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OurStory Management Team

Andy Halliday, Founder and CEO
Andy has nurtured the vision that has led to OurStory for more than twenty years. The idea was already developing when Andy attended Harvard Business School; it continued to gain clarity as he launched his career in retailing, entertainment and technology.

Andy’s strategic roles as Entertainment Group President for Edison Brothers Stores and as Co-Founder and President of Simon Brand Ventures, a division of Simon Property Group (the nation’s largest retail mall developer), honed his passion and expertise in creating innovative and memorable consumer experiences, and prepared him for his executive roles with leading technology companies including Excite’s Electronic Commerce Group, contact.com, and In-Q-Tel. After co-founding Open Field Software and leading business development for Spoke Software, Andy felt that technology and timing had aligned to the point where he could finally realize his vision to create an innovative and compelling consumer service for capturing and sharing life stories.

Andy founded WisdomArk, the company that developed OurStory, in early 2005, and recruited (assembled) a team with a potent blend of technical and consumer marketing expertise and proven track record of building and growing consumer web services. The team built and launched the user-acclaimed Alpha version of the service in 2005 and a greatly enhanced Beta service May, 2006.

Andy welcomes you to the OurStory Beta service looks forward to supporting you as you collect, preserve and share your perspectives from life’s amazing journey.

Click to read more about Andy in our full Executive Team Biographies, or in his Founder’s letter to the community.

Chris Lunt, Founder and VP Engineering
Chris brings a wealth of engineering strategy and development experience to his leadership role at OurStory.com. As an Engineering Manager at Oracle, Chris supported the early efforts to move Oracle’s business applications onto the Web, an innovation that has now become an industry standard. Next, at Excite, Chris directed the engineering team’s indexing initiatives and was instrumental in creating one of the first context-based search models. Chris then joined Zengine as VP of Engineering, leading development of this service’s commerce platform and helping to grow the company from a start-up and through its IPO in 2000.

Before co-founding OurStory, Chris spent two years at Friendster as Senior Director of Engineering, where he led development of the site’s key applications and advertising models.

Ryan Keating, VP Finance
Ryan has has over 13 years of financial management and business planning experience and has worked as a strategic consultant to more than 40 technology companies. He brings proven skills in growing companies and leading them through funding events and acquisition to his executive role at OurStory.com.

Ryan began his career with Coopers & Lybrand in their Financial Advisory Services group, focusing on valuation of privately-held companies and assets. Ryan moved on to the technology investment banking group at Salomon Smith Barney, and then joined Microsoft, where he directed financial and acquisition strategies for an interactive TV division. In 2002, Ryan joined Mailblocks, Inc. as Senior Director of Strategy, where he played a key role in the sale of this company to AOL in 2004.

Ryan has a BA in Management from Boston University.

Janet Ball, VP Marketing
Janet’s career began in advertising, where she honed her customer marketing skills for more than eight years. At J. Walter Thompson and McCann-Erickson, Janet managed a wide range of technology and consumer accounts and negotiated multi-million dollar advertising contracts.

Janet left the agency world and joined Women.com in 1999, where she was instrumental in repositioning the company after its merger with Hearst Media’s HomeArts.com. She also led the company in the development of its first television advertising campaign, which garnered industry awards for excellence in marketing to women.

After Women.com’s successful IPO, Janet joined BlueLight.com as part of an ambitious team leading the charge for this e-commerce venture. At BlueLight, Janet successfully leveraged partnerships with Kmart, Yahoo!, and Martha Stewart Omnimedia for eCommerce while helping BlueLight grow to also become the fastest growing ISP at that time. For the last several years, Janet has been a strategic consultant to Internet and consumer product companies.

Board Members

Shanda Bahles General Partner, El Dorado Ventures
Shanda Bahles has been an active early-stage investor for more than 14 years. She has served on the boards of 17 technology-based startups and is currently a board member for six El Dorado Ventures portfolio companies, including FusionOne, Slam Dunk Networks, and Appshop.

Before joining El Dorado Ventures in 1987, she was a co-founder and/or early employee at Infotek, Millennium Systems, Magnuson Computer Systems, and Fortune Systems. She started her career as an engineer focused on building products, then moved into marketing to manage product launches. She received her B.S.E.E. and M.B.A. degrees from Stanford University.

Shanda concentrates on investments in enterprise software and Internet software and services. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, including International Business Forum, The Next 20 Years Series and Garage.com's Bootcamp.

Brian Ascher, Senior Principal, Venrock Associates
Brian focuses on software and information technology investments. Brian is a Director of Atrenta, Datallegro, RelayHealth, Simple Star, T3Ci, Unicru, Vocera Communications, and Winery Exchange.

Prior to joining Venrock, Brian was Senior Product Manager for Intuit's Quicken.com website and earlier, Product Manager for Quicken for Windows. Before his work with Intuit, Brian worked as a Strategy Consultant at Monitor Company where he advised clients worldwide on issues of management and strategy.

Brian received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Princeton University and an M.B.A. from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Eric Benhamou, Chairman and CEO, Benhamou Global Ventures, LLC.
Benhamou Global Ventures, started in 2003, invests and plays an active role in innovative high tech firms throughout the world. Eric is also the chairman of the board of directors of 3Com Corporation and Palm, Inc. He is an adjunct professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at INSEAD. He served as chief executive officer of Palm from October 2001 until October 2003. Benhamou served as chief executive officer of 3Com Corporation from September 1990 until December 31, 2000. Previously, he held a variety of senior management positions at 3Com.

In 1981, Eric co-founded Bridge Communications, an early networking pioneer, and was vice president of engineering until its merger with 3Com in 1987.

In 2003, Eric was appointed to the Joint High Level Advisory Panel of the U.S. - Israel Science and Technology Commission by U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans. He currently serves as chairman of the board of Cypress Semiconductor and as a member of the board of RealNetworks, Inc and of Silicon Valley Bancshares. He serves on the board of directors of several privately held companies, and serves on the board of the New America Foundation, a Washington DC-based think tank. Eric serves on the executive committee of TechNet and of the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB). He is the chairman of the Israel Venture Network, a venture philanthropy organization for a stronger Israeli society.