The MindTouch leadership team includes successful operators and technologists with a track record of building and growing breakthrough technology and successful businesses.
Aaron Fulkerson
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
As CEO of MindTouch, Aaron has grown the company from a small free, open source project into a widely respected brand in social business software with millions of users around the globe and an impressive list of customers. He was a member of Microsoft’s Advanced Strategies and Policies division where he worked on distributed systems research reporting to Microsoft Chief Strategy Officer, Craig Mundie. Aaron has also helped launch several non-profits and businesses outside the software industry. He also has been a contributing writer at CNN, Fortune, Gigaom, ReadWriteWeb, TechWeb, CMSWire and Forbes Magazine. He has been tapped by the White House to inform national education policy and he has been invited to the e-G8 to inform international technology policy. He is a sought after and dynamic public speaker who has presented at dozens of technology and business conferences. Aaron graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BS in Computer Science. You can find Aaron on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Steve Bjorg
Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Steve is a seasoned technologist and serial entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in software development and product design. He is the author of DReAM, an innovative service-oriented distributed architecture that is the foundation of MindTouch’s technology. Prior to founding MindTouch, Steve worked in advanced strategies at Microsoft. Before that, he founded a real-time 3D strategy game company. An expert in distributed systems and Web services, Steve has 7 patents and applications in distributed computing, behavioral type analysis, and graph theory. Steve received his BS/MS in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is now on the Advisory Board of its Computer Science department. You can find Steve on LinkedIn and Twitter
David Eads
Vice President of Sales Channels
David is responsible for all global sales efforts at MindTouch. He is enthusiastic about disruptive business technologies and he has held Vice President of Sales positions at several leading SaaS and Unified Communications companies. David has built direct and channel sales organizations that have generated over $100M in revenue. David has demonstrated successful sales leadership at Wayport Inc. (acquired by AWE in ’08), Fonality Inc. and PanTerra Networks Inc. David earned his BA degrees in Political Science, Sociology and English and graduated Cum Laude from Amherst College in Amherst, MA.
Damien Howley
Vice President of Customer Success
Damien is one of the first MindTouchers and he’s been instrumental to our success. He’s broadly recognized as an expert in customer/user experience and product help and he’s been an architect or contributor to some of the technology industries most innovative and award winning help sites. His work has impacted dozens of companies including: Intuit, Autodesk and ExactTarget. He is a customer success thought leader, evangelist and sought after speaker. Today Damien’s passion for user success benefits MindTouch customers as he heads the Customer Success team, which is responsible for designing effective and exceptional help experiences. Damien received his BS in Organizational Leadership from Miami University of Ohio. You can find Damien on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Pete Erickson
Distinguished Engineer
Pete has been with MindTouch since the beginning. Previous to MindTouch, he has held the title of CTO at other software start ups and worked at Great Plains Software and Microsoft. Pete has always been an open source and Linux enthusiast that enjoys solving complex problems. He is an expert at scalable, high availability, cloud infrastructure architectures since long before anyone at MindTouch thought they would ever utter “cloud” without sarcasm or a derisive snort. Pete received his BS in Computer Science from North Dakota State University.
Corey Ganser
Customer Experience Manager
Corey was one of the very first MindTouchers. He educates and promotes effective uses of technology to help users manage, grow, and engage others with their content. Within Corey’s 10 years of business and IT experience, 5 were spent dedicated to establishing and managing the Customer Support department at MindTouch. During this time, he supported customers like Intel, Intuit, Palm, NASA, Washington Post, and Paypal. He routinely returned 96% satisfaction results from these and other MindTouch customers. Corey received his bachelors in Entrepreneurship from the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, MN. You can find Corey on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Arne Claassen
Software Architect
Arne Claassen is an industry recognized expert in high performance computing. Among his many responsibilities at MindTouch he is the lead developer of DReAM; an open source REST framework. Arne has been involved in large scale web applications and distributed systems for over 10 years. His particular interest is in making parallel and asynchronous programming more accessible and intuitive. He received his Masters in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Alabama at Huntsville. You can find Arne on LinkedIn and Twitter.
