Executive Team
Anand Subramanian
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Subramanian is a technology entrepreneur and innovator who founded ContextWeb, creators of the online advertising exchange ADSDAQ, in 2000. His vision was to develop an easy-to-use ad exchange that brings together advertisers and publishers to enable mutually beneficial advertising transactions. As CEO, Mr. Subramanian directs all aspects of ContextWeb's business and operations. This includes building and managing a team of technology innovators, sales, marketing, operations, product management and new product development. He also has an extensive background in technology sales and delivery and a proven track record of corporate leadership.Before joining ContextWeb, Mr. Subramanian was Vice President of Product Development at Gobi, Inc., a provider of accessible home computing and Internet connectivity. From 1996 through 1999, he managed a team of technology consultants and sales staff at iGate Capital, an IT and finance/accounting staffing resource company, with responsibility for major accounts including AT&T, Bellcore and MCI. In the early 1990s, Mr. Subramanian built and ran a successful healthcare software business in Bombay, India. He is a frequent speaker and commentator on technology, digital media and the convergence of the two. He has recently spoken at "Think Tomorrow~Today," ThinkPanmure's 2008 conference, The Upstream Group's Seller Forum, iMedia Communication, Inc.'s Agency Summit, Red Herring's "Always On" Conference, and he was also a finalist for The Metro New York Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2008 Awards.
He received his Bachelor of Technology degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay in 1992.
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Richard Sheldon
Chief Financial Officer
Richard Sheldon is the Chief Financial Officer of ContextWeb, Inc. Prior to joining ContextWeb in 2006, Mr. Sheldon provided CFO consulting and capital-raising services to small and middle market companies. He has also held CFO positions at ECONnergy Energy Company, Concrete Inc. and Weatherford Global Compression Services. In addition, Mr. Sheldon was a business development executive at GE Capital and a strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company. He started his career at Arthur Andersen in London where he became a Chartered Accountant.Mr. Sheldon holds a M.A. from Oxford University, a M.B.A from Columbia Business School and is a member of the Chartered Accountancy Association.
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Shanthini Sarkar
CPO, Chief Product Officer
Mrs. Sarkar comes to ContextWeb, creators of the online advertising exchange ADSDAQ, from Gobi, Inc., a provider of accessible home computing and Internet connectivity, where she was the Assistant Director of Client Experience responsible for timely order fulfillment and efficient customer service. At Gobi, she also served as Project Manager, overseeing the design, implementation and rollout of the in-house order management system. Mrs. Sarkar's earlier positions included Lead Software Developer at Sapient Corporation.She is a frequent speaker and commentator on technology, digital media and media convergence and has recently spoken at Magazine Publishers' Association (MPA) event "Ad Networks and Exchanges: Building Brands Online," appeared at OPA's 2008 London: "Forum for the Future," and was featured on a panel at Wimlink's first event: "Dream Big: The Future of Women in Media" event.
Mrs. Sarkar holds a B.S. degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University and a M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University.
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Jay Sears
EVP, Strategic Products & Business Development
Jay Sears is EVP, Strategic Products and Business Development at ContextWeb, creators of the online advertising exchange ADSDAQ. Mr. Sears is responsible for bringing new products to market as well as developing key strategic relationships that drive audience and revenue acquisition.Prior to joining ContextWeb, Mr. Sears was SVP Business & Strategy Development for EDGAR Online from 1997 to 2004 where he drove the strategy that took the company from an under $1 million entrepreneurial business to a publicly traded NASDAQ company. He created over 300 partnerships including ones with Yahoo!, The Nasdaq Stock Market and Microsoft. Prior to EDGAR Online, he served as VP Marketing for Wolff New Media, the subject of Burn Rate by Vanity Fair media columnist Michael Wolff. Mr. Sears regularly speaks at industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies, PPC Summit, PubCon, ad:tech and CIMA and has been quoted in publications such as Jack Myers Report, MediaWeek, Inc Magazine and many others.
Mr. Sears received his BA in political science from Kenyon College in 1989.
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Robert Daniel
SVP, Sales and Publisher Development
Before he joined ContextWeb, creators of the online advertising exchange ADSDAQ, in 2006, Mr. Daniel worked at Advertising.com for over six years, most recently as Director of Strategy. At Advertising.com, he started as an analyst and was promoted numerous times into various sales and sales management positions. Mr. Daniel's team grew revenue by over 1,200% in 4 years and they were instrumental in selling Advertising.com's branding and behavioral suite of products. Prior to his work at Advertising.com, he was a financial analyst at AT&T.Back to top
David Peterson
SVP, Technology
Prior to joining ContextWeb, creators of the online advertising exchange ADSDAQ, in 2007, Mr. Peterson provided CTO consulting services to both large and mid-size companies. From 2000-2005, he was CTO of Unicast, a rich-media internet advertising services company; and from 1989-1999, as R&D Manager, he transformed the R&D group of the Associated Press from a cost center to a revenue center by designing products for internal usage and commercial resale.In addition, Mr. Peterson was a technology executive at Xplus1 (formerly Poindexter Systems), a pioneer in the online advertising predictive marketing technologies, and Armanta, a financial software company. He started his career at ITT (now Alcatel) as Lead Architect on their technology team.
Mr. Peterson holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.
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