Board & Advisors
David Karnstedt - Director
David is Yahoo!'s former Senior Vice President of North American Sales. David oversaw the company's integrated Search and Display advertising sales team, which was responsible for effectively meeting the needs of Yahoo!'s advertiser partners by providing them with holistic solutions utilizing the broadest array of products and data insights across the media landscape. Joining Yahoo! in September 2001, David built and managed the company's North American sales force, successfully integrating the search and display teams and accelerating revenue at market leading rates. He helped establish Yahoo!'s recognized leadership in online advertising through strategic partnerships with key advertisers and ad agencies, search engine marketing companies, and search technology providers.
Prior to Yahoo!, he was Vice President and General Manager of AltaVista's Internet search group where he helped the company become one of the first portals to enable all rich media formats. Before joining Alta Vista, David served as Western Advertising Director for Wired Digital Lycos.
In 2001, David co-founded the Interactive Advertising Bureau's search committee, dedicated to developing standards and research to further the search marketing industry. He also currently sits on the Board of Directors for the Interactive Advertising Bureau as well as the Ad Council and is a frequent speaker at a variety of media and industry events.
David earned a BS in Communications from the University of Illinois.
Peter Loukianoff - Director
Peter is the Managing Partner and co-founder of Almaz Capital Partners. Prior to Almaz, he was a partner at Alloy Ventures from 2001-2008. Before his career in venture capital, Peter co-founded an enterprise software company and was an operating executive with two other successful Internet and mobility start-ups in Silicon Valley. From 1989 through 1994, he worked in Russia with prominent scientific institutions, including the Kurchatov Institute and the Russian Academy of Sciences, to facilitate licensing arrangements with US companies, including Apple and Sun, among others. In addition to Apptera, where he led the first institutional investment in the company, Peter is on the board of directors of Attune Systems and Ravenflow. He is a co-inventor on five patent-pending voice advertising and mobile messaging technologies.
Peter earned an MBA and BS Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
Carl Showalter - Director
Carl is a founding partner of Opus Capital focusing primarily on networking software, systems and semiconductor investments. Previously, Carl was a General Partner with Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to joining Lightspeed, he was the vice president of marketing for Juniper Networks where he led the company's global marketing and product management teams. Carl joined Juniper from UUNET, where he served as vice president and general manager of UUNET's $2B revenue dial and DSL wholesale business. Before that, he was director of product management at America Online's Networking Division, ANS. Carl started his career with Bellcore, focusing on packet data services and network security.
Carl holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and a master's degree in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University.
Mary Coleman - Director
Mary joined Walden International (WI) in 2002 as a managing director focusing on software and IT services. Prior to joining WI, she was CEO of Rightworks, an e-procurement and trading exchange software firm, which was acquired by I2 Technologies. She joined Rightworks from Internet Capital Group, where she had previously been a managing director focusing on investments in enterprise software and internet infrastructure including companies such as Rightworks. Before that, she was the CEO of the Baan Company, a leading European ERP software firm. Mary attained this position after selling Aurum Software CRM software firm where she served as the CEO to the Baan Company, after taking Aurum Software public on the NASDAQ.
Earlier in her career, Mary served as a vice president of marketing for a number of high technology firms. She studied electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Lance Rosenzweig - Director
Lance Rosenzweig is an entrepreneur and business leader with a passion for developing innovative ideas and technologies into successful, pioneering companies. Lance successfully led PeopleSupport, one of the fastest growing and profitable BPO companies in the world, through a complete business cycle - including founding, angel and VC investment, turnaround, IPO, secondary offering, and the sale of the company in August, 2008.
Prior to PeopleSupport, Lance was a co-founder of two other start-up businesses. In the wireless industry, Lance was afounder of UniSite, which was acquired by American Tower for over $200 million. In the plastics industry, Lance was afounder, Chairman, and President of Newcastle Group.
Earlier in his career, Lance gained management insight at three leading multi-national firms. His corporate experience included roles as a divisional Vice Presidentat GE Capital, as Vice President in the investment-banking group of Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley), and as corporate planning manager of Jefferson Smurfit Corp.
Lanceholds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management (honors list every term). He received a BS in Industrial Engineering, with Tau Beta Pi honors, from Northwestern University.
Dr. J. Leighton Read - Director
Leighton Read is a General Partner with Alloy Ventures. Before joining Alloy, Leighton spent 14 years as a biotechnology entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Affymax NV, under the direction of Dr. Alejandro Zaffaroni, setting the stage for two successful spin-outs: Affymetrix and Maxygen. He founded Aviron, a biotechnology company best known as the developer of FluMistTM, the intranasal influenza vaccine, where he served as Chairman and CEO until 1999 and Director until its acquisition by MedImmune in 2002. While at Alloy, he served as the first CEO of Avidia, a spin-out of Maxygen later acquired by Amgen.
For over two decades, he has also been interested in the psychological principles that underlie successful electronic games and is currently devoting substantial time to his role as Chairman of Seriosity, a start-up leading in the application of game principles to the challenges of large enterprises.
Leighton received a B.S. from Rice University in Psychology and Biology (1973), an MD from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (1976) and completed internal medicine training at Duke and the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston where he held appointments at the Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health. His research dealt with applications of decision theory in medicine, cost-effectiveness analysis and policy regarding medical innovation.
John Luongo - Advisor
John has more than 30 years of chief executive and senior operations experience working with leading technology companies, including The Vantive Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Merrill, Pickard, Anderson and Eyre, and Tymshare, Inc. Currently, he is a venture partner with Opus Capital. Most recently, Luongo was president, CEO and chairman of The Vantive Corporation, a leading customer relationship management (CRM) software provider. Previously, John was senior vice president, International Division, for Oracle Corporation. He also worked as a senior consultant for Merrill, Pickard, Anderson and Eyre, a venture capital firm.
In 2001, he became a technology advisor to the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. John holds a bachelor's degree in East Asian History from the City University of New York and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
Scott Kauffman - Advisor
Scott is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of PopTok which offers licensed movie, TV and music video clips that can be shared via IM or email. Prior to PopTok, Scott was President and Chief Operating Officer of BlueLithium, a leading data driven performance marketing company, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2007. He also served as President and CEO of several Silicon Valley start-up companies, including Zinio Inc., one of the biggest global online publishing and distribution services company, with divisions focusing on digital magazine and book publishing, and AdKnowledge, one of the Internet industry's first third-party ad servers.
Scott also sits on the boards of MDC Partners, a marketing services company, Coremetrics Inc., the leading provider of digital marketing optimization solutions, and Zango Inc., an online media company providing consumers free access to a large catalogue of sought-after videos, games, music, tools and utilities.
Scott holds an AB in English from Vassar College and an MBA in marketing from New York University's Graduate School of Business. He was honored by Advertising Age in 1996 as one of twenty Digital Media Masters. In1992, Advertising Age named him one of the top 100 marketers in the country.
Mark Lockareff - Advisor
Mark Lockareff is an established senior executive, entrepreneur, and investor with a successful 24 year track record of operating, venture capital, investment banking, and board of director experience with leading companies in the technology industry.
Mark is currently a Managing Director of Bridge Partners, an advisory firm he co-founded in 2008 that provides interim CEO, board of director, and executive chairman services to high potential technology companies. From January through December 2009, Mark served as interim CEO and President of Agiliance. Prior to Agiliance, Mark served as interim CEO at Apptera, a mobile ad network company.
Prior to Bridge, Mark was a Venture Partner at Meritech Capital Partners, a $2.2 billion venture capital firm, where he spearheaded investment efforts in the software and Internet industries. Mark's investments included Facebook, Riverbed, Softricity, AmberPoint, Model N, ProofPoint, Revenue Science, Acopia, Kanisa, and Quigo. Prior to Meritech, Mark was a Founder and Managing Director of GameChange Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm affiliated with Accenture that focused on enterprise software investments. Before GameChange, Mark was VP, Corporate Development at Excite@Home and VP & GM of Classified Advertising for Excite. Prior to Excite, Mark helped create and manage several Internet and networking companies including Classifieds2000, PlanetID, and Echelon. Earlier in his career, Mark was a technology investment banker with Salomon Brothers. Mark began his career in sales at IBM.
Mark received a B.A.S. degree in electrical engineering and economics from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago.
Art Shaw - Advisor
Art serves as CEO and Chairman of Connexus and is responsible for the company's strategic vision and day-to-day operations. Prior to the formation of Connexus, Shaw served as the CEO of VendareNetblue, the union of Vendare Media and Netblue. Shaw also served as President and CEO of myCFO. Under his direction, myCFO grew to more than 300 employees while achieving the #1 rating from Bloomberg Wealth Manager for two consecutive years.
Previously, Shaw was at Charles Schwab where he launched www.schwab.com and helped grow it to more than $1 billion in revenue. While at Schwab, Shaw was SVP and GM, running the firm's $400 million mass market business. He has also held positions domestically and internationally with McKinsey & Co. and Chase.
Art holds a BA, magna cum laude, in Mathematical Economics from Brown University where he was elected Phi Beta Kappa, and an MBA from Stanford University. He was also selected as a Henry R. Luce Scholar and spent a year in Thailand working on public policy.
Marketta Silvera- Chairman of the Advisory Board
Ms. Silvera is an accomplished visionary, entrepreneur and chief executive in voice technology, software/SaaS and Internet security industries. Since joining Apptera in 2005 as chief executive and board member, she has transformed the Company from an early-stage voice/data software business to a leading provider of mobile advertising solutions that help enterprises and social networks increase revenues through targeted, relevant multimedia advertising ("Google-on-the-Phone"), 1-to-1 marketing and personalized e-commerce over the phone channel.
Previously as an entrepreneur and chairman/CEO, Ms. Silvera founded the first network-based Internet security company, Pilot Network Services that developed patented technology to protect corporate networks against criminal hackers. She took the company public, and built it to a $1 billion market cap. Prior to that, Ms. Silvera was President/COO of VoiceCom Systems, a leading voice messaging and IVR systems provider and of Votan, a voice recognition technology leader.
Ms. Silvera is a board member and past president of AVIOS, an international voice technology society. She has been a frequent speaker at technology and investment banking conferences, and has contributed articles to local and national publications. She holds a B.S. in Economics from Turku School of Economics, Finland, with course work in St. Gallen, Switzerland, and graduate studies in Mathematical Economics at Syracuse University in New York