Drew Mohoric is the co-founder of Innoblue, a non-profit, early-stage business accelerator in State College, PA.
Innoblue starts and supports innovative business, civic, and social ventures. The company’s vision is a community transformed by entrepreneurship; where people act on the double bottom line, to do well while doing good.
Mohoric is a Schreyer Honors College student in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State with an expected graduation date of May 2012.
Davis Shaver is creator and editor-at-large of Onward State, a student blog that focuses on the Penn State community. The blog publishes a mix of news, features, and opinions.
Shaver also held Penn State's first Teaching and Learning with Technology Student Fellowship, through which he and a team of educational technologists developed a concept for next-generation university management.
Shaver is a student in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State, with an expected graduation date of May 2012 with a degree in History and a minor in Science, Technology, and Society Studies.
David Chu, the founder of Spyder Rentals, a company that rents an exotic specialty vehicle called a Can-Am Spyder. Before starting Spyder Rentals in 2008, Chu worked at IBM for six years starting as a public sector IT consultant and then went on to become an account executive for the System x server brand.
Chu is currently working with three other young entrepreneurs to produce a new social media game called, “RockThePaper.” It’s a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to benefit certain charities and gives participants a chance to win a substantial amount of money. The game will be available on phones purchased in specific countries with an executive contract with Nokia.
Chu is a 2003 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State.
Nick Berardi is CEO and co-founder of Hoppio, a startup that aims to help mobile developers create feature-rich apps by taking the hassle out of maintaining a scalable back-end server.
Berardi is the owner of Managed Fusion, a leading information technology consulting firm serving clients throughout the U.S. Managed Fusion specializes in helping companies scale in the cloud and creating cutting-edge retail point-of-sale and e-commerce applications. Previously, he served as CTO and co-founder of IDEA PiPE, a social collaboration tool that allows members to share ideas and track their progress across their enterprises. He has also worked for Voveo, as director of technology services, and for Lockheed Martin.
Berardi is a 2003 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia.
Daehee Park works in monetization and analytics at Mulu, a celebrity-supported social commerce platform that raises money for charities. His passions include high-risk startups, performance marketing, and “creating unfair advantages with data.” At Mulu, he leads the eCommerce team around platform monetization, brand integration, data strategy, and analytics.
Prior to joining Mulu, Park worked as a marketing strategy consultant at Acxiom, a global interactive marketing services company, and co-founded Whim Media, a performance marketing agency based in State College, PA.
Park is a 2009 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. He currently lives in Tempe, Ariz., and is the father of two children.
J. T. Marino is chancellor of engineering at Mulu, which USA Today reporter Jon Swartz called, “e-commerce with a cause.” Mulu, which formally launched in early March at SXSW Interactive, is a social media platform with a unique model for sharing and discovery that aims to benefit social good through charity partnerships. Within a user's profile, he or she can identify the charities for which he or she is raising money. A unique feature of Mulu is its question-and-answer format and “guru points” that go to curators for activity based on their recommendations.
Marino’s past experience includes working as a software engineer at Hashrocket and at West Arete Computing. Marino attended Penn State and studied computer science and mathematics. While there, he was a member of the Ruby Group Meetup and the Penn State Entrepreneurship Club, and was a computer science and math tutor.
Nick Berardi is CEO and co-founder of Hoppio, a startup that aims to help mobile developers create feature-rich apps by taking the hassle out of maintaining a scalable back-end server.
Berardi is the owner of Managed Fusion, a leading information technology consulting firm serving clients throughout the U.S. Managed Fusion specializes in helping companies scale in the cloud and creating cutting-edge retail point-of-sale and e-commerce applications. Previously, he served as CTO and co-founder of IDEA PiPE, a social collaboration tool that allows members to share ideas and track their progress across their enterprises. He has also worked for Voveo, as director of technology services, and for Lockheed Martin.
Berardi is a 2003 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. He currently lives and works in Philadelphia.
Chris Fanini is the CTO and co-founder of Weebly, a tech start-up based out of San Francisco, California. Weebly is an extremely simple and powerful way for anybody to create a website, blog, or online store. More than 10 million people have created a website with Weebly, and 12 percent of the U.S. population visits a Weebly website every month.
Weebly was named one of Time’s 50 best websites of 2007, and has been featured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Entrepreneur magazines, as well as on NBC and the BBC.
Fanini attended the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State.
David Rusenko is the CEO and co-founder of Weebly, a tech start-up based out of San Francisco, California. Weebly is an extremely simple and powerful way for anybody to create a website, blog, or online store. More than 10 million people have created a website with Weebly, and 12 percent of the U.S. population visits a Weebly website every month.
Weebly was named one of Time’s 50 best websites of 2007, and has been featured in Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Entrepreneur magazines, as well as on NBC and the BBC. Rusenko was named to Forbes’ “30 under 30” list in 2011.
Rusenko is a 2007 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, and is the youngest recipient of the prestigious Penn State Alumni Achievement Award. He lives and works in San Francisco, and enjoys traveling, scuba diving, DJing, and playing racquetball during his free time.
J. T. Marino is chancellor of engineering at Mulu, which USA Today reporter Jon Swartz called, “e-commerce with a cause.” Mulu, which formally launched in early March at SXSW Interactive, is a social media platform with a unique model for sharing and discovery that aims to benefit social good through charity partnerships. Within a user's profile, he or she can identify the charities for which he or she is raising money. A unique feature of Mulu is its question-and-answer format and “guru points” that go to curators for activity based on their recommendations.
Marino’s past experience includes working as a software engineer at Hashrocket and at West Arete Computing. Marino attended Penn State and studied computer science and mathematics. While there, he was a member of the Ruby Group Meetup and the Penn State Entrepreneurship Club, and was a computer science and math tutor.
Daehee Park works in monetization and analytics at Mulu, a celebrity-supported social commerce platform that raises money for charities. His passions include high-risk startups, performance marketing, and “creating unfair advantages with data.” At Mulu, he leads the eCommerce team around platform monetization, brand integration, data strategy, and analytics.
Prior to joining Mulu, Park worked as a marketing strategy consultant at Acxiom, a global interactive marketing services company, and co-founded Whim Media, a performance marketing agency based in State College, PA.
Park is a 2009 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State. He currently lives in Tempe, Ariz., and is the father of two children.
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Pre-registration is preferred for this event (http://istmeetandgreet.eventbrite.com)
Neilye Garrity is the co-founder of Candid Career, a video-based career exploration website that hosts informational interviews with industry professionals. Candid Career’s notion is that we can all learn from the experiences of others. The company is dedicated to providing the inside scoop on careers so viewers will be informed and ready for what lies ahead.
Garrity worked as an IT Consultant for IBM in the Washington, D.C. area for six years prior to starting Candid Career.
Garrity is a 2004 graduate of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State and lives in Annapolis, MD.
Matt Miller is CTO of CyberCoders, a nationwide recruiting firm founded in 1999 that specializes in locating sales, executive, technical, financial, accounting, engineering, scientific, mortgage, construction, and operational positions across all industries. He is also the CTO and co-founder of CareerBliss, an online career community that helps everyone find happiness in the workplace.
Prior to co-founding CareerBliss, Miller worked in the defense industry for the National Security Agency and Lockheed Martin Corporation focusing on security, automation, and large data systems. He is passionate about technology trends including openness, personalization, and mobility.
Miller is a 2001 graduate of the College of Engineering at Penn State and has an M.S. in computer science from the University of Southern California.
Matt Brezina is the CEO and co-founder of Sincerely, a startup that makes it easy to send real photos in the mail from a mobile phone. Postagram, Sincerely’s first product, enables users to send postcards made from photos taken with Instagram, the popular photo-sharing app for the iPhone.
Brezina also co-founded Xobni, an e-mail software company that makes your inbox and address book smarter. Xobni, and its Smartr product suite, discovers all the people you’ve ever called or sent an e-mail or text message to, and creates complete social profiles that are instantly searchable. Xobni’s application for Microsoft Outlook has been downloaded more than 7 million times and was called, “the next generation of social networking” by Bill Gates in 2008. Xobni has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications.
Brezina is a 2003 graduate of the College of Engineering at Penn State.
Steve Huffman is the co-founder of Reddit, a social news website where where users provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what's good and what's bad. Huffman created Reddit with his college roommate, Alexis Ohanian. Reddit was initially funded by Y Combinator and grew to become one of the largest social news sites online. In October of 2006, Reddit was acquired by Conde Nast Publications.
In October 2009, Huffman left Reddit and in 2010, co-founded the travel search site Hipmunk, a new travel search site that aims to make travel planning easier. Hipmunk was designed to help people who are overwhelmed with pages of irrelevant search results. Flight results are presented in a visual "timeline" that allows people to select the best flight for them at a glance. Hotel results are shown on a map so that people can view where in a destination they will be staying and the landmarks near them.
Huffman is a 2005 graduate of the University of Virginia.
