About Us > Management Team
BlueKai's vision for enabling polite marketing was formed by our team of seasoned executives who bring decades of experience from the online advertising, behavioral targeting, and data mining industries. Together, they are building a company that will enable a balanced ecosystem where targeted advertising produces results for advertisers and continued revenue for publishers—all driven by a data exchange that respects consumer control and privacy.
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Omar Tawakol, Chief Executive Officer As Chief Executive Officer at BlueKai, Omar is responsible for the overall management, growth, and vision for the company's groundbreaking exchange business. Prior to founding BlueKai, Omar was the Chief Advertising Officer of Medio Systems, the leading provider of mobile search and advertising solutions for carriers such as Verizon and T-Mobile. He joined Medio from Revenue Science, where as Chief Marketing Officer and General Manager he was instrumental in founding and growing the company's leading behavioral targeting businesses, which provide services for many of the largest Internet publishers. There he was actively involved with key industry leaders in defining standards for behavioral targeting. Omar earned Master of Computer Science and Industrial Engineering degrees from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Engineering degree from MIT. While at Stanford, he was a computer science researcher in the Stanford Logic Group as well as at HP Software Labs. Omar's research on formalizing context was published in the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. Omar is also an active speaker and commentator on topics such as behavioral targeting, mobile advertising, and consumer privacy. He was recently listed in Media Magazine's Media 100 for 2008. |
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Grant Ries, Chief Revenue Officer As Chief Revenue Officer, Grant is responsible for BlueKai's sales and business development efforts, strategic planning, partnerships, and corporate development activities. Grant brings more than 11 years of experience in business development, sales, and product marketing and has executed successful partnerships with many of the largest online media companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, NBC, eBay, Disney, ESPN, and Dow Jones. Prior to co-founding BlueKai, Grant was the first executive hired at YuMe, the largest video ad network and platform with a monthly global reach of more than 130 million uniques and 500 million video streams. As VP of Business Development, Grant built YuMe's strategic business development roadmap and a world-class team, launching the ad network and platform business representing hundreds of millions of monthly streams. Grant was also responsible for providing Microsoft with the video ad platform and sales channel for the launch of the Microsoft Windows Media Center Internet TV Service as well as providing NBC Universal with the ad platform for the launch of their video download service. Prior to joining YuMe, Grant was VP of Business Development at Revenue Science. Grant was a member of Revenue Science since its inception and served in a variety of strategic roles, from sales and account management to business development. Grant also serves as a Company Advisor to two companies, YuMe and AdReady. He earned Bachelors and Masters Degrees from the University of Washington. |
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Michael Bigby, Chief Technology Officer As Chief Technology Officer, Mike is responsible for the strategy, design, and development of the BlueKai Data Exchange and overall management of the technical organization. Mike brings more than 13 years of experience in software engineering and extensive experience in the development of innovative advertising and security solutions. He spent the last 10 years as a manager, director, and senior director at Yahoo, where he managed multiple large-scale teams to build Yahoo's branded advertising delivery, messaging, and anti-abuse security platforms. Under his leadership his team also managed Yahoo's client performance strategy, its Global User Database, and a SWAT team comprised of the senior engineers who served as strategic internal consultants. Prior to joining Yahoo, Mike was the first software engineer at Broadcast.com, and built their engineering organization from the ground up until their purchase by Yahoo. Mike joined Broadcast.com from a consultancy role at BSG. Mike earned a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from Texas A&M University. |
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Alex Hooshmand, Senior Vice President of Global Product & Operations As Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Products, Alex leads BlueKai's US and global product management, client services, and operational efforts. Alex joins BlueKai from Right Media, a Yahoo! company and the first and largest online advertising exchange, where he headed the Strategic Integration Group (SIG). SIG's primary focus was signing and integrating value-added service providers and ad networks (such as behavioral targeting networks) to the Right Media Exchange. During Alex's tenure, the SIG team grew its client base and revenues exponentially, contributing to Right Media's leadership position in the online ad industry. Prior to Right Media, Alex worked as Director of Product Management at DoubleClick and as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company. Alex earned a Bachelor of Economics degree from Carnegie Mellon, and a Master of Business Administration degree from Wharton. |
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John Sedlak, Senior Vice President of Global Sales As Senior Vice President of Global Sales, John is responsible for driving global sales strategy for BlueKai's agency and marketer business. Sedlak brings almost two decades of client solutions driven marketing and extensive sales management and strategy expertise in online media. Prior to joining BlueKai, John was SVP of Sales and Strategic Alliances at Vibrant Media, a worldwide video advertising ad network and leading provider of contextual video advertising. Before joining Vibrant Media, he held several senior sales management and business development positions at Time Warner and AOL from 1999 to 2008 including Regional VP of Eastern Region Sales at AOL Media Networks and SVP of Sales for Time Warner Global Marketing. Earlier in his career, Mr. Sedlak held sales posts at Dow Jones & Company/The Wall Street Journal and worked in Media Planning at Ammirati & Puris. John is a graduate of Rutgers University. |