Meet Valen
The Valen Technologies management team is comprised of six seasoned executives from a variety of backgrounds with the dedication to develop Valen into the premier provider of predictive analytics solutions.
Dax Craig, President and CEO
Dax Craig is an entrepreneur who has founded several companies in a broad range of industries. Mr. Craig most recently served as Vice President of Global Business Development for Centurion Wireless Technologies, Inc. Centurion is a global leader in the wireless antenna and power products industry with over $140 million in annual revenue, seven factories and locations in five countries with over 1,500 employees.
Mr. Craig founded and served as CEO of Xertex Technologies, Inc., which was ultimately acquired by Centurion. Xertex was a leading provider of antennas for picocells, microcells, in-building wireless, WLANs and telematics. Mr. Craig took the company from a start-up to a leading antenna provider, and enabled the Company's acquisition by the global market leader.
Mr. Craig also founded AXS Wireless, Inc., a broadband wireless company utilizing the UNII wireless infrastructure band for national delivery of broadband Internet services to consumers in tier-two and tier-three markets. Mr. Craig is a member of the Executive Advisory Board of the University of Tulsa College of Business. Additionally, Mr. Craig
is the Chair-Elect for the Metro Denver Sports Commission Charities Board and a Board Member for the Metro Denver Sports Commission Board of Directors.
Mr. Craig graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BS in Business Administration and Marketing. He earned his MBA, Finance and Telecom, from the University of Colorado.
Richard Vlasimsky, VP Market Development
As VP of Market Development for Valen Technologies, Inc., Mr. Vlasimsky is responsible for the applied research of Valen, where he enjoys applying Valen's predictive analytic technology to new problem domains. Mr. Vlasimsky has developed pricing models for all the commercial lines of business (BOP, GL, Property, Auto, and Work Comp), premium audit models, retention models for transportation companies, and loss prevention models.
Mr. Vlasimsky joined Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and served as a technical architect, project manager, and channel manager. Richard worked on a number of successful initiatives, notably: a global deployment of enterprise resource planning and demand planning system for Texas Instruments. A technology transfer and channel development project with an enterprise application integration startup (SeeBeyond Technologies), and the development of a constraint-based ad-targeting system for Turner Broadcasting (now Time Warner).
After Andersen, Mr. Vlasimsky joined Silicon Valley startup, Market Touch, and served as product manager for their content personalization line of products. Mr. Vlasimsky became involved with the computational learning groups at Berkeley and Stanford where he explored new approaches to statistical learning - including Support Vector Machines, Fuzzy Logic, Particle Swarm Optimization, Genetic Algorithms, and Neural Networks. These early explorations ultimately led to the co-founding of Valen Technologies.
Mr. Vlasimsky has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and an MBA with an emphasis on operations research and information technology. Both degrees were achieved at the University of Oklahoma.
Clayton Dukes, VP of Sales and Marketing
Mr. Dukes brings 11 years of predictive analytics insurance software sales and sales management experience and a total of 25 years of insurance software sales and sales management experience to Valen.
Most notably, Mr. Dukes began his predictive analytics sales experience with Risk Data that was later acquired by HNC and then finally by Fair Isaac. At the Risk Data - HNC group of companies, Mr. Dukes was instrumental in driving revenue from $12 million to $300 million prior to acquisition by Fair Isaac.
Dan Bankson, SVP Predictive Analytics
Mr. Bankson joined Valen Technologies in February of 2008 to lead turnkey predictive modeling product and strategy initiatives serving property and casualty insurance clients. Solutions in development and implementation address the full policy lifecycle, including policy acceptance, underwriting and pricing, claim cost saves, and premium audit activities.
Mr. Bankson came to Valen from Capital One’s Auto Finance division, where he spent seven years as lead of the predictive modeling and analysis group at Capital One Auto Finance, helping to grow a small lending business into one of the top 3 non-captive auto lenders in the United States booking over $15 billion in annual loan originations. Mr. Bankson’s team developed, implemented, and monitored a suite of credit scoring and target-marketing models used for direct marketing, loan origination and pricing, and collections activities.
Prior to Capital One, Mr. Bankson spent a year in retail at Blockbuster, overseeing the direct marketing modeling and reporting group, who developed response and revenue models promoting high return on marketing spends.
Mr. Bankson started his career as an actuarial analyst, spending 6 years at Texas Employers Casualty Company, followed by 6 years as an Actuarial Consultant with Bickerstaff & Whatley. His primary activities included ratemaking and reserving for Auto, GL, Homeowner, and Workers Compensation, some reinsurance layer pricing via loss distribution modeling and simulation, and Dynamic Financial Analysis model development.
Mr. Bankson graduated from Baylor University with a Bachelors in Math, and received his Masters of Science degree in Statistics from Southern Methodist University.
Greg Penn – Vice President – Engineering
Mr. Penn joined Valen Technologies in August of 2008 to lead engineering and product strategy initiatives for Valen’s turnkey solutions serving property and casualty insurance clients.
Mr. Penn came to Valen from Junction Solutions where he spent 3 years establishing and leading the product strategy and development teams responsible for Junction Solutions’ standard industry solutions for Multi-Channel Retail, Food and Beverage, and Consumer Packaged Goods based on Microsoft Dynamics AX enterprise software. Mr. Penn's team established product roadmaps, customer support services, and development best practices for these solutions while also attaining formal Microsoft certification.
Prior to Junction Solutions, Mr. Penn spent 9 years in the Product Development division at PeopleSoft, Inc. overseeing the software development life cycle for PeopleSoft’s Advanced Supply Chain Planning solutions leveraging optimization technologies and techniques for managing supply chain and manufacturing processes.
Mr. Penn started his career at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) spending 8 years working in the Technology Services Organization designing and developing various modules on Andersen’s Enterprise Resource Planning solution MAC-PAC. During this time Mr. Penn was recognized and awarded a patent on a rules-based product configuration application.
Mr. Penn graduated from the University of Tulsa with a BS in Business Administration and Management Information Systems.
David West - SVP Marketing
Mr. West joined Valen Technologies in September 2008. Mr. West brings with him over 25 years of insurance industry experience. He has responsibility for all of Valen’s marketing efforts.
Before joining Valen, Mr. West led the insurance practice at TowerGroup, a leading research and advisory firm specializing in financial services. Prior to joining TowerGroup in 2007, he was the Global Marketing Manager for Insurance at SAS Institute Inc., a market-leading business intelligence & analytics software vendor. During nearly ten years with SAS, he also held the position of Systems Engineer Manager for US Financial Services and spent four years as a Systems Engineer. Before joining SAS, he spent thirteen years with The Prudential Insurance Company of America. Three of those years were spent as a systems manager in Prudential HealthCare’s IT department where he managed a team of programmers and analysts. Prior to this, he spent ten years in P&C underwriting in a variety of capacities. This unique background has placed Mr. West on both sides of the IT glass wall and on both sides of the negotiating table..
Quoted frequently by publications such as Insurance & Technology, Insurance Networking News, Canadian Insurance, National Underwriter, Mr. West has been a featured speaker at numerous industry conferences in Europe and North America and has worked with hundreds of insurers around the world.
Mr. West has a B.A. degree in Psychology from Davidson College
Board of Directors
In addition to an experienced management team, Valen is proud of its distinguished board of directors with management experience in the insurance, financial services and technology industries.
Dax Craig - President and CEO of Valen Technologies, Inc.
Phillip Dignan - Managing Director of Appian Ventures
Mark Levine - Managing Director of
Core Capital Partners
William Walsh - CEO of Skylake Development Company
Hugh H. Williamson, III - CEO of XeDAR Inc.
