Key People

Add to Watch List Share This Page

Email Page Flag This Page

Flag

Management

Gary Swart, Chief Executive Officer

No bio available. Add a bio.

Odysseas Tsatalos, CTO, Co-Founder

No bio available. Add a bio.

Stratis Karamanlakis, VP of Development, Co-Founder

No bio available. Add a bio.

Brian Goler, VP of Product and Marketing

No bio available. Add a bio.

Ed Schaffer, VP of Finance and Operations

No bio available. Add a bio.

Sawan Deshpande, Director of Operations

No bio available. Add a bio.

Jason Chicola, Director of Marketing

No bio available. Add a bio.

Josh Breinlinger, Director of Online Sales

Josh Breinlinger has worn many hats at oDesk starting as the Director of Online Sales and is now currently the Director of Marketing.

Board of Directors

Thomas Layton is the CEO of OpenTable. Previously, he was a co-founder of CitySearch, Inc. which later merged with Ticketmaster to become Ticketmaster Online - CitySearch (NASDAQ: TMCS), now a subsidiary of USA Networks. In his role as President and COO at TMCS he helped grow that organization to become the leading online local content property, serving more than 128 cities worldwide.

Prior to his experience at Ticketmaster - CitySearch Thomas was with Score Learning Corporation, a leading educational services company, where he served first as Chief Financial Officer and later as President and Chief Operating Officer. Prior to that, Thomas was Vice President and General Manager for MicroFinancial Corporation, a high-growth, nationwide equipment leasing company, and from 1986 to 1988, he was a Consultant with the Boston Consulting Group. Thomas also has extensive experience in other entrepreneurial firms and in venture capital.

Thomas holds an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Mary Song

Mary Lou Song is a community development consultant, advising Internet companies who want to build cooperative relationships with their consumers.

Song was most recently director of community development for Friendster, a start up company focused on building social networks.

Previous to Friendster, Song was senior product manager for eBay. As the company's third employee, she was instrumental in the development of the eBay online community. When she joined the company in 1996, eBay had approximately 15,000 community members; today it has more than 40 million around the world.

In eBay's early days, Song built a cooperative relationship between the company and the user community, combining traditional product marketing with online community marketing. She was responsible for the strategic direction of community products, for the development and implementation of community tools, and for community initiatives that impact eBay's global community.

Prior to eBay, Song worked as a journalist. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and a master's degree in Communications/Media Studies from Stanford University.

Avoop Goyal

As a founding member of the Media and Ad Services division at TiVo, Anoop is responsible for building new advertising products targeting its 4 million customers. He has over 14 yrs of software experience in companies like TiVo, Tavant, eBay, Accenture, and Oracle.

Prior to TiVo, Anoop was the General Manager of Tavant India. He started the Tavant Engineering operations in Bangalore which now has over a 1000 people. He managed eBay's outsourced offshore product development team of 100 people split between three centers: Chennai, Bangalore, and San Jose. Prior to that, he was a founding member of Accenture's Oracle Solution Center in Palo Alto where he helped manage, design, and implement systems and offerings for the Center. Earlier, at Oracle Corporation, he managed consulting projects for Fortune 500 clients in the US. In his early days there, he was a member of the tools development division. While at Oracle, Anoop was responsible for identifying and coordinating the first project that Oracle undertook in India.

Anoop has a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford University and a Bachelors in Computer Science from The Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur.

Gregory Gretsch

As a former founder and executive of four start-up technology companies, Greg uses his expertise to assist entrepreneurs in building strong businesses. Greg has been in the high-technology industry for more than 17 years. He joined Sigma in 2000, and brings to the firm expertise in new venture creation and marketing. Greg tracks markets that have an impact on both the enterprise and the consumer, including business applications, enterprise infrastructure, storage, Internet services, consumer services, and alternative energy.

In 1997, Greg co-founded Connectify, an enterprise software company that sold software for Electronic Direct Marketing. After selling Connectify to Kana Communications in 1999, he stayed on board as the Vice President of Electronic Direct Marketing. Prior to Kana, Greg started GiftONE in 1996, which he later sold to SkyMall. In 1993, Greg launched his first start up, Vicarious, an education and reference CD-ROM publisher. Early in his career, Greg spent time at Apple Computer where, in addition to spearheading product marketing programs, he lead a project partnering with CNN that offered the first public showcase of QuickTime. Before joining Apple, Greg was an IT consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture).

Greg has a B.B.A in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Georgia.

Robin Driscoll

Robin Driscoll was previously a Director of oDesk, and most recently its Interim Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Driscoll was formerly the CEO and Founder of The WorkCard Company, Inc., an ASP-based supply chain management company for contingent labor, which was sold to Adecco in 2002. Prior, Robin was President of PTA International, a full service staffing provider with over 1,000 contract employees working in Silicon Valley. In 1995 Robin successfully merged PTA with AccuStaff, a $2 billion NYSE-listed company, and continued his tenure as Western Vice President of AccuStaff until his 'semi-retirement' as an active Silicon Valley angel investor with the Band of Angels, Chairman of Essential Solutions, Inc., a Silicon Valley information technology staffing company and active board member of several Silicon Valley startups, including Broadware. In addition, Mr. Driscoll brings 15 years in sales and senior marketing management at various technology companies including Datura International and Schlage Electronics. Other activities include: President of the Saint Mary's College Board of Regents, President of The Driscoll Family Foundation and board member of various startups and non-profit organizations.

Robin holds his BA in Business Management from Saint Mary's College.

Robert Frick

Robert Frick previously served as the Vice Chairman of the Board, Chief Financial Officer and head of the World Banking Group for Bank of America, as Managing Director of BankAmerica International, and as President of Bank of America's venture capital subsidiary. Now retired, he previously served as a director of Connectify, Inc. from its founding to acquisition by KANA and currently serves on the boards of directors for five private companies. Mr. Frick holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Kevin Harvey

Kevin Harvey is a General Partner of Benchmark Capital. Kevin is a seasoned entrepreneur with a long track record of developing innovative technologies into successful enterprises. Prior to Benchmark, Kevin was founder, president and CEO of Approach Software where he led the development of the world's first end-user client/server database for Windows. Approach Software was purchased by Lotus Development in 1993.