Ozgur (Oz) Dogan
Ozgur "Oz" Dogan is the Co-founder and CEO of Blend360, a Maryland-headquartered data and AI services firm built to make analytics, AI, and agentic applications work at enterprise scale. Founded in January 2017, Blend has scaled to 1,500+ professionals across the US, Europe, India, and Latin America, partnering with Fortune 1000 and PE-backed companies to move clients from AI experimentation to measurable production impact. The firm has been named to the Inc. 5000 list every year since founding and was recently named AI-Enabling Solution of the Year at the DataIQ AI Awards, alongside being recognised in AIM Research's PeMa Quadrant.
Oz took over as CEO after serving as Co-founder and President of Americas, where he led go-to-market and built out Blend's core AI and data solution portfolio. Before Blend, he was CMO of Hepsiburada — the NASDAQ-listed Turkish e-commerce platform among the top 5 fastest-growing in EMEA — where he drove 3x revenue growth and started the enterprise data science team. Prior to that, he spent a decade at Merkle, the largest independent CRM and digital agency in the US before Dentsu's acquisition, rising to SVP and General Manager of the Data Solutions Group and receiving the firm's Chairman's Award.
He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and an MBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Georgia – Terry College of Business, with executive education at INSEAD. He is a DataIQ 100 USA Most Influential People in Data honouree, a member of the Wall Street Journal Technology Council, and serves on the advisory council for the Masters in Marketing Analytics programme at the University of Maryland's Smith School.
Oz earns his place on the AIM Next 15 AI CEOs in America 2026 for building one of the fastest-scaling independent AI and data services companies in the US — and for occupying the operationally specific layer between "AI strategy decks" and "production-grade AI systems" where enterprise transformations actually succeed or fail. As CDAOs, CIOs, and CMOs across the Fortune 1000 push agentic AI into core business workflows through 2026, Blend360 is one of the few independent firms with the global delivery footprint, recognised analytical depth, and operational discipline to execute at scale.