Our Management Team
Erik Thomsen, CEO
Erik Thomsen is Chief Executive Officer of Gaia Metrics. An internationally recognized authority in the fields of multidimensional information systems and sustainability reporting, his reference book, OLAP Solutions: Building Multidimensional Information Systems 2nd edition, is used around the world in both graduate computer science and MBA courses. He was awarded one the fundamental patents behind the business intelligence (or decision support) industry for the creation of multi-level hierarchies with indicators that support different calculation states across those hierarchies – something fundamental to nearly all sustainability reporting applications.
Previously, as an aggregation specialist for the World Bank, Erik designed the software models for numerous national and sub national integrated socio-economic-environmental indicator systems. He also designed the logic for how the World Bank aggregates irregular data for its system of national accounts (SNA). Prior to co-founding Gaia Metrics (and a related company MindsEye Software www.mindseyesoftware.com/dev, which provides technology to Gaia Metrics under license), Erik was Distinguished Scientist at Hyperion Solutions (now a part of Oracle).
John O’Connor, Vice President, Sustainability Research
John worked for decades at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, where he designed and managed systems for internal decision-making and external reports, such as the Bank’s operational guidelines for financial preferences and reporting of results in the World Bank Atlas, etc. As Chief of the Bank's Comparative Analysis & Data Division he was responsible for the social, economic and environmental factors comprising the World Development Indicators. As Senior Advisor in the Bank’s Environment Department he devised a quantitative portfolio management system for monitoring the “triple bottom line” or TBL, at the national level, and was the manager and primary author of Monitoring Environmental Progress. Many of the world’s current sustainability indicator frameworks and approaches such as the ecological footprint, environmental services, human development indicators and the global reporting initiative are the result of programs John initiated while at the Bank. John’s quantitative approach to integrating economic, social and environmental indicators was recently adopted by the UN statistical commission and will become over time the way that governments report on macro level sector accounts. John also spearheaded innovations in information systems and chaired the international committee of the US EPA's National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy & Technology. He was a trustee for the Millennium Institute, an NGO promoting a longer-term perspective on sustainable development.
George Spofford, Vice President Engineering
George Spofford has 25 years of experience as a hands-on solution developer, consultant and software engineer in the decision support industry. Fluent in a wide array of platforms, tools, and languages, George has integrated a range of complementary decision-support technologies that have delivered synergies on behalf of users and that are highly relevant for sustainability reporting, including a GIS-OLAP viewer to surface Microsoft OLAP cube data within ArcInfo, a high-dimensionality data viewer for sophisticated visualization of Microsoft OLAP cubes, an MDX-to-mdXML converter to parse MDX and produce mdXML and a custom Excel add-in for budgeting/forecasting access to Microsoft OLAP. Previously, George was Distinguished Engineer at Hyperion Solutions developing semantic-integration and federated query processing software. Prior to Hyperion, he led a team at Praxis International developing the OLAP portion of an integrated OLAP-SQL database, and co-founded Power Thinking Tools, which was sold to CCA.
Robert Schettino, Vice President Marketing & Communications
Robert Schettino manages marketing and communications for Gaia Metrics. Prior to Gaia Metrics, he was an advisor for digital content and emerging technology companies including Kiptronic, Kadoo, ALaS and also The Ohio State University’s Center for Business Performance Management. He has also advised consumer-facing digital content companies iVideosongs and MixMatchMusic.
Previously, Schettino was chief marketing officer for the social media software start up, BuzzLogic, where he led the marketing, positioning and communications initiatives that brought BuzzLogic to prominence and drove customer adoption. He joined BuzzLogic from Hyperion, where he was part of the turn around team and as Vice President of Corporate Communications, led the global communications initiative central to Hyperion’s emergence as the leading business performance management software vendor. Prior to joining Hyperion, Schettino created award-winning communications programs for Intuit, The Discovery Channel and Cox Communications. Schettino has completed executive programs at the Wharton School and is a journalism graduate of Kent State University.
Gaia Metrics is headquartered at 48 Grove Street, Suite 101, Somerville MA, 02144, USA.