Datamaran’s Key Hire Signals Strategic Pivot in AI Risk & Governance

NEW YORK, LONDON and VALENCIA, Spain – September 14, 2026 – In a move signaling a significant strategic evolution, AI-powered risk and governance software provider Datamaran has appointed Marlies Gevaert as its new Commercial Director. The appointment is a cornerstone of the company’s broader pivot to a more customer-centric, segment-based operating model designed to accelerate growth in an increasingly complex market for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance.

Gevaert, who will be based in the company's Valencia office, is set to lead one of two newly formed go-to-market (GTM) teams. This structural change comes as businesses worldwide grapple with an unprecedented wave of regulatory demands, pushing them to seek more sophisticated, technology-driven solutions. Datamaran’s leadership believes it is at a critical inflection point, where the right combination of technology and specialized commercial leadership can unlock substantial market opportunities.

A Strategic Pivot in a Crowded Market

Datamaran's decision to restructure its commercial operations reflects a deliberate strategy to move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach. By creating focused GTM teams, the company aims to deepen its expertise within specific, high-growth market segments. This approach is becoming increasingly common in the competitive B2B SaaS landscape, where understanding the nuanced challenges of a particular industry or customer profile is paramount for success. The new model is designed to sharpen the company's focus, turning market momentum into tangible commercial outcomes by aligning sales, customer success, and business development around specific client needs.

This strategic realignment is bolstered by significant recent momentum. In September 2024, the firm secured $33 million in Series C financing led by Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital, a clear vote of confidence in its AI-driven governance platform. The funding was earmarked for U.S. expansion and advancing generative AI capabilities. This followed a comprehensive rebrand that shifted its positioning from a “sustainability-first” tool to a broader AI-powered governance platform, targeting risk, legal, and C-suite executives.

The move distinguishes Datamaran in a crowded field of ESG software providers. While many competitors focus on data collection and reporting, Datamaran positions itself as an “upstream” intelligence platform. It synthesizes external signals—from regulations and peer disclosures to media and stakeholder sentiment—with a company's internal data. The goal is to provide a defensible, auditable, and traceable evidence base for strategic priorities, rather than simply helping to fill out compliance reports after the fact.

Bridging the Gap Between Policy and Profit

The choice of Marlies Gevaert to lead this new charge is far from incidental. Her career is a rare tapestry woven from threads of high-level EU policymaking and front-line commercial strategy. With over 16 years of experience, she embodies the exact blend of expertise that companies navigating the current regulatory maze desperately need.

Before joining Datamaran, Gevaert was the managing director for the Benelux market at Greenomy, an ESG reporting software company acquired by Position Green in 2025. There, she was instrumental in scaling the commercial engine. Her experience in a high-growth, compliance-focused SaaS environment was honed further during her nearly six years at EDICOM, a leading e-invoicing and VAT-compliance provider. At EDICOM, she built the first Benelux commercial team from the ground up, leading consultative sales with Fortune 500 clients wrestling with intricate global regulations.

Critically, her commercial acumen is founded on a deep understanding of how regulations are born. Her early career was spent inside the legislative machine, serving as an EU Policy Advisor in the European Parliament and as a Policy Advisor on International Economics for the Flemish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This dual perspective is Datamaran's strategic ace.

"Marlies has spent her career on both sides of the table, inside EU policymaking and inside the commercial engines that turn regulation into business value," said Marjella Lecourt-Alma, CEO and co-founder of Datamaran. "That combination is exactly what our customers need right now: someone who understands the pressure they're under and knows how to build a team around solving it. As we move to a segment-led pod structure, Marlies is precisely the kind of commercial leader we want driving that segment forward."

Gevaert shares this vision of transforming regulatory hurdles into strategic assets. "I've spent my career helping businesses see ESG and regulatory compliance not as a burden, but as a source of real business value, and Datamaran's AI-powered approach to governance is a natural extension of that mission," Gevaert stated. "The regulatory landscape our customers operate in keeps evolving, and companies need partners who can move fast with them. I'm looking forward to building that here."

Tackling the Compliance Conundrum with AI

The “inflection point” Datamaran's leadership refers to is the rapidly escalating complexity of the global regulatory environment. The European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a primary driver, forcing thousands of companies to conduct rigorous “double materiality” assessments—analyzing both how sustainability issues affect their business and how their business impacts the world. This requires a level of data-driven defense and continuous monitoring that traditional, manual processes cannot support.

This is where Datamaran’s technology finds its product-market fit. The AI platform continuously scans a vast universe of information, tracking over 19,800 regulations across more than 190 countries and analyzing the disclosures of over 10,000 companies. It provides clients with a dynamic, evidence-based view of their material risks and opportunities, allowing them to conduct materiality assessments that are not only compliant but also repeatable and refreshable at the click of a button.

By automating this intelligence gathering, the platform helps legal, compliance, and sustainability teams move from a reactive, compliance-checking posture to one of proactive, strategic governance. The benefits are tangible. According to one case study, a Fortune 500 financial institution reported achieving nearly 90% efficiency gains and significant cost reductions by using the platform to streamline its materiality and risk identification processes. The software provides a structured workflow that aligns disparate teams around a single, shared view of priorities, backed by an auditable evidence trail.

As regulations like the CSRD expand to include “Wave 2” companies and global standards from the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) gain traction, the demand for such solutions is set to intensify. Datamaran’s platform is built to support these specific frameworks, offering a clear path for companies struggling to get ahead of the compliance curve.

Redefining Governance for the C-Suite

Ultimately, Datamaran's strategy, crystallized by the appointment of Gevaert, is about elevating the conversation on risk and ESG from operational compliance to strategic governance. The goal is to empower companies to own their ESG strategy in-house, reducing reliance on expensive and often static consulting engagements. By providing a continuous, AI-powered intelligence stream, the platform delivers the kind of objective, data-driven insights that boards and C-suite executives require to make defensible strategic decisions.

This fusion of sophisticated AI technology with deep regulatory and commercial expertise represents a potent formula. It equips businesses not just to survive the current wave of regulation, but to leverage it as a catalyst for building more resilient, forward-looking, and valuable enterprises.