Our Team
A. Executive Management
B. Managers/Editors
C. SEO, Social Networking and Conversion
D. Web Designers
E. Web Developers
A. Executive Management
Mr. Mitchell is a Web developer, entrepreneur, Chairman of Kensington Partners, LLC, a private equity firm that sponsors leveraged buyouts with purchase prices between $10 million and $100 million, and an essayist.
Previously, he spent most of his career in the computer industry, having been a Research Associate at Harvard Business School (”HBS”) and a Software Specialist at a major computer company. At HBS, he did research in computers and information systems and was a teaching assistant for second-year MBA classes. At Digital, he supported major New England customers of Digital on Digital commercial operating systems. He was also a management consultant in information systems to many of the large commercial banks in Boston and several high technology companies in Massachusetts. He has been active in high technology entrepreneurship, as an entrepreneur, venture advisor and as a consultant to Venture Founders Corporation, a venture capital fund.
Mr. Mitchell studied political philosophy and economics at Pitzer College (the Claremont Colleges), international relations (specifically, defense policy and arms control) at Harvard University, and management at MIT and the Wharton School of Finance. At Harvard, he was a Graduate Student Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs and was a member of two working groups in national security issues at the Belfor Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. In addition, he was a research assistant in statistics for Gary Orren in the Government department.
Many of his applications and templates have been used by Microsoft to debug future versions of Microsoft Office, and he is one of the world’s leading experts in Microsoft Word and Excel. (Don’t blame him for any of the numerous bugs in Office — Microsoft doesn’t always listen to him.)
Mr. Mitchell has been interested in business since elementary school, and he is probably the only person you’ll meet that was reading The Wall Street Journal as a teenager. (Some would say it’s written for teenagers, but that’s a different story.) His business interests include corporate strategy, competitive analysis, business process reengineering, project and team management, knowledge management, and commercial applications of the Internet. He remains interested in politics, international relations and microeconomics.
Keith is Chief Technology Officer (”CTO”). He is a professional problem-solver, particularly skilled at managing both local and distributed teams, scoping problems, architecting solutions, and facilitating communications between team members. He teaches a course in Northeastern University’s online MBA program on “Managing Information Resources” and he speaks regularly about managing projects and motivating volunteers.
Keith has worked as part-time CTO for several internet startups, and he served as Managing Director of Village Software, Inc. for over 10 years, where he managed or overseen the management of over 1000 projects, including over a dozen for Microsoft and 90+ projects for Harvard Business School. While at Village, Keith became one of the world’s foremost experts at Microsoft Excel. He and his team wrote the spreadsheet solutions distributed with Excel, and he co-authored a book on Microsoft Office from Que publishing (Keith wrote the programming chapters). He also developed training materials for Microsoft on how to program Microsoft Exchange forms.
Keith was given the U.S. Presidential Scholar’s award by the Reagan administration. He also participated in the U.S. Department of Energy Super-Computing Honors Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He received a Bachelor of Science in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Hansard Scholars Program for Parliamentary Government at the University of London, Birkbeck College. He did artificial intelligence work for the U.S. Dept of Energy (got a “Q” Clearance, working on nuclear treaty verification tools), and has consulted to MIT, Tufts University, Coopers & Lybrand, and many others.
Keith is expert in most Microsoft development tools, including SQL Server, VB.NET, and C#.NET, C++ and VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), as well as various older languages, such as VB6, FORTRAN, raw PostScript, 8080/ Z80/6502 assembly language, C, Common LISP, Turbo PASCAL, and PAL/ObjectPAL. He speaks HTML, XML, and XSLT, and is (finally) getting up-to-speed on CSS. He has programmed for the Palm in MechWarrior, and has done middleware development with ATG Dynamo. He wrote QuickTemplates for Borland using their proprietary scripting language, and wrote SmartTemplates for Lotus/IBM using LotusScript. He has even written code in APL. His current learning agenda focuses on WordPress and PHP as well as the LAMP software stack.
Keith has been an active MIT alumnus. He has served as President of the MIT Club of Boston, a 1500-strong all-volunteer organization tasked with connecting MIT alums with MIT and each other. He serves as an alumni mentor for MIT’s “Solving Complex Problems” course, and also serves as an international grad student mentor for MIT. He’s also been an a capella singer, a drummer in a rock’n'roll band, and once built a robot that danced the Macarena while beeping the tune for same. Keith and James have a long-standing contest to see who can be doctrinaire about following best practices.
A former McKinsey consultant and Dell veteran, Bill Leake is founder and CEO of Apogee Search Management. His professional experience draws on deep expertise in both business and marketing to help increase revenues for a wide range of clients. He has been involved in driving provable revenues through internet marketing techniques since the early 1990s when, as part of the management team at Power Computing, he built the first company to sell $1 million of product over the internet. Bill has guided Apogee Search from inception to its current position as the most prominent search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, and one of the 25 largest in North America.
Bill received an MBA with honors from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.A. from Yale University. A frequent speaker at trade shows and online marketing events (including Search Engine Strategies, Online Market World, Innotech, and the e-Marketing summit), Bill has also been featured for his online marketing acumen in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and CNBC’s Squawkbox.
B. Managers/Editors
Heather is originally from North Carolina where she graduated from UNC Chapel Hill with a degree in both Journalism and Advertising. She started her career in the publicity department at Fox Searchlight and from that moved on to work for Fox Reality.
While working in production, her passion for writing continued to grow when finally she decided to pursue her craft professionally with a career in marketing. Heather helped to launch IFly, a startup airplane company recently acquired by AirShares Elite, and then moved to Manhattan to work as Marketing Director for Sales Graphics, whose major clients include Men’s Health, Doubleclick, Vanity Fair and more.
Her love for California brought her back to LA in June of 2007 where she became the Marketing Director for Children In Film, Inc., is the Editor in Chief of BarkMagazine.com and runs her own website, SurvivetheCity.com.
In her free time, Heather enjoys surfing, hiking, skiing, biking, producing short films and spending time with friends and family.
Adam Levitt has been writing and creating content for the web since its emergence as a communal medium in the early 1990s. Prior to the advent of graphical web browsers he produced interactive levels on the prototype MMOGs that existed in those days, while sending and receiving email in UNIX through PINE. When HTML emerged as the standard for web design he created his first web sites to publish creative and academic writing samples for the edification of the limited public who already had internet access.
In 1997, Mr. Levitt helped launch his first commercial web project: an early marketing and PR site for the Jerusalem-based think tank, The Shalem Center. He subsequently partnered with established multimedia pioneers at Golem Productions to create written content and information design for the innovative interactive project, israelVR.net. As the Creative Director of Redemption Media, LLC Mr. Levitt created early web presence for a number of notable Israeli artists including Baruch Nachshon and Eitan Erell. He also partnered with early innovators in referral based revenue generation models on strategic marketing initiatives. From 2003-2008 Mr. Levitt worked as a property manager for leaders in the multifamily housing industry. He has worked in copy writing, content production and marketing for the world wide web on a freelance or contract basis for nearly ten years.
Mr. Levitt’s poetry, essays and academic journal articles have been published extensively in print and on the web, many under his Hebrew name or pseudonymously. He earned his BA with extensive focus on writing techniques from Eugene Lang College of the New School for Social Research and worked for three years at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has edited a variety of print publications and generated a vast amount of copy for the world wide web. His academic focus was cultural criticism and he has long been fascinated by the literary ramifications of emerging technologies. It is for this reason, above all that he has immersed himself in the written culture of the world wide web for so many years.
C. SEO, Social Networking and Conversion
Ian Strain-Seymour is Director Product Development for Apogee Search Management, where he manages their onlne marketing services group, ensuring that the wants and needs of Apogee’s many clients are met beyond expectations.
As an online analytics, ecommerce, and information architecture expert, Ian Strain-Seymour specializes in optimizing the online experience for customers in order to help Web site owners achieve success. As Director of Strategic Accounts and Consulting Services for Coremetrics, Ian has enabled Coremetrics’ largest clients, such as Bank of America, Estee Lauder, IHG, and QVC, to more effectively use web analytics data to optimize their business.
In 2004, Ian developed the web analytics strategy for UPS, creating the business case, defining business requirements, and implementing procedures for usage of a web analytics solution to optimize the performance of UPS.com. Prior to that, Ian also managed the strategic information planning team and alliances program at Macquarium Intelligent Communications, a leading interactive agency based in Atlanta, GA. While at Macquarium, key efforts included the redesign of Storagetek’s Web site; the design of entertainment eCommerce portals for Sam Goody, Suncoast Video, and Media Play; and global Web project for HSBC.
Brian Combs is Senior Vice President and Chief Futurist of Apogee Search Management, where he focuses primarily on corporate and service development for Apogee, with a particular emphasis on determining the trends and directions of the marketing industry. His opinions on the future of the web and internet marketing have been included in The Wall Street Journal, The Houston Chronicle and The SEO Bible by Jerri Ledford. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and events.
As an online marketing expert and Internet pioneer, Brian Combs specializes in bringing measurability to marketing. Prior to founding Apogee Search, Brian was Director of Marketing and Business Development for Journyx, the leading provider of web-based time and expense management solutions. At Journyx, he oversaw all marketing and strategic partnership activities.
Brian’s web endeavors have received accolades from many sources, including InfoWorld, The Austin Chronicle, The Austin American Statesman, Texas Monthly, and the Houston Chronicle.
In late 1993, Brian co-founded the Austin Web Users Group, one of the world’s first web-focused professional associations. He currently sits on the advisory board of EFF-Austin and previously sat on the board of directors of the American Marketing Association, Austin Chapter.
D. Web Designers
Chris Merritt-Lish became interested in web design in 2000 when he was given the opportunity to redesign the TransAmerica Flood Hazard Certification corporate intranet site. Since then, his interest in web-related business never subsided. Chris worked as an independent designer and coder for 5 years, each year strengthening his reputation and his knowledge of web technologies. By 2005, he was well versed in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, SQL, Web Design, and the basics of internet marketing. To advance his work, he decided to expand his knowledge of search engine optimization and interactive marketing.
In January 2006, Chris was appointed Vice President of Information Technology at Language Connections, a language translation company. He redesigned their website, focusing on search engine optimization and internet marketing techniques. He substantially improved Language Connections‘ website rankings and presence on the internet, bringing them significantly more business and establishing them as an authority figure on Language Services in the Boston Area.
Chris left Language Connections in 2007 to pursue his own Web design and Internet Marketing ventures. In May 5 2007, he earned a Professional Search Engine Marketing Certification from Web CEO. He is currently working in New York City as a consultant for both Web design and Internet Marketing projects.
Chris studied computer science at Boston College.
E. Web Developers
Krassimir Boyanov (aka “Krass”) has 15 years of experience in developing software interface solutions for top US and foreign public safety agencies, as well as application software for private entities. Krassimir is highly trained and experienced in object-oriented software development and relational database design and programming.
Krassimir was born and raised in a small town in Bulgaria, Eastern Europe. His parents inspired him to be well educated and only measure with the best. Krassimir’s passion for computers started with the first Apple II computer and Basic programming language. Krassimir received his bachelors in Electrical Engineering from The University of Varna, Bulgaria with a major in Peripheral Devices. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of socialism in Bulgaria, Krassimir had to start his first job as a high school teacher. Even with very limited funds, he persuaded the school’s administration to reinstate the computer program. Krass enjoyed the challenge of teaching computer courses for students, while keeping his passion for computer technology alive.
After owning and operating a small computer gaming company, Krassimir’s career as a programmer started in Sofia (Bulgarian capital) as a multimedia developer, at a San Francisco based company, called Great Bear. Krassimir participated in the creation of two multimedia titles that can now be found in many libraries and educational institutions throughout The United States. His work with emerging WEB technologies came when he immigrated to The U.S. to pursue his passion. Krassimir worked full-time for MorphoTrak, Inc., the leader in the Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems market.
Krassimir has participated in the development of more than a dozen distributed software application solutions for major state and public-safety agencies. Krassimir also received a Masters in Computer Information Systems from The University of Phoenix. In his free time, Krassimir enjoys playing soccer, coaching his youngest son’s soccer team, and reading computer literature.
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