BigDATAwire Unveils 2025 People to Watch
San Diego, CA — April 21, 2025 – BigDATAwire, the leading publication covering big data, analytics, and AI news, today unveiled its BigDATAwire People to Watch for 2025. This feature highlights key community members who are poised to drive the industry forward in the coming year.
For the past decade, BigDATAwire has scoured the landscape every 12 months in search of exemplary individuals who have made a big difference in the wider big data community. And 2025 is no different. As it has for previous years, the 2025 People to Watch puts the spotlight on 12 individuals who have done extraordinary work in the areas of big data, advanced analytics, and AI.
“I would like to personally congratulate the 2025 BigDATAwire People to Watch,” said BigDATAwire Managing Editor Alex Woodie. “The big data space is in a period of punctuated equilibrium at the moment, and this group not only personifies the big changes that are taking place, in many cases they are creating the new technologies that are driving it.”
This year’s group showcases the upheaval that we’re currently seeing in both big data and AI. Distributed file systems like Hammerspace’s and observability offload tools like Cribl’s are shaking up the status quo in big data infrastructure, while libraries like Polars and the tidyverse keep Python and R developers on the cutting edge of technology. Selecting people for the People to Watch program isn’t easy, but it’s an honor we don’t take lightly at BigDATAwire.
The 2025 BigDATAwire People to Watch selections are:
Dipti Borkar
Vice President and General Manager, Microsoft OneLake and Fabric ISVs
David Flynn
Co-founder and CEO, Hammerspace
Bryan Goodman
Executive Director of Artificial Intelligence, Ford Motor Company
Rajesh Gupta
Interim Dean, School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences, and Director, Halicioglu Data Science Institute
Andy Konwinski
Co-founder of Databricks, Perplexity, and Laude Ventures
Alondra Nelson
Harold F. Linder Professor, The Institute for Advanced Study
Prukulpa Sankar
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Atlan
Clint Sharp
CEO and Co-founder, Cribl
Krishna Subramanian
Co-founder, President, and COO, Komprise
Ritchie Vink
CEO, Polars
Hadley Wickham
Chief Scientist, Posit PBC
Christine Yen
CEO and Co-Founder, Honeycomb
To read exclusive interviews with each Person to Watch, please visit: https://www.bigdatawire.com/people-to-watch-2025
About BigDATAwire
BigDATAwire (formerly “Datanami,”) is a news site and weekly newsletter covering the tools, technologies, and techniques that unlock value from big data, as well as the people and communities that develop and use them. Today’s data science, advanced analytics, and AI offerings have evolved quickly, but effective data management remains a bottleneck for many organizations, especially when it comes to ensuring privacy, security, and governance in line with emerging regulations. Now in its 14th year, BigDATAwire covers both the enterprise and sci-tech segments, which have many overlapping challenges and use cases. Subscribe now at www.bigdatawire.com.
About Tabor Communications Inc.
Tabor Communications Inc. (TCI) is a media and services company dedicated to high-end, performance computing. As publisher of a complete advanced scale computing portfolio that includes AIwire, HPCwire, BigDATAwire, and QCwire, TCI is the market-leader in online journalism covering emerging technologies within the high-tech industry, and a services company providing events, audience insights, and other services for companies engaged in performance computing in enterprise, government, and research. More information can be found at www.taborcommunications.com.