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Management Team

George Garrick, CEO

George has an extensive background in consumer behavior, advertising, direct marketing, and new media as well as proven success in startup company fund-raising, recruiting senior management teams, and scaling growth-stage companies.

After joining the company when it was a small startup, from 1994-1996 Garrick served’as CEO-North America for Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), the nation’s leading marketing information services company, where he was responsible for $270MM in revenues and 4,000+ employees. During 1992-93 he served in London as President-IRI Europe, launching IRI services in France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey.

In 1998 as CEO of Flycast Communications, he grew the company to become the Internet’s first and leading direct response ad network, with a performance-based ad model that re-defined the role of Internet advertising to be ROI based. Garrick took Flycast public in 1999 at a $500 million valuation, and subsequently sold it for $2.3 billion.

In 2002 Garrick took over as CEO of PlaceWare Web Conferencing, one of the first successful SaaS companies, where he grew the company to $60MM of revenues and negotiated its sale to Microsoft for $200MM.

Garrick has also served as CEO of Wine.com, Jingle Networks (1-800-FREE411), and Mochi Media, in all cases accelerating growth significantly through a combination of fund raising, management recruiting, and product innovation and strategy.

George has also been an active independent investor and board member with companies such as Shopzilla, Comscore, Adify, and Qik. He earned BS degrees in Math and Engineering, and an MBA, from Purdue University.

Bill Lonergan, CFO

A seasoned executive, Mr. Lonergan has more than 25 years of financial management experience helping technology companies achieve and manage rapid revenue growth and gains in market share. He also has extensive experience in taking successful companies public.

Mr. Lonergan was most recently with Blue Lithium, where he was responsible for finance, operations and corporate development. In addition, he oversaw the international expansion strategy. He was also responsible for coordinating the due diligence activities relating to the $325 million acquisition of Blue Lithium by Yahoo. Prior to Blue Lithium, Mr. Lonergan was the CFO of LookSmart, an online media and technology company specializing in vertical search, where he was instrumental in transitioning the company from a search listing directory to vertical search technology provider.

Previously, he was a senior partner at KPMG LLP. During his tenure at the firm he was chosen as global lead partner for the Microsoft and Hewlett Packard accounts, named to the Leadership 2000 Partner group and appointed national director of the High Technology Performance Improvement Consulting Practice. Mr. Lonergan is a C.P.A., a Chartered Accountant, and a graduate of the University of Durham, England.

Mihir Shah, Chief Revenue Officer

Mihir Shah is Chief Revenue Officer of Offerpal Media. He is responsible for all of Offerpal's commercial activities, including revenue growth and user acquisition. As such, Mihir manages the company's relationships with leading advertisers, developers and publishers.

Prior to joining Offerpal Media, Shah was Vice President, Ad Network for RockYou, a leading provider of applications and widgets across the social media space, with application properties on major social networks including Facebook, MySpace and Hi5. In a short time, Shah grew the company's revenues by more than 500% and more than quadrupled gross margin. He was responsible for 15 billion monthly ad impressions, as well as sales, account management, performance marketing, analytics, and publisher management.

Mihir also founded CookEatShare.com, a vertical social network catering to home cooks and professional chefs. Prior to that, he was the Vice President and General Manager for Direct Selling Solutions at QuinStreet, the largest performance marketing firm in the country. Earlier, Mihir was the President and CEO of Liquid Software, a Sutter Hill Ventures backed enterprise application integrator. Mihir earned his BA in Quantitative Economics from Stanford University.

Jim Rainey, Vice President, Product Management

Jim Rainey is the Vice President of Product Management at Offerpal Media, overseeing product strategy and development initiatives and across multiple parts of the business.

Previously, Jim has held product management positions at a number of leading consumer internet companies, including Netscape (search), AOL (music and personalization), Ask Jeeves (paid inclusion, web search, image search, personalized search, and desktop search), and, most recently, SideStep (travel metasearch).

Jim has a BA in Economics from Princeton University. In his free time, Jim enjoys travel, backpacking, flyfishing, and good food.

Shannon Jessup, Vice-President, Sales

Shannon Jessup joined Offerpal Media to lead our sales efforts with advertisers and advertising agencies. Ms. Jessup has over 15 years of leadership experience in all facets of high technology including channels, sales, marketing and operations. Jessup's expertise is building effective, revenue-generating client and partner relationships that help companies meet their business goals.

Prior to Offerpal, she was the head of sales and business development for Commission Junction, a global leader in the online advertising channels of affiliate marketing and managed search. Before Commission Junction she was the director of worldwide channels for Citrix Online (CTXS), a leading provider of on-demand applications for remote access, Web conferencing and collaboration. Ms. Jessup has also held senior level positions for companies including Epoch Internet and Merisel (MSEL).

Ms. Jessup started her career with IBM as a collegiate sales representative and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of California Santa Barbara. She is originally from Northern California and currently makes her home in Santa Barbara with her husband and three children.

Naghi Prasad. Vice-President, Engineering and Operations

Naghi Prasad has developed award-winning products for online advertising and analytics companies. Most recently, he was the Vice President of Engineering and Operations at Turn, a contextual advertising company building a next-generation automatic bidded CPA advertising network. Prior to that, Naghi was the VP of Engineering for Intelligent Content and Search at Verity, overseeing products that contributed over $100 million in annual revenues.

Previously, Naghi held senior management roles at Peoplesoft and VerticalNet, leading their data warehousing and analytics initiatives and creating award-winning product suites. As a member of the Accenture technology think tank organization, he led a number of initiatives on emerging technologies including search, knowledge management and complex systems modeling.

Naghi has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from the University of Massachusetts, a master's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Chennai.

Alex Brutin, Vice-President, Business Development

Alex Brutin is the vice president of business development at Offerpal Media. He is responsible for forging new relationships with other direct payment providers and monetization partners as well as new strategic initiatives. Alex Brutin has extensive sales, business development and entrepreneurial experience from a number of start-ups, predominantly in the online financial and ecommerce services area.

Having previously worked as the Head of Channel Partnerships at Google Checkout and in Merchant Services Business Development at PayPal, Mr. Brutin most recently was the VP of Business Development at FreeCause, a free, fully-customizable toolbar that helps organizations reach and engage their supporters in fundamentally new ways. He was also the Vice President of Business Development at Ebates, the pioneer and leader of online Cash Back Shopping.

Brutin earned his undergraduate degree from Universiteit Antwerpen in Belgium and his MBA from the Walter A. Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.