SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Udemy, the global marketplace for learning and teaching online, today announced the appointment of veteran technology leader Venu Venugopal as the company’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Udemy is aggressively scaling operations to further support the millions of students and instructors on the platform, as well as its corporate and government customers around the world. Venugopal will lead the engineering, data science and IT efforts to bolster the global growth of the company and help anyone looking to learn new skills or improve existing ones find the right teacher.
“We’re thrilled that Venu has joined the Udemy team,” said Gregg Coccari, CEO of Udemy. “As we remain committed to helping students, companies, and governments everywhere gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy, we look forward to working with Venu to scale our business, continue to innovate on our platform, and deliver an even better experience to the millions who teach and learn on Udemy.”
Venugopal joins Udemy from Expedia, where he was Vice President of Engineering for HomeAway, the world’s leading online marketplace for vacation homes. Prior to that, Venugopal founded, architected, and led the development of Maya, the 3D-character animation and visual effects platform, which won an Oscar for technical contributions to the film industry. He also led the development of Adobe Flash, the highly successful platform for delivering rich, engaging experiences across multiple devices. Venu holds masters degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Brunswick, Canada.
“It’s an honor to join a mission-driven company like Udemy and lead such a talented team,” said Venugopal. “Knowing that the work we do directly impacts the lives of millions is both a privilege and a great responsibility. I’m excited to join the team and drive a new era of innovation and user experience.”
About Udemy:
With a mission to improve lives through learning, Udemy is the online learning destination that helps students, businesses, and governments gain the skills they need to compete in today’s economy. More than 30 million students are mastering new skills from expert instructors teaching over 100,000 online courses in topics from programming and data science to leadership and team building. For companies, Udemy for Business offers an employee training and development platform with subscription access to 3,000+ courses, learning analytics, as well as ability to host and distribute their own content. Udemy for Government is designed to upskill workers and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow. Udemy is privately owned and headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver, India, Ireland, Turkey, and Brazil.