Connect with us

Technology

Pragmatic Institute Names Danielle Chircop Chief Executive Officer

Published

on

Veteran product and technology leader to drive Pragmatic’s evolution into the premier capability partner for product organizations in the AI era

PHOENIX, July 29, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Pragmatic Institute today announced that Danielle Chircop has been named Chief Executive Officer. Chircop joined the company in July 2026 after five years at General Assembly as Chief Product and Technology Officer. She will lead Pragmatic’s next chapter, building on its market-driven foundation to help organizations develop enduring product capability in the AI era.

Chircop has spent more than 20 years building and scaling learning businesses. At General Assembly, she oversaw product management, engineering, curriculum, and technology for the company’s global learning portfolio, repositioning it around AI workforce transformation. She launched AI programs that contributed to 30% B2B revenue growth and led the development of an agentic curriculum system that reduced first-draft curriculum development time by approximately 90%.

Previously, Chircop spent 13 years at Kaplan, advancing from operations into product management and technology leadership roles, including Vice President of Digital Product, Vice President of Engineering, and Head of Platform Development. She also co-founded KITE, Kaplan’s adaptive assessment business. Chircop began her career as an instructor in China and holds a master’s degree in higher education from Loyola University Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Xavier University.

“I started my career as a teacher,” said Chircop. “That background has stayed with me throughout my career. It taught me to listen carefully, explain complex ideas clearly, meet people where they are, and understand that real learning is demonstrated by what someone is able to do afterward. That belief is exactly what excites me about Pragmatic. Our opportunity is to help organizations move from understanding product principles to consistently applying them in ways that improve business outcomes.”

Pragmatic serves product professionals and enterprise teams through courses, certifications, and customized learning grounded in its proprietary 37-box Pragmatic Framework. Its Enterprise Access Pass helps larger organizations build shared, market-driven product practices at scale.

As AI reshapes both what product professionals need to learn and how product organizations operate, many organizations are discovering that technology alone does not improve product outcomes. Competitive advantage increasingly comes from the enduring product judgment, operating practices, and shared language needed to use AI effectively.

“AI is changing how product work gets done, but it is not replacing the enduring principles behind successful products,” Chircop said. “Pragmatic can bring those two ideas together: timeless product judgment and modern AI-enabled execution. Our role is not to teach AI in isolation. It is to help organizations become better product organizations because of AI.”

That approach is already reflected in Pragmatic’s AI courses and certification programs, which help professionals apply AI to research, prioritization, and recurring workflows while keeping market problems and business outcomes at the center.

Under Chircop’s leadership, Pragmatic will build on more than three decades of helping product teams succeed while expanding its role as a long-term capability partner for modern product organizations, helping teams turn durable product principles into stronger, more consistent performance.

“We are thrilled that Danielle has joined us to lead Pragmatic,” said Ryan Raskopf, Partner at PennantPark Investment Advisers, LLC. “As a trusted thought leader, Pragmatic is uniquely positioned to support product organizations and product professionals at this moment of AI-driven transformation. Danielle brings demonstrated leadership success and deep experience across product strategy, technology, and AI execution, which enable her to guide Pragmatic’s continued strategic investment to meet the moment for our clients.”

About Pragmatic Institute

Pragmatic Institute helps product professionals and organizations build the capabilities, skills, and judgment to create products people want to buy. Since 1993, Pragmatic has served more than 250,000 alumni at 10,000+ companies in 75+ countries. Its training and certifications are grounded in the proprietary 37-box Pragmatic Framework, a repeatable system for making market-driven decisions across the product lifecycle. Pragmatic offers live online, on-demand, in-person, and private team learning, along with an active alumni community and practitioner resources. Learn more at pragmaticinstitute.com.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pragmatic-institute-names-danielle-chircop-chief-executive-officer-302837933.html

SOURCE Pragmatic Institute

Continue Reading

Technology

commercetools Named a Leader in 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce as AI Reshapes the Market

Published

on

By

commercetools is a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce for the seventh consecutive year.commercetools has been driving AI innovation on how enterprises build, operate and sell, including capabilities like Sphere, Commerce MCP and commercetools for Builders.commercetools is helping global enterprises modernize complex commerce operations and prepare for a future where both people and AI agents discover, shop and transact.

BOSTON, Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — commercetools, the digital commerce AI company, today announced it has been positioned as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Digital Commerce. This marks the seventh consecutive year commercetools has been recognized as a Leader in the report.

As AI reshapes commerce, commercetools is expanding how it supports the enterprises who build and operate commerce experiences, and the shoppers who use them. Global enterprises including JD Sports, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Chemist Warehouse and Mirion Technologies are using commercetools to modernize complex digital commerce, accelerate growth and adopt new AI-powered ways of operating and selling.

“Commerce is moving from systems that simply respond to human instructions toward systems that can increasingly understand, decide and act,” said Doug McNary, Chief Executive Officer at commercetools. “We’re proud to be named a Leader for the seventh consecutive year. Enterprises shouldn’t have to choose between the flexibility they need today and the autonomy they’ll need tomorrow. Our focus is giving them the technology to support both.”

Over the past year, commercetools has introduced new products and capabilities designed to bring AI across the commerce lifecycle:

Sphere: Brings together commercetools’ AI-native infrastructure and agent governance through Commerce MCP into a unified platform for enterprises to build, operate and sell with AI.commercetools for Builders: Helps anyone build, extend and evolve enterprise commerce faster with AI.AgentSphere: Lets enterprises build and manage AI agents to run commerce operations and agentic shopping, with appropriate guardrails to do so safely and at scale.Modular commerce offerings: Gives enterprises the flexibility to start with the capabilities they need and expand over time, accelerating time to value without requiring a full commerce transformation upfront.Commerce Integration Layer: Centralizes integration logic behind customer-facing experiences. Storefronts, mobile apps and AI agents connect through a unified layer hosted and maintained by commercetools.Smart Data Modeler: Uses AI to accelerate product data modeling, helping teams build the right foundation faster and reduce time-to-launch.

commercetools’ customers include large enterprises across retail, manufacturing, life sciences, healthcare and telecommunications in markets around the world.

To learn more about commercetools’ position as a Leader, download your complimentary copy of the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant report today.

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce Platforms, Aditya Vasudevan, Penny Gillespie, Sandy Shen, Jason Daigler, Mike Lowndes, 19 October 2026

Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc., and/or its affiliates.

Gartner does not endorse any company, vendor, product or service depicted in its publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this publication, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About commercetools

commercetools, the global digital commerce AI company, helps enterprises transform commerce for the AI era. Built API-native from the start and AI-first by design, our technology enables agentic shopping experiences, automates commerce operations and gives businesses the agility to modernize faster, innovate continuously and operate more intelligently.

More than 500 global brands, retailers and enterprise companies rely on commercetools to power their digital commerce. Together, they process more than $100 billion in annualized GMV, over 700 million orders and more than one billion customer records on our platform.

Media Contact: comms@commercetools.com 

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/commercetools-named-a-leader-in-2026-gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-commerce-as-ai-reshapes-the-market-302916761.html

SOURCE commercetools

Continue Reading

Technology

Phylo’s Biomni Lab to expand the use of AI agents in scientific research at Bayer

Published

on

By

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Phylo, Inc. announced today a partnership with Bayer to deploy Biomni Lab, Phylo’s agentic AI platform to accelerate scientific research and evaluation. 

Under the agreement, Phylo will provide Bayer with full access to its agentic platform that helps Bayer scientists bring together scientific literature, biomedical data, and analytical methods in one environment, reducing the manual effort required to assemble and assess evidence. The platform’s inspectable workflows preserve the context behind each result, allowing researchers to review the underlying sources, methods, and execution and apply their own scientific judgment. Bayer scientists will gain access to Biomni Lab for workflows focused on assembling literature and omics evidence for drug discovery.

“This partnership reflects our belief that AI should expand scientific curiosity, not just speed up routine work. Giving our scientists an AI partner that brings rigor to every step lets them explore more ideas, ask bolder questions, and find the insights that move drug discovery forward, ultimately accelerating the pace at which we can bring new medicines to patients,” said Sai Jasti, Senior Vice President, Head of Data Science & Artificial Intelligence, Bayer Pharmaceuticals R&D.

“For agentic AI to matter in research, it has to earn the trust of the scientists doing the work. Bayer’s selection of Biomni Lab is a strong endorsement of the scientific rigor and AI capabilities we’ve built into the platform,” said Kexin Huang, Ph.D., Co-Founder and CEO of Phylo. “Our vision is an AI-native operating system for biopharma, where every scientist can direct a team of AI agents to pursue complex research questions. With Bayer, we aim to show what becomes possible when AI capabilities meet deep scientific expertise: more hypotheses explored, more discoveries made, and new possibilities for medicine.”

About Phylo

Phylo’s mission is to bring the best agentic intelligence to every biomedical scientist. Its enterprise-grade AI platform, Biomni Lab, is the first Integrated Biology Environment—a unified workspace where scientists collaborate with AI agents across literature research, experimental design, biological data analysis, and scientific decision-making.

Biomni Lab is now used by leading global biopharma, including Bayer, Chugai Pharmaceutical and Ono Pharmaceutical. Phylo is based in South San Francisco, backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Menlo Ventures.

For more information, visit phylo.bio. To learn more about Biomni Lab, visit biomni.phylo.bio.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/phylos-biomni-lab-to-expand-the-use-of-ai-agents-in-scientific-research-at-bayer-302917080.html

SOURCE Phylo, Inc.

Continue Reading

Technology

Sandler Partners Welcomes Bryan Rias as Director, Sales Engineer, West Region

Published

on

By

New Hire Announcement | Independent Technology Distributor Sandler Partners grows its Sales Engineering team, adding Bryan Rias as Director, Sales Engineer, West Region.

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., Oct. 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Sandler Partners, the leading independent Technology Solutions Distributor, announces the addition of Bryan Rias as Director, Sales Engineer, West Region, further strengthening its dedicated sales engineering team and the technical support available to Partners in the West Region.

Bryan brings more than two decades of experience designing and delivering complex technology solutions, including enterprise and Cloud architecture roles at Lumen/Savvis and IBM focused on infrastructure modernization and customer success. His expertise spans automation, edge computing, disaster recovery, application performance monitoring (APM), and DevSecOps. In his role, Bryan will support Partners across the West Region, aligning early with them on strategy and leading thoughtful discovery to help them find the right fit for each client.

For Bryan, strong relationships and solid values guide his life and form the foundation of his professional success, a perspective that fits naturally within the Sandler Partners community. When he is not working, Bryan spends time with his family, including his wife, three sons, and a grandson, RVing, boating, and biking, along with pursuing his passion for freediving.

“Bryan brings the kind of hands-on experience our Partners value: he’s been in the room on complex deals and knows how to turn a customer’s needs into the right solution,” says Justin Marano, Chief Revenue Officer, Sandler Partners. “He came to Sandler for the freedom to work across best-of-breed Providers, and our Partners in the West will feel that right away. He’s collaborative, grounded, and focused on helping Partners win. I’m excited to have him on the team.”

“I’m excited to get to work alongside our Partners, helping them navigate complex opportunities and bring clarity to technical decisions,” says Bryan. “For me, it all comes back to relationships. When you build them on trust and shared values, the results follow for our Partners and their clients. That’s something that the Sandler community really embodies, and I look forward to getting to work with our Partners!”

About Sandler Partners
Sandler Partners helps empower its network of leading independent Sales Partners to deliver a comprehensive range of technology solutions to organizations worldwide, including Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Connectivity, Cloud, Colocation, Mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), and Continuity. Its community-focused approach enables Partners to identify the right solutions for customers quickly and objectively from a diverse portfolio of 220+ Providers. Partner sales agents, VARs, and MSPs gain access to an innovative suite of sales tools within the Sandler Portal—including SCOUT, Solutions Finder, Scout for Solutions, and the Marketing Center—several of which are AI-powered, all backed by a robust support network, dedicated Sales Engineering expertise, and rich marketing resources. Together, these tools and resources empower Partners to focus on what they do best: delivering quality, value, performance, innovative solutions, unmatched expertise, and exceptional service to their clients. Members of the Sandler Partners community also benefit from the industry’s strongest negotiated agreements and a dedicated team committed to ensuring commissions are accurately identified, tracked, and paid. For more information, visit www.sandlerpartners.com.

Sandler Partners – Media Contact
Tina S. Dyksterhouse
tina@sandlerpartners.com
310-861-2295

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sandler-partners-welcomes-bryan-rias-as-director-sales-engineer-west-region-302916413.html

SOURCE Sandler Partners

Continue Reading

Trending