Rao Achanta

Rao Achanta is a technology professional with 20-plus years of experience in architecting highly scalable IT solutions for solving business problems. As CTO, Rao is responsible for the product roadmap, development and delivering value to customers through their next generation solutions using machine learning and artificial intelligence at RSA America. His responsibilities include, formulate and articulate strategy and effectively drive consensus across the organization; in partnership with the executive team, work to identify opportunities and risks for delivering the product; and assessment of marketplace obstacles and technical hurdles to the business success and utilizing strengths in research and identify technology trends and evaluate and identify appropriate technology platforms especially in ML, AI, Cloud, Mobility and Analytics.

Prior to RSA America, Rao was a Vice President of Software Development at Veritra. Rao has deep expertise in designing and implementing complex, large-scale, and highly available enterprise architectures. Worked with a few of the largest consumer retail companies with large consumer datasets in developing effective promotional campaigns. His past project work enabled him to work with organizations including Citibank, OfficeMax, Lakeside, United Healthcare, Sears, Jiffylube, Pennzoil, IAAI, Baxter, McDonald's, and others.

Rao holds a Ph.D. degree in science and serves as a professor at Chicago State University. Rao’s research interests include using ML, AI, VR and AR in retail for increasing customer lifetime value.