Rama Ramakrishnan

Rama Ramakrishnan is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the practical application of Predictive and Generative AI techniques for industry problem-solving and the development of intelligent products and services. 

Prior to his academic career, Rama had over two decades of experience as a tech entrepreneur and executive, with a track record of founding and leading software companies that were eventually acquired by technology giants such as Oracle, Salesforce, and Demandware. 

His most recent role was as senior vice president at Salesforce, where he served as the chief data scientist for Salesforce Commerce Cloud, overseeing the Salesforce Einstein for Commerce platform, which employs analytics to predict and influence the shopping behavior of millions of consumers monthly. Rama's journey began in 2010 when he founded CQuotient, a startup that developed a data-science-based personalization platform for retail and e-commerce. After a successful exit to Demandware in 2014, Rama played a pivotal role in Demandware's acquisition by Salesforce in 2016 for $2.8 billion, transforming CQuotient's technology into Salesforce Einstein for Commerce, now one of the world's leading B2C recommendation engines influencing billions of consumers annually.