Skyword™ Inc. Senior Team Bios

Tom Gerace - Founder & CEO

Prior to founding Skyword™, Tom launched Gather.com, a demand-driven news and entertainment property reaching more than 6M people each month. Gather remains an owned-and-operated property of Skyword Inc.

Gerace also founded and served as President of Be Free, a publicly traded online marketing services company. Be Free transformed online advertising from pay-per-view (i.e. CPM Advertising, where advertisers paid a fixed fee every time their ads were shown) to pay-for-performance advertising (i.e. Cost-Per-Click and Cost-Per-Acquisition Advertising). Be Free-operated channels often saved customers 80% of their cost of new customer acquisition when compared with other marketing methods.

Tyler Hoffman - CFO

Tyler Hoffman's 12 years of experience in finance and accounting began in the technology-assurance practice at Price Waterhouse. Tyler served a wide variety of clients including several venture-backed entities and publicly held companies with international operations. He served in several capacities including general assurance services, transactional due diligence, and forensic accounting.

Most recently, Tyler managed the accounting and revenue functions at Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA), a $100M publicly traded software company as well as playing a key role in establishing Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

John Mihalik - CTO

John Mihalik's career spans more than 15 years in the software engineering industry. John has lead the development and deployment of massively scalable web-based solutions, and brings an extensive knowledge of Internet application development to the company. He has had direct experience in architecting web solutions since the early days of Internet expansion.

John began his career in 1993 as a software developer for the Department of Environmental Protection in Pennsylvania. He later served as a software engineering consultant from 1996 to 1997. Later that year, John joined Be Free, Inc. as the Director of Engineering. There, he led the rapid development of mission-critical technologies -- most notably the tracking and warehousing of billions of Internet ad impressions across multiple datacenters. In 2005, John joined Skyword as Vice President of Development and was later named CTO.

Tim Spencer - Vice President, Sales

Tim Spencer has 12 years of experience delivering high-performance sales and team leadership. He began his career in the motion picture industry, executing sales and business affairs responsibilities for Good Machine, a leading independent producer and distributor of award winning films, such as The Ice Storm, In The Bedroom and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. In 2002, the company was acquired by NBC Universal and renamed Focus Features, where Tim managed the global sales operation until 2008. He was instrumental in the creation and profitability of such Academy Award winning films as Lost In Translation, The Pianist, The Constant Gardener, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Milk and Brokeback Mountain.

David Woodrow – SVP of Partner Services

David Woodrow leads the Partner Services team, which develops and executes content marketing programs for our clients and the company’s owned and operated online properties, including Gather.com. Prior to joining the company in 2006, David spent 5 years running the Client Services organization at Participate Systems, a technology and professional services company that developed and managed online communities for Fortune 500 companies. David has worked with established brands including P&G, Microsoft, Borders, Starbucks, TiVo, Warner Bros., McGraw-Hill, and Kraft.

MaryAnne Flynn – VP of Writer Services

MaryAnne's career spans 18 years of experience in service and sales with technology start-ups, working with initial teams through public offerings. MaryAnne started in Sales with PCs Compleat in 1992 and advanced to managing the Major Accounts team prior to the company's purchase by CompUSA. From 1998-2004, MaryAnne led the Affiliate Services department at Be Free, Inc. In this role, MaryAnne developed a suite of outsourced services to maximize the growth and success of over 400,000 affiliate sites. She led a team of 30 staff members who delivered services in five languages to U.S. and European clients.