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Management Team

Mike Ballard, Vice President, Finance

As VP of Finance, Mike Ballard is responsible for all finance functions of Ingenio. He has been with Ingenio since 2002, before which he served in financial leadership positions for Bizfinity, Pets.com and CellNet Data Systems. During that period Mike oversaw two IPOs and numerous other additional capital raisings, while managing quickly growing organizations. Mike is a seasoned finance executive with thirteen years serving technology companies, and prior to that spent seven years as an investment banker. As an investment banker with Bear Stearns, County NatWest, and BZW Barclays, Mike served in mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and financial structuring. He has a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating magna cum laude.

Scott Faber, Creator/Co-Founder and GM, Ether

The idea for Ingenio - to combine the Web and the telephone to create value-added communications -- came to Scott Faber as he was riding in a New York City taxicab listening to a network of drivers chatting on an all-night conference call. He now leads Ingenio's Program Management department and seller community. Prior to Ingenio, Scott was a new-media consultant in Bertelsmann AG's Corporate Executive Program, playing key roles in several of its Internet start-up companies. Scott was part of the core global team that launched BOL, Bertelsmann's e-commerce response to Amazon.com; he also worked in Germany for Bertelsmann, helping to develop BMG's European music-on-demand strategy and launching GameChannel. Before Bertelsmann, Scott worked for Disney Publishing and the Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition. He received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and is an alumnus of Yale University with undergraduate degrees in English literature and mechanical engineering.

Michael Fordyce, Vice President, Sales and Business Development

Mike Fordyce brings to Ingenio a 15-year career in strategic alliances, partnership marketing, and sales from the telecom and Internet industry. His experience includes responsibility for business development at Respond Networks, a ventured-back lead generation company, which was acquired in 2002; Director of Business Development for PointCast, which was acquired in 1999 by Idealab (and later AOL); Director of Small Business Market Strategy for Pacific Bell, where he was one of the founding team members to launch the long distance division; Regional Marketing Director for MCI, where he launched the campus MCI product line and lead strategic alliances for the International Group. Mike received a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in History and Economics, MBA for University of San Francisco, and Executive MBA from Columbia University.

Ron Hirson, Vice President, Program Management

Ron Hirson has over 10 years of software and user interface design experience and joins us from iDrive.com where he ran product development and was a member of the management team. Ron helped grow the iDrive.com to service 10MM+ unique monthly visitors and 250MM+ monthly pageviews. iDrive.com's software service was licensed by over 40 major universities including UCLA, Wake Forest, Case Western Reserve University, and George Mason University. Ron joined iDrive.com via the acquisition of The Digs Network, Inc. which he co-founded and served as the CEO. While running business operations and fundraising for The Digs Network, Ron led product planning and integration, and partnerships with Evite.com, Matchmaker.com and Real Networks. Prior to founding The Digs Network, he was a management consultant with Price Waterhouse, where he ran usability labs, customized and implemented software for clients including Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios, SAFECO and CSKAuto. Ron received his BA from UCLA and graduated Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

Blair Jeffris, Vice President, Marketplaces

Blair has been with Ingenio since the company launched in 1999 and is responsible for marketing and partnership programs for Ingenio's Live Advice Directories and Marketplaces. Prior to Ingenio, Blair was Director of Sales & Business Development with USWeb/CKS, an Internet consulting firm where he led business development efforts for its E-Commerce Practice Group, a key driver of growth leading to USWeb's successful IPO in 1997. Blair joined USWeb via the acquisition of XCom Corporation, a company he helped start to provide Internet design and technology services to corporate clients in financial services, computer hardware, and software industries. Blair received his B.A. from Stanford University.

Paul Manca, Executive Vice President

Paul Manca is also Ingenio's CFO and manages Corporate Development. He brings 23 years operating executive and investment banker experience in the IT, communications, software and retail/consumer industries. Paul was Managing Director and Sector Head for the Communications/Media practice at BZW, the investment banking arm of Barclays Bank in London. Previously, he was VP Corporate Finance, CIBC World Markets. As a banker, Paul led numerous transactions representing billions of dollars as a key advisor to management teams/boards. He later was CFO of two companies, CellNet Data Systems and Pets.com, both he successfully took public managing rapid growth internationally, developing key corporate strategy including business development joint-ventures, raising nearly $1 billion, and managing key operations. Prior to Ingenio, Paul was Managing Director in a consulting firm focused on corporate value proposition, business development, M&A/capital, and governance. He has a BA in Economics from University of California at Berkeley, and an MBA in Finance. He serves on Tambourine, Inc.'s Board of Directors.

Sean Van der Linden, Co-Founder and Vice President, Customer Operations and Business Intelligence

Sean Van der Linden co-founded Ingenio and was the architect of the original Ingenio system. Prior to Ingenio, Van der Linden was a co-founder of Concrete Media, a successful Web content provider. While at Concrete Media, Sean launched two major new media properties: Bolt.com, the No. 1 site on the Web for teens, and the "Girls On" Network, a leading site for young women aged 16-24. In addition, as head of Concrete Media's custom publishing group, Sean was a central figure in the development and deployment of dozens of revenue-generating sites for clients such as Hachette Filipacchi, Time Warner, Chevrolet, ABC/Disney, Showtime Networks, CollegeBeat, and Bertelsmann. Sean's background includes the founding of Dotcom Consulting, LLC, a strategic Internet consulting firm whose clients included Petry Interactive (now 24/7 Media), the United Paramount Network (UPN), and the Rodale Press. He was also an original member of the Advanced Analytical Technologies group of Nielsen Marketing research, working out of the US and UK. In 1991, Sean received a Master's of Science in Cognitive Science from the University of Western Australia and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Colgate University.