Chris Connaway joined the Verizon Developer Community because he loves assisting people that are new to electronic devices. He enjoys helping people become more productive in their work and personal lives by making their phone work harder for them. He has worked in the Automotive Industry for the past 12 years, most recently as a Technical Manager.
Mitch Lasky has spent more than two decades in the mobile gaming, new media and interactive entertainment business. Prior to joining Benchmark Capital, Mitch served as executive vice president of Mobile and Online at Electronic Arts. Previously, he was chairman and chief executive officer of JAMDAT Mobile, Inc, the leading global publisher of wireless entertainment applications, which was acquired by EA in 2005. Prior to JAMDAT, Mitch served as general manager of eCompanies Wireless LLC, an Internet business incubator. He also spent five years at Activision, most recently serving as executive vice president of Worldwide Studios. In that role he was responsible for product development, business development and global operations. Earlier in his career, Mitch practiced law, worked at the Walt Disney Company and started a massive multiplayer online game company.
Kevin began his career at SGI recruiting developers for the IRIX platform. In 1994 he decided to pursue the burgeoning consumer Email space as the 7th employee at Software.com where he helped Portals (Excite), ISPs (AT&T), and OEMs (Netscape) deliver open messaging services to its customers. In 2000, Software.com merged with Phone.com to create Openwave and introduce the world to the mobile Web. At Openwave, Kevin worked with carriers, device manufacturers, and content providers to develop an ecosystem upon which today's global wireless data business was built. In 2003 Kevin joined another mobile pioneer, Qpass, in sales and corporate strategy roles focused on developing the ecosystem for premium content and applications. Most recently, Kevin served as VP, Sales and Business Development at Buzzwire, a service for tracking what's hot on the mobile Web.
Gigi Wang has an international background in marketing, sales and strategy for mobile, Web services and telecom companies and is currently on the Board of the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB), a high-tech forum in Silicon Valley. Previously, she was the SVP of Marketing and Alliances for July Systems, a mobile Internet company providing retailing and marketing solutions to carriers and media brands. She was also CEO & Co-founder of AsiaQuest, a company providing market entry services for companies entering Asian markets where the team developed relationships with service providers across Asia. Gigi started up the International Carrier Marketing group for Ascend Communications (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent). As an Internet pioneer, she launched the TRUSTe Internet privacy program in the mid-90’s and also started up Pacific Internet in Singapore (IPO’d on NASDAQ), along with selling data services at Pacific Bell (acquired by SBC/AT&T). Gigi has a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University where she was President of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and a MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Though initially renowned singularly for his musical talents, Pete Wentz has evolved and taken new form, joining a pantheon of successful business moguls. Wentz is the bassist and lyricist of the Grammy nominated band Fall Out Boy, an accomplished author, artist and philanthropist. Over the past few years, Wentz has leveraged his initial music stardom into a complete portfolio of music recording and management, apparel, publishing, and media and nightlife projects. His boundless range of talents and prolific entrepreneurial skills has solidified his place as one of entertainment’s most successful and enterprising stars.