Miva Merchant Management Team Biographies

Russ Carroll

CEO

While in his teens, Russ was a contemporary research astronomer, earning the highly regarded Westinghouse Science Award and, by age 17, made one of the first major astronomical discoveries using the HEAO I X-ray satellite. By the following year, Russ held investigator status with NASA on the HEAO II satellite while at the UCSD Center for Astrophysics and Space Science.

Astronomy led Russ to pioneering work with supercomputers, first at Boeing, then subsequently, in his first major entrepreneurial role as VP of computer services for Digital Productions, which won an Academy Award for 22 minutes of groundbreaking computer animation in the film The Last Starfighter.

In mid-1998, after leading several other successful supercomputing and software companies, Russ took over as CEO of a floundering three year old real estate training company. Under his leadership over the next 4 years, the company went on to become the largest training and coaching company in the United States, growing from 18 employees to over 200.

Rick Wilson

President – COO

Rick began with the original Miva Corporation (now Miva Merchant) in 1999 as Director of North American Sales. His responsibilities included channel sales and management, strategic partnership development and end user adoption. Rick took over as Vice President of Sales and Business Development in 2002. In 2007 he became Executive Vice President when the company was spun out of MIVA, Inc (formerly FindWhat) into a standalone entity. Today, Rick's duties include overseeing all parts of day to day operations with a specific focus on Sales, Marketing and Business Development. During his tenure at Miva Merchant, Rick has worked with thousands of web hosting companies to assist them in offering an ecommerce platform to their end users.

Rick's more than 12 years of executive-level sales and marketing experience also includes his tenure as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Providence Systems (now Buffini and Company), a privately held sales training company. At Providence Systems, Rick developed and executed the sales and marketing strategies that helped lead a successful corporate turnaround in the late 1990's.

Jon Burchmore

Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Burchmore has over 14 years in the computer industry in both technical and management roles. During Jon's tenure at Miva Merchant he's been the driving force behind the industry-leading technology used in Miva products. Jon organized a variety of internal systems and managed a team of developers who regularly brought quality products to market in a timely fashion. Prior to Miva, Jon was a developer at Hyland Software, one of the foremost electronic document management companies.

Tim Sullivan

CFO

Tim has over 20 years of financial and operational management experience. He has managed companies engaged in diverse activities, including electronics manufacturing, software, and consumer products distribution, and in sizes ranging from startup to multinational corporations. Tim was the CFO of the original Miva Corporation for four years before its sale.

Tim has been vice president of finance or chief financial officer for two public companies and two private companies. He has been a financial executive at three software companies including Ashton-Tate, the multinational developer of dBase. He also has extensive operations experience in logistics, purchasing, materials control, order processing and fulfillment at several operating levels including VP Operations. Tim began his career with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers).

David Hubbard

CIO

David's internet experience began over 15 years ago with the operation of an e-commerce business in the early days of online shopping. Frustrated with the lack of reliability and performance in the web hosting industry, David co-founded Hostasaurus in 2000, which under his direction as President, quickly became a Miva Merchant premier hosting partner. As CIO of Miva Merchant, David is responsible for the hosting and network infrastructure, as well as Miva Merchant's PCI compliance initiative. David has an undergraduate degree from the University of South Florida's College of Engineering and previously held senior roles for two Fortune 500 companies, as well as Manager of Network Operations at a non-profit cancer treatment center.

Jen Ferraz

Senior Vice President of Hosting Operations

Jen began working with Miva Merchant as a co-founder of Hostasaurus, Inc in 2000. After a decade as a Miva Merchant Premier Hosting Partner, hosting thousands of Miva Merchant customers, Jen joined the Miva Merchant team to take a lead role in the design, implementation, and management of the new web hosting division. Prior to her role as Vice President of Hostasaurus, Jen was a senior engineer with Nielsen Media Research, responsible for Nielsen's commercial TV ratings server environment, and the network manager for the University of South Florida's Department of Pediatrics. Jen has a bachelor's degree in engineering and a master's degree in management from the University of South Florida.

Christopher Walt

Secretary and General Counsel

Chris Walt has been a practicing attorney for over 28 years. After graduating from Stanford University (BA, MA 1973) and obtaining his law degree from the University of California Berkeley School of Law (JD 1979), Chris joined a large San Diego law firm, where he became partner and practiced business and corporate law for 10 years. Since leaving the firm and establishing his own practice, Chris has continued to represent emerging and established companies in business, corporate and real estate transactional matters.