Wildfire

Victoria Ransom
Founder
Passionate about growing and marketing innovative companies, Victoria has been an entrepreneur since her early twenties and has developed three companies, all of which are successfully operating today. At Wildfire Interactive, Inc., Victoria oversees the strategic development and general management of the company while also collaborating with her team across the full spectrum of business levers.

As CEO, Victoria has led Wildfire to profitability in just one year and has built a client list that includes major brands and agencies including Facebook, Pepsi, Unilever, Sony, AT&T, Ogilvy, Publicis and Fleishman Hillard. Thousands of small and medium-size businesses all use Wildfire's turnkey marketing solutions. Wildfire is a two-time winner of the fbFund; investors include Facebook, Accel Partners and the Founder's Fund.

Prior to founding Wildfire Interactive, Inc. in the summer of 2008, Victoria was a student at Harvard Business School where she obtained an MBA. During her time at Harvard, Victoria helped to develop a distributed booking system for small and medium size travel companies and was selected to spend a summer at Highland Capital Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence.

Prior to business school, Victoria co-founded a global adventure travel company, Access Travel, Ltd., that operates today in 16 countries. She also spent two years as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York.

In addition to her MBA, Victoria has a bachelor of arts degree from Macalester College where she graduated Suma Cum Laude. In her capacity as an entrepreneur, Victoria has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine and Dow Jones VentureWire. In her spare time she is an avid snowboarder and surfer and a passionate adventure traveler who once spent six weeks living with a remote Amazonian tribe and five months living in a favela in Brazil!

Alain Chuard
Founder & Head of Product Management
With a talent for design, a passion for technology, and a strong background in entrepreneurship and management, Alain has been involved in the development of a number of innovative software products. In addition to co-founding Wildfire Interactive, Inc., Alain was responsible for the design and development of Voyager, a web-based customer management software for tour operator companies. This business won Alain a place in Highland Capital Partner's 2007 Entrepreneurship Program.

Prior to this, Alain co-founded Access Travel, Ltd., a leading brand in instructional adventure travel with operations in 16 countries and spent two years as a financial analyst with New York investment bank, Salomon Smith Barney.

Alain has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a bachelor's degree from Macalester College where he studied mathematics and economics. Formerly a professional snowboarder who competed on the World-Cup Pro Tour, Alain is passionate about snowboarding, surfing, mountain biking and traveling. He has been featured in two books and numerous magazines, including The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal and TransWorld Snowboarding.

Follow Alain on Twitter to receive his updates.

Remy Burger
Product Management
Remy holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Bern in Switzerland and is fluent in French, German, Swiss German, and English. At Wildfire Interactive, Inc., Remy primarily focuses on product management.

Prior to Wildfire Interactive, Inc., Remy co-owned and managed Atalier GmbH, an online games and entertainment company that provided digital marketing solutions. It was here that he won a Swiss Dialog Marketing Award for his work on a Swiss Milk Producers campaign. Later he was Senior Consultant at Publicis Modem, the digital unit of Publicis, Switzerland's largest advertising agency.

As a core-member of the Spartanic Rockers, a world-renowned Swiss/Japanese Breakdancing crew, Remy was able to travel the world judging and competing in numerous international breakdancing competitions. He also won an individual National Breakdance Championship title and is maintaining the longest running website about this dance on the web. Among his favorite things in life are gadgets, art, swimming, and reading.

Follow Remy on Twitter to receive his updates.

Curtis Kroeker
VP, Business Development
Curtis is passionate about being part of a great team, creating relationships and growing innovative businesses. His role leading Business Development for Wildfire gives him the opportunity to do all three. In addition to his BD responsibilities, Curtis taps his general management and strategy experience to collaborate on matters ranging from daily operations to long-term vision.

Prior to joining Wildfire, Curtis was the Director and General Manager of the Vehicles Business of eBay Motors where a car sold every minute (literally!). In this role, Curtis provided strategic, operating and team leadership directing all BD, marketing and product initiatives. Curtis and his team grew the Vehicles Business to one of eBay’s largest businesses, launched a retail offering for franchise dealers that tripled supply, and created an advertising platform to serve and monetize eBay Motors’ 12 million monthly unique visitors in new ways. In his seven years with eBay, Curtis held various roles with eBay Motors and the International Business Unit where he worked with in-country teams to help establish eBay in Europe.

Prior to eBay, Curtis spent five years with McKinsey & Company serving both incumbent and early-stage clients in Toronto, Atlanta and Johannesburg. Curtis’ work focused on growth strategy, market entry, and online business model development and launch.

Curtis holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Calgary. This Canuck is proud to call California home and lives in San Francisco with his wonderful wife and young daughter. Curtis and his family spend their spare time outdoors hiking, biking, sailing and surfing throughout Northern California and, when possible, abroad.

Derek Draper
VP of Sales
Derek graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in Economics and a BA in Psychology. After graduating, he worked in various different sales and operational roles for Fisher Investments in Woodside, CA.

After leaving Fisher Investments in 2007, Derek took the plunge and became an entrepreneur. He founded EMB, a Panamanian real estate investment corporation, and Red Shack Ventures, a company dedicated to building an online business directory for Central America (Hola! Guide). He also founded the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network of the Bay Area, which aims to encourage and support entrepreneurial endeavors within the local Dartmouth community.

At Wildfire, Derek is responsible for helping with the sales and account management efforts. When not working, Derek enjoys surfing, developing websites and taking photos of nature. Visit his website to learn more about Derek and check out his photos.

Maya Grinberg
Community Manager & Marketing Associate
Maya is a Belarus-born, New-York-City-bred, Silicon Valley transplant. A proud bookworm of the both the physical and interwebs versions of written word, you can usually find her with her nose buried in a book, or a laptop. She has contributed some blog posts to several lady oriented blogs, like CuteGeek.com and TechTarts.com.

Maya is a proud graduate of the Applied Economics and Management Program at Cornell. That's Big Red speak for having a degree in business. It is also Big Red speak for "Dang, it was REALLY cold over there."

Prior to her joining the Wildfire team where she manages all the outreach channels including the blog, newsletter, social media, and video series, Maya was a strategy consultant for IBM. She worked primarily in the industry of Energy and Utilities around newly developing Smart Grid initiatives.

In her free time, Maya loves nothing more than driving down to the local animal shelter to spend the day snorgling all the dogs that spend time there. It's a real volunteer position! Except they don't use the word "snorgling." Even though that's what she does. As well as rubbing bellies.

On most days, you can find her spending time walking outside with her face raised to the sky, because she still can't believe how awesome the weather is here.

Follow her on Twitter as @papayamaya.

Kristen Wo
Account Manager
Born and raised in Hawaii on the island of Oahu, Kristen Wo did not grow up imagining that her career would take her outside of Hawaii. When she went to Stanford to major in Economics, she always came back to the islands for summer internships, and imagined she'd return for good upon graduation. However, when she met the founders of Wildfire in the summer of 2009 and began interning out of the apartment in Menlo Park that Wildfire called it's headquarters, something changed.

Watching Wildfire stretch its wings, Kristen, the first and now "oldest" employee of the startup decided she wanted to stick around for the ride. As the lead Account Manager, Kristen regularly juggles handfuls of client campaigns, interfacing between Wildfire's team of designers and client administrators to make sure everything looks, feels, and acts to the highest company standards.

Outside of Wildfire, Kristen likes playing tennis, dancing hula, traveling, and going out with friends. She is the authority on sushi in Palo Alto and regularly guides n00bs in the office to the good spots around town.

Doug Regner
Sr. Account Executive
Though he was born in Boulder, CO, Doug Regner lived 17 years of his youth (because he's so ancient now) in Tuscon and Tempe. When he was 16 years old, Doug was selected by the Speaker of the House to serve as a Congressional Page. He moved out to Capital Hill when he was still in high school and attended school at the top floor of the Library of Congress. From this experience, he developed a collection of assorted handshake-with-government-officials photos, including former Mayor Marion Barry, and New Mexico Governor Richardson.

During college at Occidental, where he majored in Economics, Doug played one year of baseball and then switched to rugby. Something hit a nerve, and he has been playing ever since. Currently he plays with the Olympic Club, a Division 1 mens club rugby team. He is proud to play with several teammates who have been on the US Mens National team.

After Occidental , Doug traveled in Europe for 2 months and then started a 7.5 year career at Fisher Investments, where he held varied roles, including Research Analyst, Sales Manager, and Innovation Manager. When Doug is not working, he loves everything that could be done outdoors, including mountain biking, running, hiking, snowboarding, and plenty of other athletic activity verbs. He has made it a point to go on at least one international trip every year since college. Catch up with him on Twitter at @dougregner.

Dan Davis
Sr. Account Executive
Dan graduated from Occidental College with a BA in Economics. After graduating, he headed to New Zealand where he spent time traveling, studying finance and planting over 1,000 trees. After returning to the US in 2001, Dan cut his teeth in the startup world before joining Fisher Investments and moving through various roles ranging from Sales to Operations to Project and Product management.

After leaving Fisher Investments in 2008, Dan made the move to the software world, working with the Meltwater Group in program, project and product management. In the end, the draw to work in a small startup and the great team at Wildfire were too much to resist and he joined to help show clients the way in reaching their goals and running great promotions.

If not working, Dan enjoys snowboarding, hiking, sailing and anything that involves outdoor activity as well as traveling all over, generally to visit his enormous family.

Ben Arnon
Sr. Account Executive
Ben Arnon has always been passionate about the convergence of media and technology. This is evidenced in his diverse professional background. Ben is based in New York City and enjoys selling Wildfire’s innovative customer engagement and social marketing platform to major brands and agencies.

Ben spent the first decade of his career in the media content business. Based at the time in Los Angeles, Ben initially worked in feature film development at Jersey Films and then held brand and retail marketing roles at Universal Pictures. Ben later joined Yahoo! Music as Director of Business Development, where he led an initiative to syndicate Yahoo’s licensed music video content to major social networks including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Piczo. Additionally, Ben managed several content acquisition deals for both Yahoo! Music and Yahoo! Movies.

In 2008, Ben moved to Washington, DC to become Director of Business Development & Sales at Blue State Digital, a CRM technology and new media strategy firm best known for leading all new media strategy and technology for President Obama’s presidential campaign. At Blue State Digital, Ben led efforts to sell community engagement and brand marketing programs, that replicated the strategies and tactics utilized by the Obama campaign’s new media program, to major media and consumer brands.

Ben possesses an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a BA from Emory University. Additionally, Ben actively blogs for the Huffington Post. Check out his blog posts at: www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-arnon

Brad Wolf
Account Executive
Though he was born in Chicago, Brad Wolf grew up and attended school in Phoenix, AZ and is thus a die hard Phoenix Suns fan. During his stint as a Business and Psychology major at Arizona State University, Brad participated in the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative Contest. While his idea did not win the college competition, it sprung into existence in real life as Dorm Room Movers, a collegiate moving and storage solutions company which is still active and currently offering service at 7 universities across the country.

After his graduation from ASU, Brad worked for a little over a year at String Letter Publishing doing ad sales for two major national music magazines and websites. In November of 2009, Brad started a second company, an app development firm called Bearded Jew Apps. Brad’s iPhone app is the cause of much amusement around the office.

At Wildfire, Brad is an Account Executive, focusing his love of all things web, networking, technological innovation, and Silicon Valley into helping Wildfire’s clients create engaging, interactive promotions for their varied brands.

Brad is a huge music lover and can play an alarming amount of instruments, including some of the more colorful, such as the banjo and harmonica. He describes the best moment of his life (“hands down!”) to be when he was on the Price is Right during college and won a car from Bob Barker (true story!)

Nic Bennett
Account Executive
Nic is a true insider in the field of Online Advertising, bringing nearly seven years of experience at Google to the Wildfire Interactive team. Having been front and center for the rapid-fire growth of Google's AdWords platform, Nic was eager to move on to the next big field in Online Advertising: Social Media. At Wildfire Interactive, Nic works on Sales and Account Management, ensuring the highest level of client satisfaction and goal fulfillment for our advertisers.

At Google, Nic wore many hats, from helping establish the early sales best practices to planning the company picnic. One highlight was spending six months in Hyderabad, India, growing operations internationally. Prior to Google, Nic obtained a BS in Marketing from Santa Clara University.

Having grown up in the green state of Oregon, Nic has a firmly entrenched love of the great outdoors...but not the rain. You can find him in his free time surfing, hiking, playing basketball, and just enjoying the bountiful California sunshine whenever possible.

Brendan McManus
Account Executive
Brendan is a 2009 Notre Dame graduate obsessed with entrepreneurship, social networking, usability, and user experience. He teamed with two of Victoria's Harvard Business School classmates to launch UpDown.com, the leading social platform for virtual investing, live on CNBC in September 2007. While at UpDown, he fearlessly took on many roles, including those of a financial officer, a creative marketer, and community manager. He continued working for UpDown throughout his final two years at Notre Dame, including his time studying abroad in Rome from January through May of 2008 when he loved skiing the Swiss Alps, hitting the beaches of southern France, and exploring the Eternal City.

Prior to working at UpDown, Brendan passionately supported the Programming Director, PR Director, and Executive Producer of New England Sports Network, the official television network of the Boston Red Sox. Hailing from North Andover, MA, he attended Phillips Andover Academy, high school of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes (and rival school of Phillips Exeter Academy, high school of co-founder Mark Zuckerburg) and remains a die-hard Red Sox fan.

Matt Monahan
Advisor
Matt is a Stanford University graduate, marketect and creativitor – a thought leader for new and innovative socially-driven marketing platforms.

Matt worked through high school as a videographer at Alliance Wake, an action sports centric production house that delivers magazines, television shows, and web content to enthusiasts worldwide.

While an undergrad, Matt co-founded The CoMotion Group, a consultancy that helped legacy media companies understand how to design successful viral video campaigns. The CoMotion Group was absorbed into 750 Industries in March of 2008. 750 Industries is a social video marketing platform with expertise in engaging consumers through shareable media, delivering TV-like reach, along with immediacy, targetability and tracking. 750 Industries changed its name to Sharethrough in June of 2009.

At the tender age of 24, Matt currently serves as co-founder and principal at CF Holdings // Creativitr - a social media centric consultancy and product incubator.