Leadership

As Senior Vice President for Corporate Programs within the Office of the CEO, Gavin Day oversees a multifaceted organization that includes the SAS IPO Readiness Office; Corporate Programs and Strategy; Alliances and Channels; Technology Partnerships; and field and technology enablement. Gavin’s focus is on defining and communicating SAS’ technology vision to transform a world of data into a world of intelligence. He also directs SAS’ path toward IPO with the goal of empowering our customers and employees, enhancing our culture and investing in our brand as the future and founder of analytics.

Haines is head of the global Risk Management division at SAS. He is responsible for the strategic direction, research and development, product management, consulting, and delivery of risk management and insurance solutions across the globe. Prior to SAS, he held several senior-level risk positions in banking, most recently at JPMorgan Chase, where he led the mortgage banking modeling and analytics function. 

David Keim leads a team focused on protecting SAS’ intellectual property and maintaining its corporate infrastructure. His department supports the governance of SAS offices and affiliated businesses across the globe. He and his team provide legal advice to multiple divisions throughout SAS, including Research and Development, Marketing, Finance, Human Resources, Corporate Services, Information Technology and Global Channels.

Bob Messier oversees a team responsible for leading and integrating customer support functions within the global Sales organization. The Customer Support and Engagement group drives SAS' early adopter programs, customer programs that drive software adoption and efforts to gather customer feedback. His teams provide customers direction on best practices for adopting and deploying SAS analytics and artificial intelligence solutions. In addition, his functions work closely with Marketing, Product Management, R&D and Professional Services divisions to create a customer-focused environment across SAS initiatives.

In his more than 20 years in SAS Education, O’Brien has worked with academic institutions and commercial businesses to equip people with the analytic skills needed to be successful in today’s workforce. He has been instrumental in creating degree and certificate programs with universities, custom talent development plans for businesses, and certifications that have become industry standards. O’Brien’s global team of more than 350 employees delivers educational opportunities in the latest technologies, in flexible ways to fit the learning and working styles of today.

As Senior Vice President of Engineering at SAS, Peterson leads a global, multi-faceted team dedicated to reliably delivering market-leading analytics software and solutions. He is responsible for all aspects of research and development, including project management, cloud-native design, software engineering, application security, test automation and continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD).

Melissa Roy leads a team dedicated to supporting SAS’ global sales organization. In addition to managing the attorneys supporting the U.S., Asia Pacific and Middle East/Africa/Turkey regions, Melissa directs an innovative team that is responsible for the creation of licensing templates globally and the administration of the Legal Department’s knowledge sharing database. With SAS since 1998, Roy lived in Singapore for 2 years, during which she managed SAS’ Asia Pacific legal operations, and has considerable experience in international licensing issues.

Dr. Ravi Mehrotra’s research and founding involvement in IDeaS is a natural progression of his scientific background. As an assistant professor at North Carolina State University, he invented new models for parallel computing and designed algorithms for distributed processing. At Texas Instruments, Ravi played an integral role in the development of a real-time scheduler for a complex manufacturing company. Today, Ravi continues his scientific research and is a widely-recognized leader in the field of predictive analytics, forecasting, and dynamic-price optimization.

Jon Weisz is the CEO of JMP Statistical Discovery LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of SAS, which creates interactive and highly visual statistical discovery software designed for scientists and engineers. Before leading JMP, Weisz had a long tenure at SAS working in product development and management in R&D.

Prior to joining SAS, Weisz gained experience in semiconductor and automotive manufacturing and product development. A member of the American Statistical Association, Weisz has a BS in mathematics from Eastern Michigan University and holds a master’s degree in biostatistics from the University of Michigan. Weisz is also a graduate of Harvard Business School’s General Management Program.