Dritan Nesho

Background

About Dritan Nesho

I wear a few hats based on interests in the digital economy, technology, public policy, and politics:Business executive - I am the founder and CEO of HarrisX, a mid-market, PE-backed turnaround acquisition and technology platform in the TMT space (formerly Nielsen's Mobile Insights division, acquired in 2017). I also serve as the CEO of NorthStar Research Partners, a leading qual/quants market insights organization. Tech entrepreneur - I’ve built and launched a handful of multi-million-dollar, cloud-native, data analytics applications and SaaS platforms:*Bing Pulse, later Microsoft Pulse, a real-time voting and consumer reactions platform built on top of Azure, then integrated into MS Office and Teams.*Magic Wall, a touch-screen, real-time data ingestion and visualization platform licensed for broadcast use by CNN.*Telephia, a smartphone behavioral data acquisition app built on top of AWS and operating on Android and iOS, which tracks app and content usage and 4G/5G network performance.*Billing Snapshots, a bill scraping and consumer spend analytics platform built with Google’s OCR platform.*HarrisX Overnight Poll, the only overnight polling platform in the U.S, marrying tech-enabled speed, scale and data quality with auction theory and in-depth research.*As Director of Product Mgmt. in the Technology & Civic Engagement group (2016-2017), I built MSFT's campaign technology services ecosystem, now the Cybersecurity and Democracy division.Corporate strategist - I have served in executive roles at Microsoft and WPP Group and consult multiple Fortune 100 C-Suites. I was Director of Corporate Strategy, M&A and Special Projects at Microsoft (2012-2016), where I advised the SLT and CEO on core business strategy issues. Highlights: co-founded the centralized Corporate Strategy team in 2012; oversaw the Bing search engine turnaround strategy helping it reach profitability in 2014; helped build Microsoft's privacy and security strategy and led multiple P+S campaigns; part of the Perceptive Pixel, Nokia, LinkedIn due diligence teams; built a research and data engine to steer MSFT’s $3bn annual ad spend; built 10+ product-driven media partnerships with CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc.Public opinion researcher - I ran the most accurate poll of the 2020 election. I head The Hill/ HarrisX poll and co-direct the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll. I have conducted over polls in 40+ countries for corporations and elected leaders. I have worked in 6 presidential/ PM level campaigns. Teacher – Fellow at Harvard’s IQSS and lecturer at the College since 2014.