Astadia’s Board teams top executives with the combined backgrounds and tremendous experience needed to guide our company’s growth and leadership in the SaaS consulting marketplace.
J. Ernest Riddle
President & Chief Executive Officer
Brent Mellow
Executive Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer
David Coit
Managing Director, North Atlantic Capital
Steven Horwitz
Operating Partner, Kodiak Venture Partners
Mark Shirman
President and Chief Executive Officer, GlassHouse Technologies
Tom Vadnais
Chief Executive Officer, ValueClick
Astadia Board Members
J. Ernest Riddle is the CEO of Astadia. Ernie delivers overall strategic and executive leadership to the Astadia team. He has more than 35 years of executive experience with Fortune 500 companies including leading the Marketing, Sales, and Planning division at Xerox during a successful 25-year career and serving as President of both Ryder Systems and Norrell Services. Currently, he serves as an advisor and board member for a number of public companies including Danka Business Systems and Airnet Systems, Inc.
Ernie has extensive growth management consulting knowledge in organizing and managing process design, developing executive leadership and helping companies with executive board-level strategic initiatives such as CRM and other sales & marketing strategies centered on improving market penetration and sales productivity.
Ernie holds an MBA from Emory University and a BS from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Brent Mellow
Brent Mellow is Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President of Astadia and has responsibility for global corporate marketing, product design,
information technology. legal and management of certain strategic partner relationships. Brent has more than 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, partner relationship management, business finance and infrastructure. Previously, he was Astadia's President, North America sales.
Prior to Astadia, Brent co-founded MW Advisors in 2003, which combined with GrowthCircle to form Astadia. Previously, Brent held leadership positions including VP/Sales & Marketing and VP/Chief Administrative Office at The Telvista Company, a multi-national call center outsourcer; CEO and co-founder for an Internet-based market research company; and SVP & Managing Director in Bank of America's Global Corporate and Investment Banking group.
Brent has been a featured presenter and panelist for UBS, the Call Center Networking Group, and the Southwest Venture Forum. Brent holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University and a BBA in Finance from The University of Texas at Austin.
David Coit
David Coit has been a private equity investor for over 25 years and was a founding partner of North Atlantic Capital in 1986. He earned a BA from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Prior to attending business school, he served as an officer in the United States Navy. He is a past Chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Association of Small Business Investment Companies and has been on the Board of the New England Venture Capital Association.
He currently serves on several non-profit boards, including the Maine Community Foundation, Common Good Ventures, the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences and the Schepens Eye Research Institute, an affiliate of the Harvard Medical School.
Steven Horwitz
Steven Horwitz joined Kodiak Venture Partners in 2008 as an Operating Partner with over 20 years of operating experience in a wide range of high technology companies. Over the past eight years, Mr. Horwitz has served in numerous executive consulting and portfolio leadership roles for technology companies at various stages of development and growth.
Most recently, Mr. Horwitz served as CEO of Vettro (acquired by Antenna Software), and Chairman of the Board at Vericom Technologies steering the organization in a new strategic direction. He also served as President and CEO of several enterprise software companies including Clareos, RulesPower (Acquired by Fair Isaac) and Q-Link Technologies a pioneer in the Business Process Management market segment (Acquired by Adobe Systems). Prior to Q-Link, he served as Vice President of Business Development at Tech Data Corporation and was part of the founding team at ENTEX Information Services.
Mr. Horwitz earned his Bachelor of Business Administration degree
in Finance at Hofstra University.
Mark Shirman, founder, President and CEO of GlassHouse Technologies, has over twenty years of entrepreneurial experience in the IT services arena. Mr. Shirman is responsible for building upon the GlassHouse leadership in the storage solutions space, managing the investment community, and setting the vision for the company’s solutions development. He also serves as a member of the Boston Public Library Technology Council and a director for Baby’s Breath, a non-profit organization focused connecting infants with loving homes and families.
Before starting GlassHouse Mr. Shirman was Executive Vice President of Corporate Development and CTO at Convergent Group. Prior to Convergent Group, he was responsible for the worldwide eBusiness and CRM lines of business for Cambridge Technology Partners. Mr. Shirman started his career with Arthur Andersen & Co. after receiving his BA in Economics from Brandeis University and his MBA from American University.
Tom Vadnais was named ValueClick's chief executive officer in May 2007. Mr. Vadnais joined ValueClick in October 2001 through the Company's acquisition of Mediaplex, where he was president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors. Mr. Vadnais became a member of the ValueClick board of directors in October 2001 and also has held general manager roles for the Company’s Mediaplex technology and Commission Junction affiliate marketing businesses. In June 2006, Mr. Vadnais was promoted to the role of president of ValueClick's U.S. operations.
Mr. Vadnais' experience prior to ValueClick includes positions as: president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors of Data Processing Resources Corporation; president and chief executive officer of Tascor, Inc.; a member of Norrell's board of directors; and a member of the board of directors of Traffic.com. In addition, Mr. Vadnais held various management roles such as vice president of operations and assistant to the chairman and CEO during his 23-year tenure at IBM.
Mr. Vadnais holds a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a master's degree in business administration from Golden Gate University. Mr. Vadnais is a graduate of The University of Virginia Darden School of Business Executive Program and the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
