Andrea Cannistraci
Manager, Marketing

A seasoned integrated marketing communications professional with over 8 years of industry experience, Andrea helped to rebrand several companies within the email marketing industry, as well as secure numerous media buys and speaking engagements within the business travel industry. Andrea formerly held the roles of Manager, Email Marketing with eMaximation, and with Accucast. She also worked for TRX, a business travel based technology company, where she spearheaded their events and conferences. Andrea's career spans a number of industries, having worked with clients in the areas of: travel and hospitality, email marketing, franchising, technology, and she has an advertising agency background.

Andrea holds a Masters Degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from The University of Alabama (Roll Tide...er, I mean "We are Penn State!") and an Bachelors Degree in Political Science from Duquesne University. Originally from Pennsylvania, Andrea has lived in Rome, Italy and Atlanta, Georgia before relocating to the Left Coast in the Fall of 2006.

Loves: Gallivanting around the world, relaxing at the beach, 1997 Banfi Brunello di Montalcino, cooking authentic Sicilian dishes, and the color green.

Fav Quotes: Life is measured not by the number of breaths we take, but my the number of moments that take our breath away.

Nicole Jordan
Director, PR & Communications

Nicole's love for the tech business is genetic. She was born in Mountain View to parents who worked at companies like Fairchild, AMD and a little start-up called Intel. The majority of her 10-year PR and marketing career began in Silicon Valley, jumping in during the late 90's to work with a number of .coms and then jumping quickly out in 2000 to represent a more stable company, Apple. Her love for all things business, geek tech and digital entertainment have taken her from the Bay Area to New York and now to Los Angeles. She's happy to have found a home at the Rubicon Project and especially enjoys the newest member to the company family - the shiny espresso machine in the kitchen.

Kara Weber
VP, Marketing

Kara's background incorporates both digital and traditional media; along with her marketing experience she brings extensive experience in start-up capitalization and strategic development to the Rubicon Project. This is her fifth startup; she\'s finally accepting her addiction to the chaos and high-speed chases integral to startup life.

She joins the team from Mogopop, a mobile media company, where she was co-founder and VP Marketing. Prior to Mogopop she oversaw marketing for Talking Panda, an iPod application developer. Kara was part of the founding team at Tripod.com, a personal-publishing company that produced one of the most popular sites on the Web during the 1990s. At Tripod she oversaw all aspects of communications and brand marketing, culminating with the company's acquisition by Lycos in early 1998. She was also Vice President of Marketing at Streetmail, a publisher of local news via subscription-based email newsletters; that company was acquired in 2001 by Waterfront Media.

She graduated from Williams College in the latter part of the 20th century, and continues to rely heavily on an international network of Ephs to solve problems and forge connections. While her hockey skates have a lot of dust on them, she promises to lace them up and re-live her glory days on the ice once she finds a rink in LA

In to: reading pulp thrillers, contemporary art and design

Favorite Foods: Indian food, donuts with sprinkles, anything from the Union Square Cafe, and pizza.

Hobbies: ites a blog! (Or did, anyhow) d3.typepad.com

Passionate About: Finding a cure for Huntington's Disease: www.hdsa.org and www.hdfoundation.org

Marwan Soghaier
VP Creative and Brand

Marwan Soghaier is Vice President, Creative & Brand for the Rubicon Project. Marwan came from Amp'd Mobile®, where he successfully led the services product management team to deliver one of the first wireless 3G entertainment services targeted at the youth market. Amp'd achieved national market penetration in partnership with MTV, Verizon Wireless and Best Buy and was valued at $450 Million. But enough about Amp'd, how about more on Marwan...

Prior to Amp'd, Marwan ran his own consulting firm working with companies like Motorola, Fluidmaster, Softbank Technologies and Ticketmaster to build out market strategy and interactive product. Some of Marwan's hallmarks include market launch of one of the first-ever wireless applications for mobile professionals through partnership with Palm and AT&T as Director of Business Development at Cresenda Wireless in 1999, where he first dedicated his focus on technology. Hold your applause.

Marwan spent the first 7 years of his career in the glamorous traditional financial services environment of Risk Management consulting, developing and advising an international client base on commercial risk strategies and building new system solutions to address their operational needs.

Marwan's passion has always been to translate market-directed, market-validated needs into focused next generation product and services market strategies. Marwan holds a B.A. in Business Administration and Marketing from the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, NM.

Marwan was born in Germany (like Duc), but grew up in Santa Fe, NM (unlike Duc) where he frequently visits his friends and family. He currently lives in West Los Angeles with his wife and daughter, Isabella.

Loves: Fine dining, Gadgets, Travel, KickBoxing, Ironman competitions, Movie Buff

Fav Quotes: "There's no reason to become alarmed, and we hope you'll enjoy the rest of your flight. By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?" (Which was second to Craig's Caddy Shack quotation that he wanted to use)

James Lee
Web Develper

James, the Rubicon Project's Web Developer, worked at many odd places prior to joining the Rubicon Project, from leading baristas at Starbucks to developing websites for large corporate clients including Discount Tires, PHFE Intranet, and Glovia Services (a subsidiary of Fujitsu). James attended the Infamous School of Industrial Design at California State University Northridge. (GO MATADORS!)

Loves: Bright and shiny objects, Trail B/Hiking, b - Movies, foreign (Chinese, Bollywood, Japanese, Korean) movies, Garlic. Vampires beware

Fav Quotes: "You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you. He never wanted you. In all probability, he hates you. This is not the worst thing that can happen."

Charlie Lambropoulos
Associate, Ad Network Alliances

Charlie was born in Chicago, Illinois in the year most notorious for being the title of one of George Orwell's most famous works. As a youth, he played a lot of soccer and was a huge fan of the beautiful game. He attended Colgate University and began his career at Barclays Capital. He currently works on the Ad Network team at the Rubicon Project.

Loves: Soccer, Pumping Stacks, Meat, Hunter S. Thompson, Green Technology

Fav Quotes: Jimmy Carter's 1974 Law Day Address at the University of Georgia & "Another day witnessing existence in bewilderment."

Inman Breaux
Associate, Ad Network Alliances

Inman joins the Rubicon Project as an Associate on the Ad Networks team. Prior to joining The Rubicon Project Inman headed and co-founded Finfo.com, a financial application and advertising platform.

From Oakland, CA Inman attended the University of Southern California earning a B.S. in Business Finance/Entrepreneurial Studies with a minor in Philosophy. While at USC Inman was a Trustee Scholar, a captain on the Men's Track team, and President of the Trojan Investing Society. Inman is an avid sports fan of all things Oakland (Raiders, A's, Warriors) and will defend them irrationally.

Loves: Sports (basketball, track, pugilism/mma), equity markets, music, film, working out

Fav Quotes: “Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.”

Jeremy Woodlee
Director Account Management

Before the Rubicon Project, Jeremy spend several years managing the online classified business at the Los Angeles Times, where he learned firsthand how difficult it is to sell online advertising space and manage ad networks. At the Rubicon Project Jeremy joins the network team, bringing on board and managing strategic ad network relationships.

Loves - beach volleyball, basketball, good but affordable wines, vinyl

Fav Quotes: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." - Daniel Burnham

Ryan Dranginis
Manager, Ad Network Alliances

Ryan grew up in West Simsbury, Connecticut and is a die hard Whalers fan. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2000 and served two combat tours with the Marine Corps in Iraq. Prior to joining the Rubicon Project Ryan ran a web design and marketing firm in San Diego, California.

Loves: Surfing, Running, Yoga, Rock Paper Scissors, New Ideas

Fav Quotes: "We're surrounded, that simplifies the problem." Lt Gen Chesty Puller

Raleigh Harbour
VP, Strategic Alliances

Raleigh brings a decade of business development, strategy and transaction expertise to the Rubicon Project team. Prior to joining Rubicon, Raleigh was Director of Strategic Alliances for StrongMail Systems, where he managed all technology and service provider partnerships. In this role, Raleigh initiated relationships with companies covering a wide variety of online sectors, including viral marketing, web analytics, business intelligence and mobile messaging.

Prior to joining StrongMail, Raleigh served as Director of Corporate Development for eTelecare Global Solutions, an offshore outsourcing firm headquartered in Asia. In this role, Raleigh led partnership and strategic investment opportunities to expand eTelecare's delivery platform, service offering and industry vertical expertise. Raleigh began his career in the merger acquisition groups of JPMorgan Chase & Lazard Fries, executing transactions for companies in the technology and business services sectors.

Raleigh holds a B.A. in Commerce from the University of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson would be proud), and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago (so would John D. Rockefeller).

Fav Quotes: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

Favorite Movie: Heat (Deniro, Pacino can it get any better?)

Josh Wexler

Josh Wexler is a seasoned entrepreneur and business leader with meaningful experience across consumer, media, and technology industries, who loves bringing new ideas to market. At the Rubicon Project, Josh is responsible for activating major web publishers and media companies. Previously, from August of 2004 through January 2008, Josh crisscrossed the US media-technology ecosystem evangelizing and growing SWMX - SoftWave Media Exchange - where he was a co-founder and CEO. SWMX groundbreaking platform competed fiercely against the likes of Google and eBay in a quest to create a media exchange for the radio, cable, and television advertising industry. While at SWMX, he appeared as a speaker at numerous industry events including the UBS Media Conference, Local Ad World, and OMMA.

Earlier in his career, he was co-founder and Vice President of Hypnotic Hats Ltd., (HYP), a boutique apparel and accessories company that received significant marketplace attention in the early '90s as a brand-favorite among celebrities, professional athletes, the fashion elite and music industry icons. HYP became a global brand within 9 months of its founding. The company was featured extensively in print including profiles in Esquire, New York Magazine, USA Today, LA Times Magazine, and Details Magazine, among others, and featured on broadcast television networks CNN, ABC, and MTV.

Josh attended Cornell University where, as a four-year starter on the men's basketball team, he was a member of Cornell's 1988 Ivy League Championship team and served as captain in the 1988/1989 season. Additionally, Josh was a three time member of the United States Men's Maccabiah Basketball team, winning a gold medal in 1985 and silver medals in 1989 and 1993.

Hobbies: sports, reading, spending time with my family and friends

Fav Quotes: Herb Brooks, Miracle: " Great moments are born from great opportunity. And that's what you have here, tonight, boys. That's what you've earned here tonight. One game. If we played 'em ten times, they might win nine. But not this game. Not tonight. Tonight, we skate with them. Tonight, we stay with them. And we shut them down because we can! Tonight, WE are the greatest hockey team in the world. You were born to be hockey players. Every one of you. And you were meant to be here tonight. This is your time. Their time is done. It's over. I'm sick and tired of hearing about what a great hockey team the Soviets have. Screw 'em. This is your time. Now go out there and take it. "

Favorite Movie: Gladiator, Braveheart

Favorite Dessert: Profiteroles, my Mom's Cheesecake Brownies

Kid's Names: Hanna, Jackson, and Tucker

Kate Hennig
Manager, Publisher Development

Kate grew up in the Bay Area but followed her love of action and city life to Southern California where she spent the next four years at Loyola Marymount University active with Delta Gamma and as President of the American Marketing Association. Business Marketing degree in hand, she joined an exciting start-up telecom company where her team developed the brand and strategic marketing initiatives. Fired up to work at another young company full of talented people, she joined the publisher team.

Loves: Her adorable puppy Jack, Yoga, Pilates, nights out with good friends, start-ups and always fashion!

Fav Quotes: "It's not about you, It's about you in relationship to others."

Mel Moultry

A native of Los Angeles, Mel comes to the Rubicon Project having previously worked as an elementary school teacher. Prior to the Rubicon Project Mel obtained his MBA from Michigan State University.

Loves: Hoops, Track and Field, Photography, and Travel

Fav Quotes: Always "Focus on the journey, not the destination."

Casey Steele
Publisher Advocate

Casey grew up in the small town of Sulphur Springs, TX and graduated from Oklahoma State University in 2006 with a degree in Marketing. Shortly after graduating she packed up her belongings and her southern hospitality to head west to follow her love of music. After working in the music business for a few years she jumped on board with the Rubicon Project as a Publisher Advocate. Casey devotes her time working directly with publishers and making them mad cash!

Loves: music, going to concerts, playing sports, cheese, Dallas Stars hockey, hanging out with friends, Sushi & Sake

Fav Quotes: "Yea, but it's a freakin' sweet car!"

Dahlia Salinas
Publisher Advocate

Dahlia comes to the Rubicon Project with a strong background in sales, having spent much of her career in the fashion and beauty industries. She brings that business development background to the Rubicon Project as a Publisher Advocate, bringing clients on board and getting them excited about the opportunity to work with such a fantastic and innovative company. Dahlia originally hails from the Washington D.C. area, having come to California as a UCLA Bruin. :)

Loves: Eating well, Travel, Horseback riding, Beach/Pool time, QT with friends, Reality television

Fav Quotes: "Talk to me, Goose." -Top Gun

Erin Mayo
Senior Account Manager

Erin comes to the Rubicon project with 5+ years of Online Advertising experience. Prior to the Rubicon Project she worked for Beliefnet.com, a division of Fox Interactive. Erin is from upstate New York originally and most recently moved to Santa Monica from Manhattan.

Loves: skiing, hiking, biking, beach

Fav Quotes: Play like a champion, always. Wedding Crashers

Peter Orlowski
Senior Account Manager

Peter spent the last three years working with advertisers as a Senior Account Manager at Oversee.net. He is excited to be breaking new ground with the Rubicon Project, and as a Senior Account Manager on the publisher side helping partners achieve their goals.

Favorites: Electronic Music, Science Fiction books and Movies, and College Football (GO BLUE!)

Fav Quote: "Is that a real poncho or a Sear's poncho?"

JT Batson
VP Publisher Communities

JT joins the Rubicon Project as the Director of Publisher Communities. Prior to joining us, JT was responsible for the new international marketing efforts at the Mozilla Corporation. During his time there, Firefox's user base grew to more than 120 million, with more than half of the users outside the US. He also oversaw the retention marketing programs that included the launching of Mozilla's first user support for Firefox.

Before joining Mozilla, JT was one of the early employees at AdBrite, where he was responsible for the PR, marketing and sales development for the fast growing Sequoia backed start-up.

From Augusta, Georgia (yes, he has been to the tournament and no, he has never played the course), JT was a political science major at Stanford, where he won the J. E. Wallace Sterling Award and later served as the Director of External Relations for the Stanford Men's Basketball team.

Fav Movie: Coming to America

Fav Food: good BBQ (can't be fancy) or duck

Fav Quote: anything by George Carlin

Hobbies: sports (college and the Braves), politics, golf, refereeing soccer

Whitney Evans
Account Coordinator

Whitney grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and moved out West to attend Arizona State University. After graduation she picked up and moved to Southern California to work in the Film Industry, which eventually led her to Marketing at Lionsgate. She soon sought after a more specialized area of marketing, landing her on the Publisher team at the Rubicon Project.

Loves: Sushi, surfing, volleyball, taking trips, bike rides, enjoying the weekends with friends.

Fav Quotes: 'The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.'

Linda Fuhrman
Finance Manager

Linda joins the Rubicon Project as the Finance Manager, bringing 10 years of experience. Prior to the Rubicon Project she was the Controller for Gen Art, arts and entertainment organization, in New York handling both their non-profit and for-profit entities. Prior to moving to New York she was the General Manager of the boutique hotel, the Crescent in Beverly Hills overseeing the renovations and reopening in 2003. Linda began her career in finance working at L90 as the Accounting Manager in 1998.

Linda holds a Bachelors Degree from University of California, Santa Barbara in Business Economics and Minor in Accounting.

Loves: anything to do with design, photography, music, art

Fav Quotes: "Dream your life so your life is a dream"

Lindsey Mitten
Office Manager

Lindsey graduated with a BA in Business Economics, Accounting from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2007 and currently serves as our Office Manager (office mom). You will usually find her answering phones, working on finance and greeting whomever walks in our front door. Before coming to work for us she was an administrative assistant at California Retrofit Inc. in Orange County.

Loves: Facebook, David and Amy Sedaris, Writing, Baking, Shopping, Battles of Wit, "30 Rock" and "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia."

Fav Quotes: "Rubicon Project, this is Lindsey, how can I help you?" & "Love is hiding who you really are at all times, even when you're sleeping. Love is wearing make up to bed, and going downstairs to the Burger King to poop, and hiding alcohol in perfume bottles. That's love"- 30 Rock

Mallory Portillo
Executive Assistant

Mallory grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where she developed a love for the ocean and the Oakland A's. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2005 with degrees in Communication and Political Science. After college, Mallory joined Teach for America, a movement dedicated to bringing educational equality to students in low income communities. The program relocated her to Los Angeles, where she taught 6th grade in South Central LA and completed her Master's degree at Loyola Marymount University. Mallory currently lives in Santa Monica and is still trying to figure out what lies east of the 405.

Loves: Yoga, spinning, swimming, happy hour with friends, exploring LA, weekends at the beach, music, vintage furniture and home decor, fashion, doing it all.

Fav Quotes: "Wherever you go, go with all your heart."

Matt Cox
Manager, Operations

After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 1999 with a BA in Finance, Matt joined the finance team of a small internet startup called Adnet Strategies which later became L90, Inc. Moving from finance into a product development role, Matt spearheaded various projects that further developed the L90 Admonitor platform. Following L90, Matt left the online world for a while to start Chasco, Inc General Contacting where he put his project management skills to work renovating homes. Not being able to stay away from the rough and tumble world of online startups Matt joined the Rubicon Project Team in July of 2007.

Loves : Mountain Biking, Golfing, Running, hiking and traveling

Fav Quotes: "I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball."

Raj Chauhan
Director of Business Development

Raj joins the Rubicon Project as the Director of Business Development. Previously Raj worked at Yahoo! where he developed multi-million dollar search and display advertising packages for Fortune 100 clients including Sony Electronics and DIRECTV. Before joining Yahoo!, Raj was recruited to build an advertising sales organization for Oversee.net. He hired, trained and managed a national team comprised of sales, client services and analytics building the Revenue.net advertising network. He led the company's sales and product initiatives for video advertising. Earlier in his career, Raj was Strategic Partnerships Manager at Move, previously Homestore. Born in London, England, Raj moved to Cornelia, Georgia (population: 3,500) when he was seven. Raj attended the University of Georgia where he studied Psychology.

Loves: Golf, Yoga, Tennis, Poker, Gardening

Fav Quotes: "Be the change you want to see in the world" -- Gandhi

Shanon Hunt
Manager, IT

Shanon joins the Rubicon Project as the IT Manager. Prior to joining the Rubicon Project, Shanon was working as an Independent Contractor/Consultant for various clients, including the City of Santa Ana, City of Redondo Beach, Trigger, LLC., and Market China Inc. just to name a few. Prior to working for herself, Shanon was the IT Manager at Univessence Digital Studios (UDS) supporting fellow employees, offices and subsidiary companies (MediaRevolution and SevenBlueSeas) worldwide. Prior to her work at UDS, Shanon worked at L90/Maxworldwide as a Network Administrator; later being promoted to IT Manager. At L90/Maxworldwide, Shanon was in charge of supporting an International network as well as the corporate infrastructure/design.

Shanon was born, raised and still lives in Long Beach, California ("The LBC") and no, she does not "know" Snoop Doggy Dogg personally. She graduated with High Honors and holds Bachelor of Science degree in Telecommunications Management from DeVry University.

Loves: Camping, Hiking, Wine, Music, Movies, Animals

Fav Quotes: "Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you. It's called "Daisy". Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you. It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two".

Craig Roah
Founder & Chief Operating Officer

Craig co-founded Verapass Marketing, a leading interactive direct response marketing company in January of 2002. He led the company's general operations, sales, business development and product development initiatives. Within 3 years, he grew Verapass from a self-funded start-up to a multi-million dollar, profitable, leading direct marketing company. The success of Verapass ultimately led to its acquisition by ValueClick (NASDAQ: VCLK).

Before starting Verapass, Craig served as VP of Product Development and Support for L90, Inc, a leading Internet marketing company. adMonitor, L90's technology division, was the Internet advertising and ad-serving platform for over 3,000 Internet properties and publishers. Craig ran the entire adMonitor organization and was responsible for engineering, product management, customer support, campaign management staff and licensing teams. He grew the technology organization from 4 people to 75+ in a 3 year period and was integral to L90 going public in 2000. Craig also led the eventual sale of L90's adMonitor technology to DoubleClick in 2001.

Before joining L90, Craig served as Manager of the Commercial Contracts Division for one of the world's largest corporations, Boeing Aircraft Company. At Boeing, Craig was responsible for negotiating Aircraft modification contracts with U.S. and international airlines and carriers.

Craig holds a B.A. in Business Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and a M.B.A. from the University of Southern California. That combo makes for fun at game time, doesn't it?

Hobbies: golf, reading, running, the Dodgers

Favorite Quotations: "The world needs ditch diggers, too, "where'd it go" ... "Right in the lumberyard, Danny!"

Favorite Movie: Caddyshack - bviously

Favorite Dessert: Diddy Riese ice cream sandwich

Favorite Drink: Pacificos on the beach in Mexico

Kid's Names: Jackson, Tyler and Brooklyn

Frank Addante
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Frank Addante, a serial entrepreneur, has a successful entrepreneurial track record. the Rubicon Project is Frank's 6th company. Before the age of 30, Frank started 5 companies, resulting in 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure (we call that one "a learning experience") and his last venture, StrongMail Systems. Frank was the Founding CEO of StrongMail Systems, the leading email delivery infrastructure provider for thousands of companies worldwide, including Fox Sports/MSN, Ticketmaster, Williams Sonoma, FTD, Netflix and MySpace.com. Addante lead StrongMail from inception, to an initial cash-flow positive business, to becoming the market leader in less than 4 years, raising over $30 million in venture capital from top-tier investors including Sequoia Capital (investors behind Google, Yahoo, Oracle, Cisco and Apple). But we digress...

Wait, did we mention that Addante was formerly Chief Technology Officer and technology Founder of L90, Inc., a publicly-held Internet advertising company? Yep, Frank was actively involved in sales, marketing and corporate development efforts leading to a $112 million IPO led by SG Cowen. He invented adMonitor", one of the Internet's most successful advertising platforms for the Global 2000. adMonitor delivered over 8 billion ad transactions per month for over 3,000 customers and reached 65% of the worldwide Internet population. L90 reached a market cap of $500 million and adMonitor was later acquired by DoubleClick™.

Shortly after L90's IPO, Frank left and founded Zondigo, a wireless and voice software company partnered with Intel. As an early pioneer of the Internet, Addante developed Starting Point, a search engine portal that became the 7th most popular Internet site from 1995-1997 and was acquired by CMGI/YesMail.com.

If you're into awards and that kind of jazz, Frank was an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Finalist, was nominated for Inc. Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year award and has been quoted in publications such as Forbes, MSNBC, RedHerring, InformationWeek and the Los Angeles and Silicon Valley Business Journals. He serves on various boards of innovative technology and marketing companies and received his education in electrical and computer engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Things he likes to do: basketball, karate, surfing, running on the beach

Fav Quotes: "Keep it Simple"

Favorite Food: Indian food, pizza, Portillo's, Diddy Riese cookies

Favorite Charities: Make-A-Wish Foundation, Habitat for Humanity

Visit Frank Addante's Blog: http://www.FounderBlog.com

Follow Frank on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FrankAddante

Lisa Backman
Ad Ops Coordinator

Lisa grew up in Boston, where she developed an enduring love for the Red Sox and Patriots, but never for the long New England winters. She went off to college at Duke and graduated with a Political Science degree and certificate in Markets and Management. After college, Lisa moved out to Los Angeles, seeking enlightenment, sunshine, and really good Mexican food. This led her to the Rubicon Project, where she is currently a Yield Management Specialist.

Loves: board games, online shopping, Latin, spicy food, naps, and the beach

Fav Quote: "Imperfection is beauty; madness is genius. And it is better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."

Matt Meyer
Director, Yield Management

Originally from the East Coast, Matt graduated with a BA from Middlebury College and began his career at L90 as a tech support engineer in 2000, where he met the founding members of the Rubicon Project. Matt later continued his software career in Boston as a programmer for a medical software company, but quickly realized that he and Boston were not a fit. He moved back to his native New York and started a career in the wine industry. There he attained his sommelier certification and worked in high end boutique wine sales. Want to casually discuss wine? Don't go to Matt-he only gives a highly refined, expert opinion. In 2007, Matt moved to Los Angeles to join up with his old team at the Rubicon Project where he is currently the manager of Yield Management. (yes, he manages management).

Loves: Wine, Food, NY Sports Teams, Spending time with his aggressive German Shepherd Dog: Rubi.

Fav Quotes: "Back home, they put me in jail for what I'm doing. Here, they give me awards." - Casino

Amber Thompson
Marketing Manager

Born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Amber fled the desert after 18 very hot years for the surf and sun that only So Cal can provide. Amber attended the University of California, Santa Barbara were she graduated with a Bachelors of Arts degree in Film and Digital Media Studies. Prior to the Rubicon Project, Amber honed her internet advertising experience with companies based in the music, nutrition, and consumer electronic industries. She brings that experience and her passion for the industry to the marketing team as a marketing manager.

Loves: the sun, the beach, the water, Jack Johnson, randomness, and quadding (hey, you can take the girl out of the desert but...)

Fav Quotes: "He said he wanted many, many thousands of green people from history times!" - It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Angelli Mateo
Stats Coordinator

Angelli holds a BA degree in Political Science and Film and Media Studies from UC Santa Barbara. Raised in LA for most of her life, she moved back to Silver Lake. She currently works at the Rubicon Project as part of the Product Team.

Loves: food, travel, urban adventures, sci-fi, writing, open sources, discovering movies from around the world

Fav Quotes: "A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do."- ?

Dave Williams
Sr. R&D Engineer

David Williams is a professional Perl developer and an MIT-trained expert in Statistical Machine Learning. He has 10 years of battle hardened software development experience using the Perl programming language.

Before joining the Rubicon Project, David founded The Gorilla Matrix, a company specializing in the acquisition of data from large document corpora. He holds a Bachelor of Arts with Highest Honors in Applied Mathematics from the University of California Santa Cruz, and a Master of Engineering in Logistics Systems from MIT.

David joins Bob Bennett as one of the last members of an elite breed - those Angelino natives who were born, raised and still live in Los Angeles, California. David is an avid Rock Climber and trains at Rockreation 5 nights per week.

Loves: Rock Climbing, PERL, Battlestar Galactica, Applied Math

Fav Quotes: "You speak craziness Earth Boy - More Organs means More Human." - Zim

Samantha Henderson
Yield Management Specialist

Samantha is a new addition to the Yield Management Team. Samantha comes back to her native California after completing her undergraduate study at New York University where she majored in Entrepreneurship and International Literature.

Loves: travel, NY, Arrested Development reruns

Fav Quotes: "Hi, Eric Stratton, Rush chairman, damn glad to meet you." "Hi, that was Eric Stratton, Rush chairman, he was damn glad to meet you."

Steve Lundby
Yield Management Specialist

Steve was born in Southern California where he has lived his entire life. Steve attended CSU Fullerton where he majored in Kinesiology. After graduating Steve worked in the Athletic Training and Physical Therapy field for seven years. After deciding to change careers, Steve joined the Rubicon Project where he is a member of the Yield Management team.

Loves: golfing, kickboxing, spending time with family.

Fav Quotes: "You have two choices when a defining moment comes along, either you define the moment or the moment defines you." - Roy McAvoy-(Tin Cup)

Joe Halloran
Yield Management Specialist

Joe was born and raised in the beautiful state of New Jersey and just moved to Los Angeles. He recently graduated this May from Boston University with a dual concentration in finance and law.

Loves: Ball of any sort, Laxing, Movies, Music, Traveling

Fav Quotes: "A flute without holes, is not a flute. A donut without a hole, is a Danish."

Kyle Stainer
Product Manager

Raised in Hampden, Maine Kyle grew up with a deep love and appreciation for the outdoors and adventure. Kyle moved to the west coast to pursue his dreams of becoming a member of the Golden Fire Jumpers crew, an elite forest fighter team based in California. He attended California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo graduating with a major in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Administration and a minor in Forestry and Natural Resources. But, after falling short of the entrance requirements due to his vestigial limb, Kyle turned his sights on the internet world. Prior to joining the Product team at the Rubicon Project he started a website dedicated to real time updates of forest fires and fire safety tips.

Loves: working on his website, his three cats (Smuckers, Abigail and Frita), batting cages, jorts, and picnics.

Fav Quotes: "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. "--Han Solo

Duc Chau
Founder & VP, Research and Development

Duc is the Founder of Flukiest.com, an online social networking community. Before starting Flukiest, Duc led the U.S. engineering team at StrongMail Systems where he was responsible for all releases of the StrongMail product to the public. Duc was the first employee hired at StrongMail. He was also responsible for software development, design and professional services in core areas of StrongMail's flagship products. Before joining StrongMail, Duc was the lead developer at Responsebase where he redesigned and engineered the company's next generation internal mailing system that was responsible for 90% of the company's revenue. Duc was the lead developer of the initial MySpace community, which currently has over 100 million members and was acquired by Fox Interactive Media for $580 million. As the initial developer, Duc still holds the very first active MySpace profile ever created. You probably recognize his default MySpace picture or at least your sixteen-year-old cousin does.

Before MySpace, Duc worked in various senior level engineering positions at public & private companies in the consumer, voice over IP, search and wireless sectors. At L90 Inc., Duc developed NetMon, an information system designed to monitor and aid the day-to-day advertising operations for adMonitor (L90's adserving product). NetMon was responsible for reporting and optimization of the hundreds of ad servers that made up the global adMonitor network. Duc holds a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from DeVry Institute of Technology, Southern California.

Into: mid-century/vintage stuff, reading, documentaries, traveling

Can't Live Without: sarcasm, pickles, salt, soy sauce, chuck taylors

Favorite Restaurant: Killer Shrimp

Nuggets: "Duc" in vietnamese means Germany where he was hatched, and he was on Wheel of Fortune

Bob Bennett
VP, Product

In the role of Senior Vice President of Product Development for Ticketmaster, Bob led the company's product development group and was responsible for the creation, management and marketing of Ticketmaster's wide range of client and consumer products, including overseeing the day-to-day product leadership of the company's web site Ticketmaster.com.

A 12 year Internet veteran, Bennett has also held senior e-commerce positions with eToys, the Web's top children's retailer at the time; Jackson National Life, a Top 20 life insurer; and Union Bank of California.

Bob graduated from UC Davis, where he played on the basketball and volleyball teams, completed a double major in History and Political science, but never actually went cow tipping. He's also one of the only people in the world who was born and raised in Los Angeles and is still living here.

Things he likes: Hoops, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, poker, UNC Tarheels, Lakers, Dodgers, WWII books/movies (or anything really). Also, poker.

Fav Quotes: "Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand" - Cool Hand Luke

Favorite Food: Casa Noble Anejo

Movies: Band of Brothers. Star Wars. Rounders. Dumb & Dumber. Hoosiers.

Daisy Garcia
Quality Assurance Engineer

Daisy joined the Rubicon Project as a QA Engineer. She comes to us from Oracle (formerly PeopleSoft) with six years of QA experience. She earned her B.S. in Information Systems from California State University, Northridge. Daisy was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley where she grew up close to many relatives. She still resides in the Valley with her husband and baby girl, Daphnie, a golden retriever puppy!

Loves: Spending quality time with friends and family, traveling the globe, and relaxing

Quote: "Life's too short to be mad."

Ian Douglas
Software Engineer

Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, Ian moved to Los Angeles in June 2000 and has worked for various small Internet startups, as well as several years of freelance consulting for clients like Toyota, Fox Interactive and the Los Angeles County Office of Education. At the Rubicon Project, Ian works on our core statistics, analytics and data mining as a software engineer.

Loves: Sushi, Dr Pepper, dog training, Canadian beer, and that he's going to be a daddy in October 2008!

Fav Quotes: "I order the club sandwich all the time, but I'm not even a member, man. I don't know how I get away with it." - Mitch Hedberg

Masao Kitamura
Software Engineer

Masao is a software engineer at the Rubicon Project. Previously, he worked on the global partner technical services team for Yahoo! Search Marketing. During his time there, traffic volume grew from 20 million to over half a billion requests per day driving over $5 million in revenue daily. Prior to that, Masao was the first dedicated spam analyst for FrontBridge Technologies, a gateway, anti-spam, anti-virus email solution later acquired by Microsoft, processing over 100 million messages daily.

Masao holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA.

Loves: efficiency, productivity, profitability, scalability, reliability, maintainability, innovation, execution

Fav Quotes:"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

- Michael Jordan

Peter Bi
Software Engineer

Peter is an astronomer-turned internet professional. Specializing in high-traffic website technologies, Peter has worked for Rare Medium Groups, Asian American Network Inc. and several others in South California for 10 years before joining in the Rubicon Project. Peter currently works in the engineering department for the Rubicon Project.

Loves: Fine Dining, Travel, Reading - Scientific American, Buddhism and American Imagism

Fav Quotes: "Make it new"

Rocky Kitamura
Software Engineer

Rocky is a software engineer at Rubicon Project. Prior to the Rubicon Project, Rocky has worked in management roles in various entertainment companies including Disney and Sony. In addition, he has composed music for prize winning short films and commercial projects. A few years ago, he started making websites and now operates a network which sees over 10 million page views a month and over 2 million visitors.

Loves: reading, watching TV

Fav Quotes: Live as simply and naturally close to the Earth as possible.

Steven Kornblum
Software Engineer

Steven, a Software Engineer at The Rubicon Project, has been a web development consultant for over 10 years. His experience has also come from working as a developer and I.T. director at various companies that have carved a legitimate space for themselves in the online market: Fox Interactive, Verizon Wireless, NewsFactor Network, etc.

Loves: Playing/Writing/Listening to music, theoretical physics, Dodgers, Las Vegas, and his mac.

Favquotes:- "Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein and "If life was fair, Elvis would still be alive and all the impersonators dead." -- Johnny Carson

Subash D'Souza
Software Engineer

Subash joined the Rubicon Project from Mainstream Advertising where he was a Software Developer. He graduated from USC with a Masters in Computer Science and is a member of the Computer Science Honors Society (Upsilon Pi Epsilon). He currently works as a Software Engineer on the engineering team.

Loves: Movies, Reading Books (mostly thrillers), Fast Cars, Gadgets and Food.

Fav Quotes: "E Pluribus Unum" ( Out of Many, One ) A quote found on all quarters, nickels, dimes and dollar bills

Samee Ahmed
Infrastructure Architect

An Engineer from India, he came to the U.S in 1994 and since then has been in "start-up" environments most of his professional career.

At the Rubicon Project, Samee is in-charge of the datacenter infrastructure. Samee loves to learn about wildlife through various media and explore nature through the camping and trekking time-offs. An optimist and does not give up on anything easily.

Fav Quotes: "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration" - Thomas Edison

Mark Douglas
VP Engineering

Mark Douglas’s engineering background spans nineteen years. Most recently while at eHarmony, Mark led the charge to propel the site to become one of the most widely known Internet dating sites, boasting more than $200 million in annual revenue and over 20 million registered users. Prior to eHarmony, he served as Senior Vice President of Engineering at Covalent, where he managed the development of hardened versions of the Apache Web server and Web management tools.

His career began at Oracle as an early member of the Oracle Application Division team that developed the Application Division Core Platform from scratch. He went on to become the Co-founder and President of Centerview Software, which was acquired by Informix Software in 1997. Later, he served as Senior Vice President at Persistence Software, which went public in 1999.

Julie Mattern
Founder & Chief Technologist

Julie began her career in the Internet advertising industry over 10 years ago at Yesmail.com where she was responsible for the development of the company's core product, leading to a $524 million sale to CMGI. Julie was the first developer of adMonitor (L90, Inc.) where she served as Director of Engineering. She oversaw all engineering directives with a specialization in adMonitor's user interface that was highly regarded as being the industry's best, for its ease of use and rich feature set.

After adMonitor was acquired by DoubleClick, Julie was recruited by Fastclick (now ValueClick Media) where she managed the development of the company's business data systems and built a comprehensive suite of reporting tools. Most recently, Julie was the Director of Operations Engineering at Adconion Media Group (formerly EuroClick), where she focused on developing technology to improve the organization's daily workflow processes to provide operational efficiencies.

Julie holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science (with high honors, if you want to get technical) from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL.

Hobbies: traveling, walking my dogs, gardening

Favorite Food: Portillo's Italian Beef Sandwich

Favorite Drink: a nice cold beer

Favorite Places: southern Italy, London, anywhere tropical

Pets: 2 dogs (Roxy & Bailey) and 2 cats (Sushi & Miso)

Karim Nassar
Software Engineer

People ask Karim "Where are you from?"

He doesn't know. His father was an upwardly mobile immigrant yuppie, and moved the family of 6 (2 boys, 2 girls) to the suburbs of Portland, Seattle, Boston, Syracuse, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, before finally ending up in Phoenix. When the family moved back to Los Angeles yet again, Karim moved to Flagstaff, AZ to be closer to his 2 sisters attending Northern Arizona University. More than half his life was spent in AZ, more than half that time (12 years) in Flag, so by some weird accounting he is an honorary Flagstaff local, hence he thinks he is "from" there.

In Flagstaff, Karim owned a telemarketing company selling expendable construction equipment to contractors. When that got boring he went to Northern Arizona University to get a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering. His studies led to work in the Collaborative Computing Laboratory where he worked on a collaborative web portal (what would now be called a social networking site) for ecology researchers. When the lab was low on money, he worked as a contractor developing a laboratory information system for Norchem Drug Testing. Karim moved to Los Angeles from the recreational paradise of Flagstaff to work with his brother and friends at Oversee.net, and later, Rebates.com.

Karim is currently studying Nei Kung, is an amateur chef, cycles not often enough and has written free software (Activator Framework) in his (infrequent) spare time.

Ward Flock
Director of Publisher Development

Ward grew-up in the suburbs of New York in CT. His best friend’s Dad was an ad agency exec and they used to critique TV ads at the ripe young age of 10. Ward loved to play baseball and football as a kid, becoming proud of the scabs and dislocated digits. At college graduation, he knew advertising sales was for him and luckily McGraw-Hill had an entry-level job for him in San Francisco. He never went back East and climbed up the magazine publishing world via computer trade magazines, The Wall Street Journal and he Founded Forbes ASAP, a technology spin-off of Forbes magazine.

Curious about technology, he jumped to the Internet joining Netscape and later served as VP Sales for Flycast, one of the early ad networks during Web 1.0. Since then, ran the North American division of a SEM firm and was the first VP Sales at Adify, the ad network platform for Publishers for Web 2.0. At the Rubicon Project, Ward enjoys helping his pals in the publishing community make a few extra bucks with the ad networks.

For fun, Ward loves to hike, cook and chase his three kids around the backyard. He’s been in the Bay Area most of his professional life and gives back by coaching many sales and marketing executives with their careers.

Kids: Christine, Daisy and Bailey

Some favorites:

• Movie: Gladiator, The English Patient
• Food: Pizza and chocolate malts
• Quote: “Be the change you seek in the world”, Gandhi
• Hobbies: skiing, scuba diving, gardening, politics

Joe Prusz
Manager Publisher Development

Joe is responsible for prospecting, closing, and growing large strategic publishers at the Rubicon Project. He comes to the Rubicon Project from Yahoo! where he managed $50M on behalf of Yahoo’s largest advertisers. Joe leveraged insights from both large brand and performance campaigns to better serve and delight advertisers across the entire Yahoo platform including the Right Media Exchange, Blue Lithium, and the Y! Publisher Network. Prior to Yahoo, he lived in Denver and founded RealTech Media which produced and distributed online video sales materials for real estate professionals. Earlier in his career he worked in Chicago at Telution, a technology start-up that specialized in designing software for emerging communication providers. Joe received an MBA from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (his childhood dream was to play basketball for Bob Knight).

Loves: Family above all, Indiana Basketball, Guitar, Snowboarding, Wine Country

Favorite Movies Goonies, Hoosiers, Magnolia, and Braveheart

Fav Quotes: "There’s no greater joy in life than increasing publisher CPMs." – Joe Prusz circa 2008

Krista Barry
Account Coordinator

Born on the outskirts of Boston, Krista claims the Massachusetts capital as home and the affiliated sports teams as family. However, warmer weather beckoned and across the country to Los Angeles she went, graduating from UCLA with a Sociology degree in June of 2008. Always the multi-tasker, Krista had since been surfing the net for both Hollywood gossip and the perfect job opportunity when she happened to come across The Rubicon Project. Shortly after, Rubicon welcomed Krista with open arms, naming her the Publisher team's Account Coordinator.

Loves: Good food, good friends, art/photography, fashion, hip-hop, outdoor activities, & my dogs.

Fav Quotes: "Know thyself" -Socrates

"If you are going through hell, keep going."
- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Natalija Fijacko
Executive Assistant

Natalija grew up in Chicago and loved The Bulls, sledding and deep-dish pizza. She attended Columbia College where she majored in Journalism with a focus on Magazine Editing & Writing and freelanced for the school's paper, the Columbia Chronicle. After graduating, she entered the advertising field working as an assistant for a few different titles in the publishing industry.

She moved to Los Angeles about 8 months ago to pursue the warm weather mostly, but to also experience life outside of the windy city. Natalija is planning on moving to west side in Spring and is excited to see what lies beyond the valley.

Loves: A rainy day, video games, bar games, making jewelry, being productive, laughing with friends and family, fashion, magazines and all types of reality TV.

Fav Quotes: "It was on company property, with company property. So, double jeopardy, we're fine."

Leon Gurevich
Strategic Sales

Leon was born in Russia, grew up in Canada, completed his education in Austria and most recently became a US citizen after being relocated to the US as the National Marketing Manager for Eastman Kodak in 1999. During his career, Leon has sat on all sides of the media desk. During the first six years of his career, Leon successfully managed a $120 million consumer camera and battery portfolio. There he worked with agencies and publishers to manage the purchase, placement and performance of Kodak's national advertising spend. Later, at Deloitte Consulting LLP, Leon spent five years working to build strategic account relationships and provide clients business process reengineering and market strategy consulting. A large portion of his consulting effort was focused on building business within the consumer new media space, including strategic engagements with some of the largest agencies, new media companies and publishers. Most recently Leon extended his consultative approach to client engagement as a Senior Manager at Right Media / Yahoo. While at Right Media Leon worked with strategic accounts to understand their business and develop a platform strategy intended to align with their goals, optimize adoption, performance and participation in the Exchange. Leon left Yahoo after the acquisition of Right Media in order to continue to work with large publishers, providing them consulting on monetization and operational strategy. In his practice Leon worked with some of the industry's largest global publisher brands, and it was during this engagement that he was introduced to the Rubicon Project.

At the Rubicon Project, Leon is responsible for bringing onboard strategic publishers and working with them to ensure their successful integration onto the platform. To this effort, Leon brings his business development background and consultative approach which focuses on understanding the unique nature of each publisher business and goals.

Leon attended college in Canada, completing his degree at the University of Western Ontario - Richard Ivey School of Business and spent his final year abroad at the Wirtschaftuniversitate Wien, in Vienna, Austria. As a ranked member of his college ski team Austria seemed an obvious choice... academically, of course.

Loves:My three beautiful girls, Rachel, Alexis and my wife Lisa.

Hobbies:Skiing, mountain biking, wind-surfing, and building stuff - home renovation, construction, and building furniture - basically anything that gives me an excuse to buy power tools!

Fav Quotes: "Before you try to convince anyone else, be sure you are convinced, and if you cannot convince yourself, drop the subject." -John Henry Patterson

Thierry Hassid
Stats Coordinator

Loves:His friends, the ocean, badminton

Fav Quotes: "A joke is a very serious thing."

David Johnson
Software Engineer

David Johnson grew up in Southern California and has lived here all is life (not including a 3-week stay in New Mexico that he doesn't really like to talk about). His first computer was a Commodore 64. He got his start doing graphic design in 1994 by making ANSI art for computer bulletin board services. After dropping out of the University of California at Riverside Creative Writing program, he moved to the "west-side" and started working as a Graphic Design intern for the now-defunct eToys.com. Over the next several years he wrote three screenplays, worked as a designer for a small web development firm, tested video games for THQ (go Power Rangers!), read meters for the Gas Company, and managed internet sales for a classic and sports car dealership in Marina Del Rey. In 2005 he tried starting his own t-shirt company. It lasted about 8 months. In late 2005 he started work at Oversee.net as a front-end developer, where he lasted 2 solid years. His last stint was Director of Web Development at BetaRecords.com, a social-music community.

Loves:motorcycles, poker, shooting pool, Burning Man, reading, writing, relaxing, making websites.

Fav Quotes: "The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain or in the petals of the flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha... which is to demean oneself." - Robert M. Persig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

George Tsao
Desktop Support Specialist

George was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the US when he's 10. He has been a resident of San Gabriel Valley for over 20 years. He graduated from USC with a BS in Accounting. He has work as Computer Technical Analyst at Deloitte & Touche and as System Administrator at Execpro prior to joining Rubicon Project.

Loves:Badminton, snowboarding, guns, cars, and auto racing

Fav Quotes: "Do or do not... there is no try." Yoda, Star Wars

Venu Anuganti
Database Architect

Venu grew up in India, and graduated from Bangalore university in computer science. He worked in various database companies as DB kernel engineer and involved in building cloud infrastructure.

Loves: Movies, music, night outs

Fav Quote: "Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress"

Susie Roach
Publisher Development

A native of the Bay Area, Susie attended CSU, Chico where she not only survived the notorious college scene but took a degree in Political Science in less than four years. In an attempt to avoid law school, she traveled extensively throughout Central and South America ultimately winding up down under in New Zealand. Upon her return from wanderlust, she settled into a sales position at the young startup, DoubleClick. There she stayed for 8 years working her way up to the Senior Director, Account Management. In addition to her full time career, Susie spends a considerable amount of time with her young family of three, her dog Lola and her husband. When not working, chasing her kids through the park or trying to find her dog in the backyard, Susie runs, and runs, and runs.

Fav Quote: "I'm with the Underhills."

Raymond Pang
QA Engineer

Ray was born and raised in Hawaii where he enjoyed travelling to different islands, and eventually California, via the "Interstate" highways. He left Hawaii for California to attend Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo where he majored in Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems. He currently resides in the San Gabriel Valley and is oblivious to what goes on in the west side. In his off time, Ray is a car enthusiast and hopes to get into autocross and tracking. He also enjoys boxing, pool, trying new restaurants, and just kicking back at Starbucks or a "boba" store.

Bill Willits
Senior Database Administrator

Bill joined RubiconProject after spending 2 years as an independent contractor working in the Database Administration/Architecture field. He consulted for MySpace for a while creating a MySQL-backed search engine for their 'Browse' feature. Bill's first project with The Rubicon Project as a consultant, was to speed up the Master Push process, and he took it from taking over 1 hour to complete to finishing in under 30 seconds.

Prior to consulting, Bill was Director of Engineering at SiteLite, Inc which provided remote monitoring and management of Applications and Databases. One of SiteLite's first customers was L90, which was where Bill met Frank, Craig, Duc and Julie. At SiteLite, Bill managed the design, development and build-out of the ticketing and events system that managed thousands of servers for hundreds of customers and processed millions of messages per day. Even though Sitelite eventually filed for bankruptcy, Bill is proud that the technology we developed was purchased and is still in use today.

Bill also spent some time working at Oracle Corporation as a DBA Consultant travelling all over the US and beyond on database tuning assignments.

Bill graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada with a Civil Engineering degree. He then spent 5 years designing highway bridges before he switched to software engineering and went back to school for computer science.

Loves: Skiing and Softball

Fav Quote: "hether you think you can or think you can't, you are right" - Henry Ford

Heroes: Doug Combs (Extreme Skier). Jeff Ward (MX Star)

Sina Bakhtiari
Software Engineer

Sina spent his childhood in the heart of Texas and moved to Los Angeles just before high school. He attended UCLA before founding an online auction site with some friends. Later Sina went on to work for Fox, Experian, and Oversee.net. During this whole time he's been playing hockey, soccer, watching a grip of movies, pub hopping with friends and searching for the next cool late night coffee joint.

Loves: 80s music/movies, Garbage Pail Kids, Sushi, Ketel One, Cooking

Fav Quote: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

Andrew Grangaard
Software Engineer

Andrew grew up in Portland, Oregon in a land of fresh air, green trees and liquid sky. He moved to Pasadena in the 90's to attend Caltech where he developed a taste for sunny skies, smoggy air, year-round ultimate Frisbee and ego shattering intellectual rigor. In a 1999 pre-millennial spur-of-the-moment life change, he moved to New York City to be closer to his girlfriend -- now wife. They enjoyed seven winters in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Jersey City, NJ before the heeding the call of the mighty Pacific and draw of west coast family. Moving West, Andrew found his true calling - watching waves from the beaches of Santa Monica and Malibu. Andrew briefly returned to NY to run the NYC marathon in November 2008, and has no plans to run that far ever again.

Loves: Life, biking to work, frisbee on the beach, frolicking in the ocean, frolicking in the snow, frolicking in general, driving with top down and deep intellectual debate on esoteric topics, snowy Winters and ice cold beer on a hot summer day.

Fav Quote: "Good old rock. Nothing beats rock."
Perl: TMTOWTFIU
"Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy." Warren Buffett

Takuju Ueda
QA Lead

Takuju grew up in Japan, US, Japan, US, Japan, US. He likes living in LA, with its slow life style, and having fun in Tokyo, where good food is on every corner. Takuju recently discovered the zen of digital photography and has an arsenal of 13 lenses. He'll need to visit the gym more just to be able to carry them all.

Loves: Photography, fine Dining, critiquing

Fav Quote: "When in a hurry, don't take unfamiliar shortcuts. Instead go around the usual way where the outcome is known." - Isogaba Maware

Yasmin Sahami
Manager, Talent Acquisition

Yasmin brings over 12 years of HR and Talent Management expertise to the Rubicon Project team. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, she graduated from San Jose State University with degrees in Public Relations & Mass Communications and Art History. While studying English Literature in graduate school, she was presented with an entrepreneurial business opportunity to become a founding member and managing partner of a boutique executive search firm. With her three partners, she established Skyler Network, LLC in the San Francisco Financial District, providing service to the technology and financial markets of SF and Silicon Valley. Soon after, the East Coast operations were launched in New York City.

After residing in San Francisco and Manhattan for several years, Yasmin relocated to Los Angeles to begin her corporate career in Human Resources. Prior to the Rubicon Project, she held full-time and consulting engagements with Experian Interactive Media, Twentieth Century Fox, Rain Bird Corporation, and Deloitte & Touche.

Loves: Her dogs and beta fish, art, books, Broadway, yoga, hiking, nature, beach life, wine, jazz, travel

Interests: Animal and wildlife rescue, environmental protection, Amnesty International

Fav Quote:"The first rule of holes is that when you're in one, stop digging." - Thomas Friedman

Damien Hogan
Software Engineer

Damien grew up in New Orleans LA. He has been a working software and systems engineer since he was 16 years old. Starting out with web development but quickly focuses on system engineering and application development. Damien started Timecore Technologies, a funded network management software development company in 1997. While the internet bubble was bursting Damien found a niche in consulting when he founded Ceterex consulting in 1999. After a series of startups Damien went to work for Direct Alliance corporation where he spent five years as an application architect. As architect, Damien led the design, implementation and quality assurance of an ERP system designed to provide a direct sales service to customers such as IBM, Xerox and Toshiba. After leaving Direct Alliance Damien accepted a position as the Director of Product Management for Lumension Security. Lumension security is the largest privately held software security company and competes directly with vendors such as McAfee and Symantec. In addition to serving as "owner" for the company's flagship products, Damien worked for several months directly with the National Institute of Standards and Technology development a security analysis platform based on a new series of governments standards for risk assessment. Damien has been with his wife Summer for almost 13 years though they just married in 2006. Damien and his wife being pretty focused on engineering which leaves little time for additional hobbies.

Josh Springer
Yield Management Specialist

Josh began life in beautiful Rhode Island (yes, it's still a state, much to Pluto's dismay) before shipping up to Boston College for four years, where he majored in English and competed in Track and Field for the Eagles. Josh accidentally moved to Los Angeles in June after finishing a cross-country bike trip there, and is now wondering if he will ever return to the land of coffee and chowdah (and seasons). As a Yield Management Specialist at the Rubicon Project, Josh is concentrating on ad quality and ridding the online world of popups.

Loves: sports (i.e. the Patriots and Red Sox), dogs, Anna's, the beach, Los Angeles weather, Seinfeld

Fav Quotes: "Bluto's right, psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now, we could fight 'em with conventional weapons, that could take years, and cost millions of lives. No, in this case, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture, be done on somebody's part." - Animal House

Megan Bristol
Yield Management Specialist

Megan was born and raised in sunny Southern California and is the youngest of seven children. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Loyola Marymount University with a double emphasis in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. She recently joined the Rubicon Project as a Yield Management Specialist because she wanted to get involved with fast paced world of online advertising.

Loves: Traveling, my sisters, cooking, a really good Cosmo, shopping, and dachshund puppies.

Fav Quotes: "Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways."

Matt Chin
Yield Management Specialist

Matt grew up in Northern California. He moved to Southern California 6 years ago to attend Cal State Long Beach. He received a degree in Sociology. He is very happy and excited to be with the Rubicon Project's Yield Management Team.

Loves: Basketball, Golf, Green Tea, Sleep

Fav Quotes: "Either you define the moment or the moment defines you."