Marie Alexander, President and CEO

Marie is President and Chief Executive Officer of Quova. She has been the driving force behind building a company, and a market. Marie is considered an expert in Internet geolocation and is a go-to for leading media such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today on the business of geolocation.

Prior to Quova, Marie held senior and executive positions in global services and support, engineering and development, product management and strategic relationships. She helped lead both Vantive (through the merger with Peoplesoft) and Harbinger to successful IPOs and helped shape and develop the early CRM and EDI markets in which they respectively played.

Marie holds a Master of Business Information Systems from Georgia State University and a Bachelor of Music Therapy from Georgia College.

Jean-Louis Casabonne, Chief Financial Officer

Jean-Louis “JL” joined Quova in 2002 and has been a driving force to Quova’s successful development into a profitable cash-generating enterprise – JL runs a tight ship. He is responsible for all financial, legal, and administrative aspects of Quova as well as managing IT operations.

During his tenure Quova has completed four acquisitions, two financing rounds, and launched Quova On-Demand, the Internet’s only carrier grade Web service for IP geolocation. With a background that includes sales management and new market development, JL has been instrumental in growing Quova’s revenue through the development of our licensing model to both direct customers and Quova’s many partners.

He was previously co-founder, CFO and VP of Finance and Operations at Inxight Software, a spinoff from Xerox PARC. JL began his finance career at Lockheed Missiles & Space Company, and has been involved with other private businesses in areas as diverse as environmental testing, protocol conversion and database management.

JL is no stranger to the Valley; he earned his BS and MBA degrees at Santa Clara University.

Jay Webster, Chief Product Officer

Jay brings more than 20 years of executive and entrepreneurial experience in advertising and technology to Quova.

Prior to BlueLithium’s acquisition by Yahoo!, Jay served as Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Performance Advertising at the company. Subsequently, Webster was General Manager of the Lead Generation business at Yahoo!. Prior to BlueLithium, he held executive roles in leading search and performance marketing companies including Vice President of Engineering at Adteractive, Inc., President and Chief Technology Officer at Fathom Online, and Managing Partner at USWeb/CKS.

Jay brings to Quova business and technical expertise in search marketing, digital marketing, lead generation, loyalty marketing, performance marketing and ad networks. He also has strong experience with entrepreneurial startup operations and venture capital financing.

Ron Rasmussen, VP Engineering

As the Vice President of Engineering, Ron oversees engineering, research and delivery of Quova’s products. He brings to the company over 20-years of experience in software engineering and product development leadership in SaaS, web applications, enterprise applications, and systems software.

Prior to joining Quova, Ron was VP of Engineering at Lithium Technologies, Inc. – a leading SaaS provider of Social Media solutions to enterprises. Ron has held executive engineering positions with KnowNow, an early entrant to the Enterprise 2.0 market, Digital Impact (NASDAQ:DIGI), an early leader in SaaS online direct marketing for the Global 1000, and The Santa Cruz Operation (NASDAQ:SCOC), the volume leader in Unix systems. Ron started his career at Hewlett-Packard where he held a variety of senior engineering positions.

Ron holds a B.A. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Visit Ron’s public profile on LinkedIn.

LaurieAnne (L.A.) Lassek, VP Marketing & Community Development

LaurieAnne (L.A.) drives the day-to-day marketing and communications for the Company. With over 14 years of experience working with technology ventures, L.A. delights in finding the hidden synergy between people, information, and technology.

Prior to joining Quova, L.A. led a number of successful ventures, including the launch of real-time search engine Wowd.com, played a pivotal role in popular music search engine SeeqPod.com as VP of Marketing, and supported companies such as Grouper Networks and Blue Lithium/MingleNow through acquisitions by Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Yahoo!, respectively.

L.A.’s hands-on approach stems from producing grassroots technology events such as ‘Podcast Hotel SF’ and ‘Alt Search Engines Day I&II.’ As one of the original co-founders of the professional networking organization Girls in Tech, she has also facilitated numerous panel discussions, and has been an invited speaker by academic institutions and private organizations.

She holds a B.A. in Psychology, and a minor in Organizational Development from the California State University at Sonoma.

Steve Sawyer, Vice President of Sales, EMEA

Steve brings extensive knowledge of Internet B2B operations and new business development to Quova. Steve manages Quova’s European business development and sales teams, and is responsible for building Quova’s partner channel within the region.

Prior to joining Quova, Sawyer held a variety of IT business development and sales roles in the UK region. As Sales Director for Acequote, Sawyer developed the B2B sales operation within a Europe wide strategy that experienced month on month growth exceeding 20%. He also previously held the position as a business consultant for Business in Focus, one of Wales’ leading providers of comprehensive business support services, and was responsible for the guidance and mentoring of new businesses, focusing on Internet/technology and sales driven programs.

Tobias Speckbacher, VP of Emerging Technologies

Tobias Speckbacher has a passion for technology and innovation. He joined Quova in May 2000, and has since played an instrumental role in building the company and deploying Quova’s core data and cloud services infrastructure. A member of the early research engineering team, Tobias laid the groundwork for Quova’s geolocation technology. He also holds several patents, with additional patents pending.

Tobias’ current responsibilities include working with pre-product launch companies to augment Quova’s data processing infrastructure, introducing bleeding edge technologies to the product engineering process and prototyping new product ideas.

Prior to joining Quova, Tobias worked for Interliant, a large web hosting company. Tobias handled OEM mass web-hosting infrastructure for Dell Computer Corporation as a systems engineer where he programmed database driven tools from concept to product release.

Tobias studied at the Federal Higher Technical Education and Research Institute at Innsbruck, Anichstrasse.

Tobias’ motto is “Every day that I do not learn something new is a wasted day.”

Perry Tancredi, Senior Director of Product Management

Perry joined Quova in February of 2009 and is responsible for managing Quova’s geolocation products and services.

Perry has over 12 years of experience working with Internet and security technologies, and has lived and worked both in the US and overseas. Before joining Quova, he worked at VeriSign, managing fraud products that use geolocation and other information to assess the risk of online transactions. He has worked with customers including state and national government agencies, HSBC, Vodafone, Children’s Hospital, Kmart, Bank of America, and CVS.

Perry has spoken at various conferences, including CompTIA Breakaway, the Ohio Digital Security Summit, and P-Camp. He has been quoted in print and on radio for publishers including the BBC, PC Magazine, Bloomberg, Bruce Schneier’s ‘Schneier on Security’ blog, and was also featured on NBC’s Technology show, TechNow.

Perry has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Tufts University and holds certifications including CISSP, PMC (Pragmatic Marketing Certified), and Security+, and has been credited with “mad wiring skills” after winning ReadyMade Magazine’s May/June 2004 MacGyver challenge with his grand master flash lighter.

Marie Alexander

Marie Alexander is president and CEO of Quova and the geolocation industry’s leading visionary and evangelist. Ms. Alexander was previously VP of strategic relationships at Telocity, and before that served for six years at Vantive Corporation, where as EVP of services she managed the company’s successful merger with PeopleSoft. She holds an MS in business information systems from Georgia State University.

Rajat Bhargava

Rajat Bhargava is co-founder of Quova and president and CEO of StillSecure (formerly Latis Networks), his fifth venture funded company. Three of his companies have successfully exited, including two IPOs and one acquisition by a public company. Previously he was co-founder of Interliant and co-founder and board member of Service Metrics, which was acquired by Exodus in 1999. Mr. Bhargava was also co-founder, Chairman, President, and CEO of NetGenesis (NASDAQ: SPSS). He is a graduate of MIT, with a degree in electrical engineering and computer science.

Tim Connor

Tim Connor is a partner at Sequel Venture Partners and also serves on the boards of Aztek Networks, Datalogix and Infonow. He was previously CFO at Access Health (acquired by McKesson) and a managing director at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Connor holds a Harvard MBA and a BA in economics from Washington College.

Patrick Kenealy

Patrick Kenealy is Managing Director of IDG Ventures San Francisco, the world’s leading technology media company, which he joined after a 20-year career at media giant International Data Group (IDG), where he managed media and venture capital operations. Pat was founder and CEO of IDG’s Digital News Publishing subsidiary, Publisher and CEO of its PC WORLD Communications subsidiary, and CEO of IDG itself overseeing media, market research, and event businesses in more than 50 countries. Pat has invested in more than a dozen early-stage I.T. and new media investments which have collectively returned more than seven times their committed capital. Pat serves on many boards. He earned a B.A. from Harvard University.

Seth Levine

Seth Levine is a principal at Mobius Venture Capital and joined the firm’s Colorado office in 2001. His career includes venture capital investing as well as operational, transactional and advisory roles at both public and private companies including FirstWorld and ICG Communications. He is active throughout the entrepreneurial community in Colorado and serves on several boards. Seth is a summa cum laude graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Seth is an avid outdoorsman and enjoys spending his free time mountain biking, snowboarding and mountaineering, as well as spending time with his family. Visit Seth’s blog.

Charles Stryker

Dr. Stryker is currently the founder and president of Venture Development Center (VDC), a professional advisory firm. Dr.Stryker has several decades of experience helping marketing technology and information services companies scale quickly to enable customers to use data to solve business challenges. Dr. Stryker was previously chairman and founder of Naviant Inc., a consumer profile and e-marketing company that was acquired by Equifax in 2002. Prior to that he was a divisional president of IntelliQuest Information Group., Inc. a marketing research and analysis company acquired by the WPP Group. He also founded TriNet America, a leading supplier of business information to support marketing and sales applications, which was acquired by Info USA. Dr. Stryker currently serves as a board member to ARGI, Conclusive Marketing, Geoscape, NetFactor, Samba and v12.

Will Weathersby

Will Weathersby is co-founder and principal at Nexus Group LLC and a general partner of Nexus Capital Partners I and II. He previously served as a director at Credit Suisse First Boston Technology Group and DMG Technology Group. Mr. Weathersby is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.