Meet the Team

Eduardo is the founder of Bright and provides the vision and strategy for our products. His primary role is to drive the engineering, product, operations, and marketing teams crazy with his ideas. He founded SocialHour, which sold to PlayPhone in 2012 and he’s an active angel investor, having invested in several successful companies including OpenInstall, which sold to AVG Technologies.

Steve is a technology entrepreneur with over 15 years CEO experience in Silicon Valley. Together with Ed, he provides the strategy, direction, and vision for our business. He was the founder of Plum District (backed by Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst and Comcast), PacketTrap (backed by August Capital and acquired by Quest Software), Lasso Logic (backed by Outlook Ventures and acquired by SonicWALL), and Learning Productions (acquired by SkillSoft). Steve earned his M.S. in Computer Science from The George Washington University.

Anthony is a founding member at Bright, leading our engineering team with his expertise in high scalability and social web application development. A farm boy from Minnesota, Anthony moved to the Bay Area in 2007 where he developed solutions for the social web as a Lead Engineer at Zynga and Care2.com. His passions include milking servers and herding engineers.

Nick is a founding member at Bright and works to develop our reporting and analytics infrastructure. His previous employers include Zynga, where he helped scale social games to millions of users, as well as FreeCause (acquired by Rakuten), one of the first online brand loyalty companies.

Nitin is a founding member at Bright, usually working on things no one will ever see. He earned his B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT because he wasn't smart enough to drop out.

Josh heads up our HR function and also works to build partnerships with job feed providers. He has a wide breadth of experience in the HR field, having done everything from partnering with industrial / organizational psychologists to assess the effectiveness of training programs, to creating and strengthening an organization's HR infrastructure. He is an HRCI certified Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and earned his B.A. in Business and Psychology from Lake Forest College.

Jason is responsbile for overseeing and driving our day-to-day business operations. Prior to Bright, he was part of the founding team at eBaumsworld.com, one of the first online entertainment portals and a pioneer in the user-generated content space. He served as Chief Operating Officer from its launch to an eventual $52M acquisition in 2007 by ZVUE Corp, a publicly traded company.

Skye studied computer science at Olin College and received her Masters' degree in User Experience Design at UC Berkeley. Her equal talents for design, coding, and yelling at Internet Explorer segued naturally into a career in Frontend Engineering. Her former employers include The MathWorks and BitTorrent, where she built software for interface designers and designed interfaces for software developers, respectively.

Sara studied computer science at the University of Texas, but after falling in love with Bright and joining the team she's now finishing up her studies at UC Berkeley. Sara is Bright's expert problem solver; she gained her experience in Playa del Carmen, Mexico as the operations director of the Illusion Boutique Hotel and as Bright's operations manager she makes sure that all the pieces fit together perfectly and that everyone feels at home at Bright.

Vivian handles the finances at Bright. She has more than 15 years of experience in finance and accounting in public and private companies including internet marketing, email marketing and consumer products. Vivian obtained her B.A. in business administration from UC Berkeley.

Jeff is a software engineer with an extensive background developing web applications on open source platforms. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree in computer science and business, and came to California two years ago to escape the frozen tundra of his homeland and pursue his interests in technology. In his spare time he enjoys playing the banjo and killing zombies.

Naomi's favorite things are one-line witticisms, snappy comebacks, and cheesy pick up lines. Thus her job is to entice users to Bright with less than 25 characters. She stole her B.A. in International Political Economy from UC Berkeley.

Rodrigo, the Brazilian Bieber, joined Bright as a web designer, but has since taken on the important title of Meme King. When not going out for a drink once a year, he spends his free time learning 3D design, creating mobile applications, programming, and entertaining his co-workers with Lolcats. He's set to earn his BSc Degree in Information Systems from Southern Brazil College (FASUL) this year.

Thiago, the other half of Bright’s Brazilian duo, earned his BSc Degree in Information Systems at Southern Brazil College (FASUL). Before joining Bright as a Front End Engineer, he freelanced as a PHP programmer and is always interested in learning about new related technologies. Outside of work, Thiago is busy being hardcore, often swimming with sharks or emulating Evel Knievel on his motorcycle.

David Hardtke, our Chief Scientist, is a former Nuclear Physicist who thinks that finding the right job should be easier than splitting an atom. David earned a B.S. at Duke and a Ph.D. at Ohio State. He did fundamental nuclear, particle and astrophysics research at CERN, Brookhaven, the South Pole, and U.C. Berkeley. During his research career, he worked on "big data" problems before "big data" became a marketing slogan. Recently, he has applied these tools to internet and enterprise applications.

Nikko writes masterful code from the land of mangoes.

As our Data Insights Scientist, Jacob's unquenchable thirst for data persists through slide tackles, knee slides, MRIs, and string finds. He received his B.S. in biochemistry from UCSD and his Ph.D. in computational and integrative neuroscience from UCSF. He also moonlights as the in-office orthodontist's assistant, and is the reason why Bright won the company award for most beautiful teeth.

Mike is our inside sales lead. He earned a degree in Communications from Arizona State University and started his professional career in Mortgage Banking, Mike returned to San Francisco to become a member of the University Partnership Team at Bright. An avid golfer and outdoorsman, Mike prides himself by being an endless source of knowledge in College Football and useless trivia.

Ben is a hill person from North Carolina and a member of our data science team. He earned a B.S. in Physics and Math from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from UC Santa Barbara. When he's not mashing data, he's wandering aimlessly around the office.

Katie is a fan of making everything beautiful and organized, and attempts to do so as part of the Design team at Bright. She received her B.S. in Communication from Boston University and has experience designing everything from greeting cards to this page. If you hear pop music or giggling in the office, it is most likely coming from her.

Rob is a member of the Product team at Bright. After graduating from Northwestern, he joined Teach For America and taught for two years in Chicago. Rob is an avid Bay Area sports fan and aspires to one day own his own deli.

Lance is a software engineer who was seduced by Bright's promise of free lunches. He earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and he likes watching and playing soccer, as well as pretending he can make music that other people would listen to.

Aaron is a product manager at Bright. He earned a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and previously worked at Microsoft designing safety features and managing the production site. Aaron is looking forward to being an empty-handed painter once he retires.

Adam leads Business Intelligence efforts at Bright, focusing his time on optimizing how we sell and deliver our product. Prior to Bright, Adam was the founder of enGreet, an online greeting card company, which was sold to Designer Greetings. Earlier in his career, he worked at ExactTarget and was a management consultant at Deloitte. Adam earned his B.S. in Industrial Management and Computer Science from Purdue University.

Anton spent some time at Stanford in the latter half of the last decade. One day he was given a piece of paper telling him he no longer needed to pay tuition, after which he wandered the earth eating for a year. He then returned to the Bay Area to work in economic research and cook in the high-end restaurant world.

Christophe is the Frenchie administrator in charge of Bright's infrastructure. He sees to it that everything works fine; if the site is down, he will be the one fixing it. He graduated from the Universite de Technologie de Compiegne and has a Master's degree in Computer Science. If you see someone working on a screen in 16-color mode, it should be him.

Valerie is the resident birthday wizard and kitchen tyrant. A San Francisco native, she has spent the better part of a decade researching the answer to the question "What do you do with a BA in English?"

When she's not at doing marketing at Bright, you can find Jen snowboarding in Tahoe, traveling abroad, or enjoying a night in with friends and a good bottle of wine. She's a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a degree in Socio-Economic and Political Global Studies.

Native to Japan, Taro studied astrophysics before his head exploded trying to figure out the universe. With his data research skills, Taro now hopes to help extraterrestrials find employment opportunities on Earth and make ends meet during their stay, although they are still unlikely to bother with us wee human beings.

Cecchi escaped the Boston weather to join Bright as a Front End Engineer. He spent a few years studying Computer Science at Northeastern University, before deciding California was more his taste. Cecchi lives for Patriots games, playing soccer, and playing some more soccer after that.

Lisa, VP of Product, is passionate about building great products, thinking of new and crazy ideas to test, and cracking jokes in her Eastern European accent. Prior to Bright, she sold virtual cows and baby turkeys at Farmville, later graduating to building the largest web-based cross-game product at Zynga, used by 700M people. Half Bulgarian and half Russian, she takes pride at confusing people with her Japanese last name. She earned her BA and BS at Penn and her MBA at Harvard. Lisa is an avid skier, swimmer and yogi.

George is Bright's Senior Enterprise Account Executive. George has over 16 years of sales experience in the Silicon Valley and was most recently at LinkedIn for four years. George was born and raised in Hawaii, attended USC and loves living in the Bay Area.

Jeune has an obsession for keeping his functions to 15 lines at the most whenever possible. When not in front of his laptop, you can find him raiding the pantry for instant noodles.