Industry veterans join Cognota to steer go-to-market approach, revenue expansion, and product innovation for the company that leads the LearnOps category.
Cognota, the top company in Learning Operations (LearnOps®), revealed today that it has made two new executive hires as it speeds up its next growth phase: Beth Gantz as Chief Revenue Officer & Acting COO, and James Spere as Chief Product Technology Officer. These moves come as Cognota intensifies its efforts in innovation on its next-generation AI-native platform, bringing in seasoned leaders to boost revenue growth, operational effectiveness, and product development for the LearnOps (learning operations) category it helped create.
Beth brings over two decades of go-to-market leadership in the learning and talent development sector, with a proven history of building high-performing teams and achieving substantial revenue growth at companies that defined their categories. She has occupied senior sales and leadership roles at organizations such as THINQ Learning Solutions, Skillsoft, KnowledgeAdvisors (later acquired by CEB and Gartner), and Explorance, where she served as Chief Sales Officer, doubled the size of the go-to-market team spanning sales and customer success, contributed to aligning the executive team, and played a significant part in supporting a funding round. Across these positions, Beth has consistently scaled go-to-market functions and turned deep domain expertise in learning technology and talent analytics into measurable revenue results.
"As Cognota continues to grow, I'm thrilled to have Beth Gantz stepping into the role of Chief Revenue Officer & Acting COO, and to welcome James Spere as our Chief Product Technology Officer. Together, their leadership will accelerate our investment in Cognota's next-gen platform, ensuring our customers have an even more powerful, intelligent, and cutting-edge solution. This is about bringing the world-class experience our customers deserve as we build the future of enterprise talent and L&D." stated Ryan Austin, CEO and Founder of Cognota.
"Joining Cognota feels like coming home. For more than two decades, I've worked alongside learning and talent organizations trying to solve the same problem: how do you actually get visibility into what talent and L&D are doing, and whether it's working, in a way that ties back to business goals. It's a gap I've watched persist at every company I've been part of, and with LearnOps, we finally have the category and the platform to close it. I'm excited to build on what Ryan and the team have started, and help this industry finally solve something it's needed to solve for a long time," remarked Beth Gantz.
James brings over two decades of product and engineering leadership experience at some of the most well-known names in edtech and consumer learning, with a documented history of building and scaling platforms that serve millions of learners worldwide. He has held senior product and engineering roles at organizations including D2L, MasterClass, Roadmunk, and, most recently, Introhive. At D2L, James led Core Platform Development for the company's Brightspace learning management system, and at MasterClass he served as Head of Product, B2B, helping extend the platform's premium content model into the enterprise and workplace learning market. Across these roles, James has consistently paired deep technical expertise with product strategy to turn ambitious learning technology visions into scalable, market-ready platforms.
"Learning and development has been the thread running through my entire career, from
