and data scientists.

Scalable upskilling for the world’s leading enterprises

In the competitive labor market where corporations struggle with workforce planning, Lepaya aims to offer a scalable way for enterprises to upskill their employees and continually promote internal talent. This is why the company is doubling down on advancing skills data analysis, learning operations, and impact measurements to enable organizations to gain deeper skills intelligence and ensure that learning and development have a tangible impact on business goals.

“As a passionate practitioner of talent development, I have personally experienced the challenges that Lepaya is setting out to help enterprises overcome at scale. I believe prudent combinations of techniques and technology can revolutionize human talent development by causally connecting skills development to new habits and behavioral changes that drive impact for the individuals, teams and especially the enterprise.

I'm excited to join Lepaya with the intention to catalyze our team, products and services to empower companies to link industry challenges and business needs to workforce and skills insights, making measurable and observable differences in how organizations prepare their people to be fit-for-the-future of the company and their careers,” says Jim Banister, CPO at Lepaya.

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Rob Winters, Head of Data at Lepaya: “Data has an incredible potential to enrich the employee's learning and development.

By gathering and enriching information from a variety of sources, we can improve the entire learning process: benchmarking and identifying the most significant training needs for an organization, connecting learners with the right programs, and creating tailored learning experiences that meet the needs of the individual and maximize the value they gain from learning.

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And through it all, being able to quantify the impact of that employee's development on real business outcomes and metrics.”

‍René Janssen, co-founder and CEO of Lepaya: “We’re scaling up to become a vital part in the development of people that work in the companies shaping the future. The quality of our offering is based on science and data, and all is set on continuously improving it. Hence, I’m very happy to join forces with Jim and Rob, two seasoned professionals who will support us in our next steps of developing the solution that our clients and the world’s leading enterprises need to improve talent retention, productivity, and organizational growth.”

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About Lepaya

Lepaya is Europe’s leading people’s development company that takes a strategic and scalable approach to workplace learning through its global upskilling academies for every career level. Founded by René Janssen and Peter Kuperus in 2018 with the perspective that the right training, at the right time, focused on the right skill, makes organizations productive and enables overall business growth.

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As a leader in a fragmented corporate upskilling market that represents an USD 800B opportunity according to Morgan Stanley, Lepaya responds to the upskilling needs of global enterprises and fast-growing companies, such as Roche, ING, Microsoft, Dell, Freundenberg, Just-Eat-Take-away. Lepaya supports millions of professionals by combining hard skills with soft skills, offered together as Power Skills via an AI-powered capability platform.

Lepaya is backed by Endeit, Educapital, Target Global, Mediahuis Ventures, and Tablomonto. It has made 4 acquisitions: SmartenUp (2020), vCoach (2022), SpeakFirst (2022) and Krauthammer (2023). The company has raised USD 80 million to date.

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