Present
- President @ M.M.LaFleur
- Advisory Board & Mentor @ EforAll Roxbury
- Mentor @ Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship Summer Accelerator
Past
- President @ Group Nine Media
- President & CFO @ Thrillist and JackThreads
- CFO @ Huffington Post
- Advisor @ Lerer Hippeau
- University: Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst
Highlights:
- Raised over $165 million through multiple fundraise processes of various levels of complexity
- Bought and sold companies through a wide variety of M&A transactions
- Built highly scalable operations teams from the ground up
- Assembled amazing leadership teams that led our companies through periods of high growth and difficult challenges
- Led the reorganization of a global PR agency spanning 29 offices to improve profitability and build a stronger foundation for future growth
The Foundation of My Business Experience
I am the former President and COO of Group Nine Media, one of the world’s largest digital-first media companies, and the former CFO of the Huffington Post.
In early 2009, I joined the Huffington Post as the company’s first CFO. During my time at HuffPost, I grew the operations teams to support our accelerating growth and helped assemble an amazing management team. We completed two acquisitions that brought important technology to the platform, and I developed sales commission and executive compensation plans that aligned compensation with revenue and EBITDA performance. In 2011, I led the process that resulted in the sale of the company to AOL for $315 million.
Very soon after the sale of HuffPost, I joined Thrillist as the company’s first CFO. The company had recently acquired JackThreads, a men’s fashion e-commerce company, and both companies were going through a period of rapid growth and change. I built our finance, HR, legal and analytics teams from the ground up. I also moved the CTO and technology team into my part of the organization, balancing our CEO’s product focus with a methodical approach to technology development and execution that ensured we were constantly aligning available resources with product priorities.
As the CFO, and then later as President of Thrillist Media Group, I led the company through our $13 million Series A in 2012, and a $54 million Series B in 2015. That Series B turned into a simultaneous spin out of JackThreads to split it from our media business, with a separate fundraise for each company from two different groups of investors.
A year later, in 2016, I led the process that raised $100 million in Series C funding from Discovery Communications, coinciding with the simultaneous merger of four digital media companies to create Group Nine Media. Group Nine consists of four mission-driven, category-leading brands including Thrillist (food, drink & travel), NowThis (news & entertainment), TheDodo (animals & activism) and Seeker (science, tech & exploration).
From 2011-2017, I was an advisor to Lerer Hippeau. As an advisor, I had the opportunity to meet and mentor portfolio company founders. In the very early days of the fund, I also helped LH put in place the operational infrastructure needed to support its growth. Today, Lerer Hippeau is one of the largest seed-stage investment funds in New York City.
In 1998, I was appointed the Finance Manager for the newly launched North American expansion of Text 100 Public Relations, a global technology public relations firm. I was appointed to the position of Global CFO of Text 100 in October of 2000, just as the dot.com crash was accelerating. At the time the company had 29 offices worldwide and over 475 employees. The following few years proved to be an exceptional learning experience as we led the company through that period of upheaval and came out ready for the next leg of growth.
Over the course of my nine years at Text 100, I had the opportunity to lead the development of global growth strategies through a combination of O&O offices and licensed affiliates. We launched shared services hubs in our North America, EMEA, and APAC regions to streamline operations and improve productivity. I led the development of global compensation strategies that aligned with local and global goals. Today, Text 100 is an award-winning agency serving Fortune 500 clients around the world.
I’m a graduate of the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. After graduating from Isenberg, I spent seven years as a CPA, working at the regional firm of Canby, Maloney & Company (acquired by BDO) and Kenneth Leventhal (acquired by Ernst & Young).