Gregg Frieshtat, Chief Executive Officer, Vertical Acuity
Paul Kaib, Chief Strategy Officer, Vertical Acuity
Doug McCormick, Venture Partner, Rho Ventures
As a venture partner with Rho Ventures since 2006, McCormick is focused on investments in new media and brings extensive operational business experience to our board of directors. He believes that focusing on the original investment groundwork while managing strategic goals is critical for a company's success. McCormick holds board positions with a number of market-leading media corporations and previously served as chairman and CEO of iVillage Inc. (NASDAQ: IVIL), a company financed by Rho and sold by McCormick to NBC Universal in May 2006. Before iVillage, he was CEO of Lifetime Entertainment Services, the parent company for Lifetime Television Network. At Lifetime, he is credited with creating the "Lifetime Television for Women" positioning as well as conceiving and launching the Lifetime Movie Network.
In a previous life, Doug's creative accomplishments included work as a professional songwriter, penning lyrics for songs recorded by Paul Anka, Dusty Springfield and Gladys Knight. He received an M.B.A. from Columbia University's School of Business in 1990 and a B.A. from The University of Dayton in 1970.
Betsy Morgan, Senior Media Executive
Betsy L. Morgan was most recently the Chief Executive Officer of The Huffington Post, a leading news and opinion website which in four years has become an influential media brand. Under Ms. Morgan's leadership, The Huffington Post became a top destination for news, blogs, video and community on the web. The site grew from 4 million to 22 million unique visitors a month under her watch, launched seven content verticals, and doubled its blogger roll to 3,000+ influential bloggers including celebrities, politicians, academics and policy experts. The Huffington Post is the most-linked-to blog on the Internet, per Technorati.
Prior to joining The Huffington Post in 2007, Morgan was Senior Vice President for CBS Interactive and the General Manager of CBSNews.com, where she was in charge of the network's 24-hour broadband, on-demand news service. Morgan spent 10 years at CBS beginning her career there as Head of the CBS Television Network's Strategic Management Group working in the Office of the Chairman and CEO of CBS. Morgan has worked for American Sky Broadcasting, News Corporation's venture into the U.S. direct satellite business. She also spent several years in investment banking at the North American Headquarters of Schroders, in the Media and Entertainment Group. Morgan earned a MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Political Science and Economics from Colby College, where she currently serves on the Board of Trustees. She is on the National Advisory Board of The Poynter Institute, the Strategic Advisory board of The Journal Register Company and an advisor to LearnVest, a personal financial website targeted to Women. She has served as Co-Chair of the 2008 and 2009 MIRROR Awards presented by the Newhouse School of Public Communications and is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on The Future of Media. She has served as President of New York Women in Communications.
Rick Roth, CEO Roth Partners
Rick Roth is founder and CEO of Roth Partners, a strategic advisory and communications firm dedicated to building brands and driving business with senior talent, expert discipline and neutral engagement. Focusing intensely on relationships between brand, consumer and customer, Roth appreciates both above and below-the-line marketing and is passionate about creating big ideas that can be commercially successful. Prior to Roth Partners, Roth spent years with Ogilvy & Mather, first as an Account Executive and finally as Worldwide Managing Director, member of the Worldwide Board and Global CEO of OgilvyAction. He created the OgilvyAction platform and transformed the firm into the global activation, shopper and customer marketing network of Ogilvy. Prior to OgilvyAction, he was President of Ogilvy Los Angeles where he led a turnaround of that office.
Roth has driven award winning work across categories ranging from food and beverages, spirits and beer, toys and personal care products to service, business- to-business, travel, technology, health and beauty. He served for years on the Board of the Times Square Alliance, and today sits on the Boards of The American Camp Association, AnchorFree, Vertical Acuity and other early stage digital and media firms. He serves on a number of industry advisory boards as well as the steering committees of the Ithaca College Business and Communication schools.
Medha Vedaprakash, Rho Ventures
Medha Vedaprakash is an associate of Rho Ventures, having joined in 2007 after several years of operating experience at Siemens Communications, where she was responsible for leading the design and development of several products, including the company's voice over cable solution. She joined Siemens through the company's acquisition of Unisphere Networks, where she developed Unisphere's first voice over IP product. She has previously worked as an investment professional at Charles River Ventures, where she focused on emerging mobile technologies.
Vedaprakash received an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo. She earned her undergraduate degree from Bangalore University and also holds two technology patents in the voice over IP space.
Nelson Chu, Managing Director, Kinetic Ventures
Nelson Chu joined Kinetic Ventures in early 1998 and is focused on IT Infrastructure technologies (e.g., hardware systems and components, enterprise software), Internet software, database-related applications, and other emerging software and hardware technologies. He has led and/or been actively involved with a broad range of Kinetic investments including BroadWare, FoodBuy, Alereon, and Tower Cloud.
Prior to joining Kinetic Ventures, Chu was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and prior to that he was a Development Manager with Oracle Corporation. Chu received his MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School, his MS in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his BS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech.
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