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Advisory Board.
Our Advisory Board is made up of some of the biggest players in the web and mobile marketplace industry. Among them are founders, CEOs, experts and operators throughout the industry, representing marketplaces, academia, vendors, service providers and investors. Their input and guidance are essential – and the calibre of the board is what enables us to stay ahead of the game when it comes to the conference content, and at the forefront of the industry when it comes to identifying new trends.
Carolyn Yashari Becher (Los Angeles, CA)
Carolyn is the Co-Founder of HopSkipDrive, the safe and reliable rideshare solution for children. The venture-backed company was born in 2014 out of the real frustration of Carolyn and her co-founders who, as busy, safety-obsessed parents, themselves, struggled to get their children to all of their activities. Her experience prior to HopSkipDrive includes serving as a transactional attorney for prestigious law firms in Los Angeles, launching and leading several nonprofit organizations, and founding Becher Law Group, specializing in complex corporate transactions.
Matt Bendett (San Francisco, CA)
Matt is the Co-Founder and Head of Operations at Peerspace, a fast-growing, short-term space and events marketplace. He has spent his career launching and building consumer-facing businesses, spending time in leadership as an operator, marketer, and product manager. He is passionate about delighting customers, building creative solutions to complex problems, and providing answers for those in search of inspiration. Matt holds a BA in Political Economies from the University of California - Berkeley.
Brian Breslin (Miami, FL)
Brian is the CTO of SimCase, a startup dedicated to building engaging mobile learning games to teach business and math concepts to adult students around the world. Brian is also the Director of the Launch Pad at the University of Miami where he is fostering an environment to help students, faculty, and alums pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. Prior to this, Brian founded Refresh Miami, the largest technology and entrepreneurship focused non-profit in Florida with a membership base of over 9,000, with the goal to foster and inspire innovation in the Miami technology community through events and educational initiatives. Brian has spoken at numerous conferences around the nation including SXSW, Wordcamp, PubCon, Barcamp, RefreshMiami, and more. Brian is a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management MBA program at Northwestern University.
Pamela Devata (Chicago, IL)
Pam is a Labor and Employment Partner at Seyfarth Shaw, LLP. She is a subject matter expert on the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and state laws effecting background screening. She leads Seyfarth's Background Screening Litigation and Compliance Team and counsels both employers and providers (resellers and consumer reporting agencies) of background information on compliance requirements under the FCRA and related state laws on a daily basis. She has been involved in hundreds of single-plaintiff lawsuits and numerous nationwide class action cases regarding the FCRA and similar state laws. Pam is also a past member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners.
Tom Donlea (Seattle, WA)
Tom has more than a dozen years of experience in the eCommerce fraud and digital identity space. Tom joins the Marketplace Risk Management Conference advisory board after having run the Merchant Risk Council from 2006 to 2013, along with its flagship conference, as well as five years working on identity verification issues for the digital economy at Whitepages Pro. With Tom's experience and expertise in this space and running conferences, events and webinars in the US and Europe, he will be providing expertise to the Marketplace Risk Management Conference in building and delivering content.
Nathan Garnett (Seattle, WA)
Nathan joined OfferUp as general counsel in October 2017. He oversees the company’s legal and compliance matters, and has a background in technology law, securities reporting, corporate governance, commercial and regulatory matters, and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to joining OfferUp, Nathan served in several legal roles at Seattle-area technology companies, including VP, Deputy General Counsel at Avalara, Inc., General Counsel and Secretary at Blucora, Inc., and Associate General Counsel and Assistant Secretary at drugstore.com, inc. He also worked as an associate at the law firm of Perkins Coie LLP, where he specialized in technology transactions. Nathan is a graduate of the University of Washington and the University of Washington School of Law. As an avid baseball fan, Nathan’s favorite purchase on OfferUp is a Robinson Cano bobble head.
Albert Giang (Los Angeles, CA)
Albert is a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP. Albert’s practice focuses on technology companies and startups, by defending disruptors faced with legal challenges and helping new business models navigate existing regulations. His clients include some of the most respected companies in the sharing economy and e-commerce space. In addition to defending clients as outside litigation counsel, he has served two stints in-house at a leading technology company, and provides strategic counseling on cutting-edge regulatory issues, governmental compliance, class actions, and complex consumer and employment disputes. Albert has been recognized as one of the “Most Influential Minority Lawyers” by the Los Angeles Business Journal, one of the “Best Under 40” by the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and as a “Rising Star” in the Appellate field by Super Lawyers and Los Angeles magazines.
Chris Gunston (Boston, MA)
Chris is a 15+ year insurance professional at Embroker. The majority of Chris' carrier has been spent as an independent broker with a focus on helping innovative companies efficiently manage complicated and often high stakes risks, complete strategic transactions, and address central regulatory matters. Chris’ personal areas of expertise include professional liability and data security risks. His clients include some of the country’s leading information technology, internet, and professional service firms, as well as the venture capital and private equity firms that fund them. Chris has been involved with the Marketplace Risk Marketplace Management Conference since its inception in 2014 and the first conference in 2015.
Elizabeth Harz (Chicago, IL)
Elizabeth is an experienced technology executive who has led both startups and global businesses through periods of tremendous growth. As President and CEO of Sittercity, she is leading the company on an ambitious course to make childcare finally work. Prior to joining, she held leadership positions with consumer and B2B brands including Yahoo!, Electronic Arts, Chegg and CNET. As a mother of two, Elizabeth is excited to be using her experience to tackle a challenge that she and her friends and family face every day.
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Edward Hubbard (Austin, TX)
Edward spent most of his career in executive technology roles, along the way raising close to $50M in capital for various startups, being integrally involved with several profitable start-up exits and appearing as the lead or co-inventor on more than 20 issued and provisional patents. With a life-long interest in the financial markets, Edward is now focusing his inventiveness on NMR Capital.
Bon Idziak (Irvine, CA)
Bon is a 20-year industry professional and subject matter expert on the topics of background screening, drug testing and human resources technology. Bon’s philosophy is to minimize engagement and retention risk through the design, implementation and management of an intelligent screening program, embracing industry standards and best practices, while ensuring compliance. Bon regularly consults with major corporations and associations to develop screening solutions that are cost-effective and compliant.
Stephen Kane (Los Angeles, CA)
Stephen is Founder and CEO of FairClaims, a consumer-friendly digital dispute resolution platform, which boasts dozens of the world's leading marketplaces like HomeAdvisor, Turo, and Peerspace. Stephen is a Fellow at the Stanford CodeX Center for Legal Informatics, and Founder and Board Chair Emeritus of GRID110, a 501c3 working in partnership with the LA Mayor’s office to promote and develop the LA startup ecosystem. He was formerly an Associate at International law firm O’Melveny & Myers, in house at a large communications company, small business attorney, and part of the early team at legal tech startup Lex Machina (sold to LexisNexis). He's an east side LA native, and die-hard Dodgers and Lakers fan.
Juliette Kayyem (Cambridge, MA)
Juliette Kayyem is co-founder and CEO of Grip Mobility, a B2B technology company providing safety and security in the mobility marketplace to support transportation companies looking to decrease risk for riders and drivers with greater in-ride transparency. A national leader in homeland and national security and frequent, on-air national security analyst for CNN, Kayyem also serves as the Faculty Director of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government where she is also the Robert and Renee Belfer Lecturer in International Security. Previously, Kayyem served as President Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security. Kayyem provides strategic consulting to Fortune 500 companies and start-ups in technology, risk management, mega-event planning, and cybersecurity. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, she is the mother of three children and married to First Circuit Court of Appeals Judge David Barron.
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Annette King (Miami, FL)
Annette is the founder of Muuchit, a sharing economy event rental marketplace fostering social impact with every transaction. Muuchit helps local businesses and mission-led organizations monetize their spaces and rentable items for events. The marketplace generates income, drives donations, and builds awareness for non-profit provider organizations while simplifying the process for event hosts to source unique, affordable spaces. Annette believes in the creative use of underutilized resources while serving our communities, so developed a socially impactful sharing economy model by generating donations for select non-profits through Muuchit marketplace proceeds. She has over 20 years of business development experience in the technology sector, and served on the board of IT Women, Academy of Information Technology, and is currently a volunteer with Abandoned Pet Rescue. She graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with her Bachelor of Journalism and received her MBA from Florida Atlantic University.
Christina Kyprianou (Clemson, SC)
Christina is an Assistant Professor of Management at Clemson University. She earned her PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Her current work is inspired by the sharing economy and the entrepreneurial strategies that nascent peer-to-peer marketplaces pursue to build two-sided networks. Within the sharing economy as well as other contexts, Christina’s research also examines entrepreneurial firms’ strategic use of language and its role in resource acquisition. She is enthusiastic about inductive, theory building studies using qualitative data as well as content analysis and text mining techniques.
Laura Maechtlen (San Francisco, CA)
Laura is the National Vice-Chair of the Labor and Employment Department and Co-Chair of Seyfarth Shaw LLP’s Diversity and Inclusion Action Team. Her practice is focused on employment litigation and includes the defense of class, collective and multi-plaintiff actions. Laura also has experience litigating against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) in systemic actions, both at the early charge stage and in large-scale EEOC pattern-and-practice litigation. Laura also has California state court trial experience. She has been a member of multiple trial teams that have secured defense verdicts in the California Superior Courts in the counties of San Francisco, Alameda and Santa Clara. She routinely handles arbitrations, often securing favorable rulings from arbitrators. In addition to her litigation practice, Laura provides day-to-day counseling and advice to clients about the various laws affecting the employment relationship. She also regularly reviews employer policies for compliance under state and federal law.
Kevin Lee (San Francisco, CA)
Kevin is a trust and safety architect at Sift Science. Kevin is driven by building high performing teams and systems to combat malicious behavior. He has worked for the last 12 years around developing strategies, tools and teams. Prior to Sift Science, Kevin worked as a manager at Facebook, Square and Google, where he led various risk, chargeback, collections, spam and trust and safety organizations. Kevin obtained his BA in Psychology with honors and Sports Management from the University of California Santa Barbara.
Craig Lewis (Dallas, TX)
Craig is the Founder and Chief Entrepreneur Officer of Gig Wage, a venture-backed tech startup that builds modern payment tools for the future of work. Gig Wage designs payroll technology that meets the demand of on-demand workforces. Simple. Fast. Easy. Prior to Gig Wage, Craig was the CSO at Kairos, a venture-backed facial recognition / emotion-detection startup. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Craig sold over $10M of payroll and payroll-related technology. After playing Division 1 college basketball, Craig played professional basketball in Europe. Craig is the author of “The Sport of Sales” and a husband & father to four beautiful young girls. Craig’s motto: “Go for it.”
Phil Mason (Boston, MA)
Philip Mason is Founder and President of Mason & Mason Technology Insurance Services, an insurance broker specializing in venture capital, technology and life science industries. His clients include venture capital, private equity, technology, internet marketplace, and professional service businesses. His expertise includes cyber and data privacy, professional liability, and D&O liability and he’s experienced in M&A due diligence and complex insurance claims. Throughout his career, Mr. Mason has played a leading role in promoting professional education. He cofounded Techassure a non-profit dedicated to the advancement of risk management and insurance for venture capital, technology and life science businesses. Prior to founding Mason & Mason, Mr. Mason was employed by Marsh & McLennan where his clients included Fortune 1000 technology companies.
Heather Lewis (Seattle, WA)
Heather represents Rover in legislative conversations, partners with internal stakeholders on items including safety and data privacy-related matters and develops grassroots digital campaigns to encourage users to contact their lawmakers regarding relevant proposed legislation. In her spare time, she serves as a Western Governors University Advisory Board member and provides regulatory guidance to early-stage startup founders.
Tiffany Moeller (London, UK)
Tiffany is an accomplished data scientist with a passion to leverage data to solve real-world problems, particularly those at the intersection of technology and child safety. She has worked extensively with non-profits in the Chicago area combatting human trafficking and child exploitation in collaboration with law enforcement and also led the trust and safety initiatives at Sittercity for several years. Motivated to find new ways to leverage technology to prevent exploitation of vulnerable populations, Tiffany was a data scientist and co-founder of Minor Guard.
Lynn Perkins (San Francisco, CA)
Lynn is Co-Founder and CEO of UrbanSitter, a mobile and online service that is reinventing the way parents find trusted childcare. Launched in 2011, quickly Lynn grew UrbanSitter into a national marketplace in less than a year. To date, more than three million hours of babysitting have occurred on the platform across 60 cities. An Internet startup veteran, UrbanSitter is Lynn’s third startup experience. Previously, she served as founder and CEO of Xuny.com and VP of Business Development at Bridgepath.com. Before that, Lynn held roles focused on real estate strategy, services and transactions for Joie de Vivre Hospitality, Gap Inc. and LaSalle Partners. Lynn is a graduate of Stanford University.
Shannon Scott (Austin, TX)
Shannon is the Chief Operating Officer at Press - the most convenient and hassle-free laundry and dry cleaning experience - laundry and dry cleaning gets picked up, cleaned, and delivered by your local, trusted cleaner. Prior to joining Press, Shannon was the Director of Risk & Payments at uShip, Inc., which is an online marketplace that connects shipping customers with transportation service providers. Shannon is a marketplace industry veteran and has been involved with the Marketplace Risk Management Conference since just about the beginning. Shannon got her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Management from Central Missouri State University.
Lisa Thee (San Francisco, CA)
Lisa is a tech industry leader with expertise in child safety. She is passionate about bringing leading-edge technology to protect vulnerable populations while helping parents to keep their kids safe in the digital age. She leads artificial intelligence teams to address the most pressing issues of human trafficking, child sexual abuse material, cyberbullying, mental health, and self harm. By leveraging her business development experience, engineering leadership, and passion for shared value, she drove technology solutions to improve the lives of at-risk women and children in collaboration with Intel, Google, Microsoft, Thorn, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Daniel Yanisse (San Francisco, CA)
Daniel is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Checkr. Daniel co-founded Checkr in 2014 and has grown it from a background check API to a service used by thousands of companies and millions of jobseekers. As CEO, he likes to build great products and teams and is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the company. Prior to Checkr, Daniel worked on prototypes for Mars rovers at NASA and held engineering roles at startups in the transportation and mobile industries. Daniel has been involved with the Marketplace Risk Management Conference since the early years.
Michael Yoch (Chicago, IL)
Michael is a product leader with experience building labor marketplace businesses. He was EVP Product at Shiftgig, a Chicago-based gig economy company serving businesses and workers in hospitality, experiential marketing, and retail distribution. Before joining Shiftgig, he was SVP Product at HelloWallet, where he helped deliver an award-winning personal finance platform that was acquired by Morningstar. He ran product for NPR prior to that and had a brief career as an attorney before getting into technology. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin for both undergrad and law school.
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