Meet The Team
Founder & CEO
Deepa Iyengar
As the founder and CEO of InnerSights, Deepa is a visionary leader who seamlessly blends her extensive marketing and market research expertise with cutting-edge AI-driven insights to transform businesses. With over 20 years of global experience spanning all aspects of marketing research and marketing, Deepa has consistently delivered actionable strategies that drive innovation, product development, and organizational growth. Deepa’s leadership has been instrumental in advancing AI readiness for her clients, leveraging her deep understanding of market dynamics to identify AI use cases, foster AI experimentation, and implement tailored AI solutions. Her unique "Global Audience Perspective," honed from living and working across Asia, Europe, and North America, allows her to craft AI strategies that are both culturally contextual and globally relevant. Throughout her career, Deepa has led strategic qualitative and UX practices at leading firms like Ipsos, GfK, and most recently, as Head of Qual & UX at NRG. She has partnered with some of the world’s largest companies, including Google, Meta, Netflix, YouTube, Visa, American Express, Fidelity, AbbVie, J&J, Allergan, Ulta, Kellogg, and Altria, helping them navigate the complexities of marketing & research to achieve their business goals. Deepa is passionate about creating strong AI leaders who understand the importance of AI culture, Human-Machine collaboration, and sustainable AI adoption strategies. Her work at InnerSights is dedicated to guiding organizations on their journey toward an AI-driven future.
Co-Founder & Chief AI Officer
Parag Gondhalekar
A versatile consulting and enterprise technology leader with 20+ years of experience, Parag has worked with industry giants like Cisco, IBM, Fujitsu, and KPMG. His expertise in program and change delivery, vendor and partner management, P&L responsibility and business technology strategy has been honed through various leadership roles, including Consulting Director, COO, CTO, Chief Architect, and Head of Infrastructure. What sets Parag apart is his ability to adapt broad expertise across multiple industries, from global leading brands to emerging start-ups, embracing new challenges and delivering tangible outcomes while assisting business leaders in making the right decisions between risks and rewards. With a deep focus on the pragmatic and ethical adoption of AI, he is constantly exploring how AI capabilities can revolutionize business benefits and drive innovative solutions for enterprises. By combining his expertise in technology infrastructure and integration with cutting-edge AI capabilities, he is able to unlock new levels of efficiency, performance, and agility for his customers. His clients include some of the largest enterprises such as Cisco, KPMG, Fujitsu, IBM, Costco Wholesale, ThermoFisher Scientific, Mayo Clinic, Banco de Credito del Peru (BCP), Coca-Cola Enterprises, JPMC, Hyundai Motors #ai, #ml, #itadvisory, #digitalinfrastructure, #itstrategy, #digitalbusinesstransformation
Chief Legal Counsel
Andrew R. Nelson
Andy represents clients in business, commercial, and intellectual property matters. He is an expert in building effective strategies for trademark and copyright protection, enforcement, licensing, and also translating them into Artificial Intelligence domain for enterprise clients. Over his career, Andy has helped businesses in a wide variety of industries, including technology, food and beverage, AFA (apparel-footwear-accessories), manufacturing, and services. A veteran of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, Andy especially enjoys working with businesses operated by those affiliated with the military community. Andy is admitted to practice in California state and federal courts. He is also admitted to practice before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.Andy received his law degree from the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law and his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington.
Chief Strategy Officer
Allen Lazzara
Building an effective digital transformation business strategy that embraces AI requires broad expertise in business models, processes, and planning. Allen has spent his career in consulting and in the operational trenches of Fortune 500 companies building and operationalizing strategic roadmaps. Collaborating with executive leaders and management teams, he has defined and aligned business objectives and technology initiatives, mapped technologies to processes, established governance procedures, and has delivered the major foundations of digital transformation. Allen's expertise spans business technology strategic plans, data strategies, content models, organizational design, governance and compliance strategies, globalization strategies, and security strategies. Additionally, as an information architect and data scientist, he has a deep understanding of information architecture and data management and has been responsible for the development and deployment of enterprise ontologies and information models. Through in-depth research and analysis, he has built business cases for investing in emerging information technologies such as knowledge graphs where they can be used to the align business and technology organizations, integrate data, aggregate knowledge, and enable AI technologies. As a trusted advisor, he has led and facilitated strategy teams to harness critical insights for business growth and expansion. His clients include Aflac, Pfizer, Truist, Fujitsu, Meta Group (now Gartner), Coca-Cola Enterprises, Tellabs, and Cigna.
Senior Partner
Rob Hernandez
Rob's career has been spent extracting deep and meaningful human insights and then translating them into powerful strategies with concrete actions to help grow brands and build businesses. Rob possesses 30 years of experience spanning the agency, client and supplier sides. For the past 15 years, he has worked in senior leadership positions at some of the world's finest marketing consultancies including Kantar, GfK, Ipsos, and GBK Collective. Rob is a team-oriented leader with strong analytical, problem-solving and communication skills including deep expertise in account management, strategic consulting, and consumer insights for both B2C and B2B. His specialties include insights and innovation, marketing communications development, brand consulting, and growth strategy. Rob has experience in nearly every industry vertical with particular expertise in retail, hospitality, packaged goods, food and beverage, and financial services. His notable clients include Amazon, Capital One, P&G, Kraft, AT&T, Microsoft, Adobe, Carlson-Rezidor (Radisson), Pfizer, Mondelez, and MillerCoors, among others.