Executive Team

J.B. Holston – CEO and President

J.B. has run a wide range of technology and media enterprises over the last two decades. As President of Ziff Davis International, Holston managed Ziff Davis' operations across more than 100 countries, and launched Yahoo! Europe. He was part of the senior management team that led the successful LBO of ZD by Forstmann, Little, and subsequent sale to Softbank. Since selling his last technology start-up, Holston has helped create a wide range of for-profit and not-for-profit entities, including Media-x at Stanford, among several others. After receiving a BA in creative writing from Stanford in 1979, he taught English at Phillips Academy, worked as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, studied and wrote in Paris, France, then worked in strategic planning for NBC and RCA. J.B. received his MBA from Stanford in 1986, then worked on Jack Welch's staff at GE before moving back to NBC, where for five years he was responsible for strategic planning and NBC's international operations.

Greg Reinacker – CTO and Founder

Greg is the Founder and CTO of NewsGator Technologies. Greg's background includes technical consulting work for companies such as Galileo International, as well as several commercial software ventures with companies such as McGraw-Hill. Greg is recognized as a thought leader in the weblog and RSS arenas, publicly speaks about RSS and is a vocal proponent of business uses of RSS and syndication technologies. Greg holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Walker Fenton – General Manager, Media & Consumer Products

Walker began his career in the Internet working for Netcom Online Communications, the first nationwide dial-up Internet Service Provider, and has since been involved with several start-ups including dbDoctor, Inc. and Xaffire, Inc. Walker received a BA in Economics from Colby College and has an MBA from Regis University.

Dave Keller - General Manager, Enterprise

Dave is responsible for sales, marketing and professional services within the enterprise business segment at NewsGator. He has more than 25 years of experience in building and managing fast growing sales organizations. Immediately prior to NewsGator, he was Executive Vice President at Tailwind Strategies, a sales and marketing consultancy firm focused on early-stage companies. He has held executive sales management positions at several successful early-stage companies including: The Saddlebrook Corporation, Mosaix (now Avaya), Individual Inc., and IONA Technologies. During his seven-year tenure at IONA, Dave held positions of increasing responsibility culminating as Vice President, America’s Sales for this $180 million middleware vendor. Dave brings a wealth of field and channel sales experience, having built many successful direct and indirect enterprise sales teams.

Brian Kellner - Vice President of Products

Brian is responsible for product development for NewsGator. Brian has held product or development management positions for over a dozen years. Most recently he was Vice President of Enterprise Products for Webroot Software. Brian holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Management from Colorado Tech.

Mark Nass – Chief Financial Officer

Mark is responsible for all finance, accounting and administration operations at NewsGator Technologies. Nass spent the last eight years with SmartTalk, Inc. in Boulder, Colorado, most recently as CEO. He has over 20 years of management, financial and accounting experience in both private and public companies, including HBOC, CliniCom, Inc., and Peterbilt Motors Company.

Laura Farrelly – Vice President of Marketing

Laura is responsible for all marketing activities at NewsGator including demand generation, marketing communications, social media marketing, and product marketing. Laura has extensive experience in using Web 2.0, social media, and traditional marketing technologies to cost effectively build brand awareness, generate leads, and drive revenue. Laura has held senior level marketing and product management positions for over 10 years. Previously, Laura held the role of Vice President of Marketing at First Advantage SafeRent – a SaaS-based provider of risk management tools. Prior to that she served as Vice President of Marketing at Gold Systems – a leading provider of speech recognition applications. Laura has a B.S. in Engineering from Michigan Technological University, a M.S. in Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Mike McGurkin – Vice President of Services and Support

Mike is responsible for implementation services and technical support spanning products and business units for all NewsGator customers. With more than 12 years managing service and support organizations, he brings customer service best practice expertise to NewsGator’s customer base. Prior to joining NewsGator, Mike served as VP of Services and Support at Vericept, a network security enterprise software provider, where he led the establishment of robust technical and business consulting services and technical support. Before that, he worked for several small and mid-size software companies, building or expanding service organizations, as well as developing a consulting practice within BearingPoint. Mike’s experience with customer support and management is an asset for NewsGator’s customer base.