Foursquare announced a major addition to its C-Suite today, welcoming Wade Wegner as its new SVP. Global Head of Product.

Foursquare said in an announcement that Wegner will report to Foursquare President & CEO Gary Little. His role will be to “drive a clear product strategy, cultivate innovation, and build effective geospatial products that meet and exceed Foursquare’s customer needs.”

Geospatial data is a particular focus for Foursquare. The company began as a “check-in” app and later evolved into a leading location data provider.

Last month, the company launched its Geospatial Knowledge Graph. This is designed to make it easier for brands to draw insights from geospatial data sets. Geospatial data sets are notoriously difficult to work with, largely because of their immense size.

On a recent episode of the This Week in Local podcast, Foursquare’s SVP of Engineering Ankit Patel described how challenging it is to work with geospatial data. He noted this is because of its size. And also the degree to which working with this data has become a career specialty.

Product Roles at Big Companies

Wegner brings an interesting mix of experiences to his latest role. Last month he left Rapid, where he served as chief product officer from November 2021.

Before Rapid, Wegner had a brief run at Twilio where he was VP, Head of Developer and UX Success. His stint at Twilio was preceded by longer stays at both Salesforce and Microsoft. At the latter two Wegner served largely in product roles.

Here is what Foursquare CEO Little said about Wegner’s appointment.

“Wade brings an impressive track record of building software tools and scaling platforms specifically designed for developers,” Little said. “As Foursquare continues to push the boundaries of innovation in the geospatial ecosystem, Wade is an exciting addition to help supercharge our efforts to execute a strategy that empowers businesses to harness the full potential of location intelligence.”