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Key People
Management
Alex Kazim, Co-Founder & CEO
In August 2007, Alex Kazim founded Tokoni Inc. with his wife, Mary Lou Song. In his role as CEO, he is responsible for the company's operations and strategic growth plans.
Previously, Alex held several top management positions at eBay Inc. during his nine year tenure. Most recently, from 2005 to 2006, Alex was president of Skype, eBay's internet communications company where he was responsible for product development and innovation of the company's offerings worldwide. He played a key leadership role in accelerating the company's product offering and its engineering infrastructure, as well successfully integrating Skype with eBay.
Other eBay positions included senior vice president, New Ventures, from 2004 to 2005, where he was in charge of managing the company's global classifieds properties, including Kijiji, Marktplaats and Rent.com. Additionally, he was charged with the responsibility of developing new business ideas for the company, including the acquisition of Shopping.com in 2005.
From 2002 to 2004, as vice president, Marketing and Business Operations, PayPal, the eBay-owned online payment company, Alex managed all revenue-generating parts of PayPal's global business, including eBay-related transactions and merchant services business.
In his roles as vice president, Solutions Group, Alex launched the eBay API and managed the eBay Developer Program, and as director of engineering, Alex managed various software development groups at the company, including the core auction platform, Search, Customer Support tools and Billing.
Before eBay, Alex was CEO of Ix Entertainment, a 3DO and PC Game Developer. His career began at Apple where he was a software developer for Mac Communications Toolbox and managed software add-ons for PowerBook computers.
Alex earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Rice University. He and his wife and business partner, Mary Lou Song, have three children.
Mary Lou Song, Co-Founder
Mary Lou Song co-founded Tokoni Inc. with her husband, Alex Kazim, in 2007. It was Mary Lou who conceived the idea of creating a global internet community to help people share their first-hand stories and experiences and to connect with others through shared stories of interest.
In her active role as Tokoni's vice president, Community, Mary Lou oversees product marketing and community development where her key responsibilities are to grow the Tokoni community and help foster a breadth and depth of stories contributed by its members.
Mary Lou's career has focused largely on Internet community building, starting formidably at eBay where she was the company's third full-time employee. Charged to help foster an inclusive and active community, during her tenure from 1996 to 2002, she helped grow eBay's online community from 15,000 community members to then more than 20 million users globally.
In her eBay position as senior product manager, Mary Lou helped build a cooperative relationship between the company and the user community, combining traditional product marketing with online community marketing. She was responsible for the strategic direction of community products, for the development and implementation of community tools, and for community initiatives that impacted eBay's global community.
Following eBay, from 2003 to 2004, Mary Lou served as director, Community Development of Friendster, one of the first and now a leading global social network company, where she was responsible for the strategic direction of the company's community. In the position, Mary Lou helped develop initiatives to nurture the community, including features, advertising, sponsorships, acquisitions and international expansion.
Mary Lou holds a BS in Journalism from Medill School at Northwestern University, and a master's degree in media studies from Stanford University.
Brian Sweeny, VP of Operations
As vice president, Operations, Brian Sweeney is responsible for the technical operations of the company's Internet and corporate networks. Leveraging his experience with world-class information systems design, Sweeney has designed and implemented the Tokoni systems with a focus on scalability and high-availability operations.
Brian held various management positions in systems and database administration, site operations and technical architecture during his eight year tenure at eBay. From 2006 to 2007, Brian was responsible for retooling and improving the operational systems and procedures for eBay's then newly acquired internet communications company, Skype.
During the height of eBay's expansion into global markets, Brian served as director of International Development from 2003 to 2004. In this position, he provided technical guidance to the international business teams, as well as conceived, designed and implemented eBay's "Rest of World" system that simplified eBay's ability to enter new countries and geographies.
From 1999 to 2003, Brian was eBay's director of Operations and director of Technical Services. In these positions, he was accountable for the infrastructure and operations of running one of the Internet's highest transaction processing systems.
Brian lead efforts to build eBay's systems administration, database administration and crisis management teams, as well as integrating eBay's acquisitions, including Half.com and PayPal. Among his noted achievements at this time, Brian was directly responsible for increasing eBay's Web site availability to more than 99.95 percent, up from 98 percent, setting the bar for transaction-based systems on the Internet.
Brian graduated in 1988 with a BS in Chemistry from Rice University. He is married and has two children.
Patrick Dyson, VP of Product Development
Patrick joined Tokoni as vice president, Product Development in 2007 to oversee all aspects of the company's product development, including process, budget, schedule, quality and deployment.
Prior to joining Tokoni, Patrick held several management and engineering positions at Sun Microsystems from 2003 to 2007, most recently as director, Engineering where he was responsible for developing and implementing the company's enterprise software open source strategy. Also at Sun, Patrick oversaw the identity management development group, supporting a $50 million business.
Patrick held engineering and management positions at Waveset Technologies, an identity management software company, from 2000 to 2003, when the company was then acquired by Sun Microsystems.
From 1994 to 2000, Patrick was manager, Software Engineering at Splash Technologies, a maker of high speed PostScript printer controllers, where he managed a geographically distributed group developing network software.
As product manager at Coactive Computing from 1991 to 1994, Patrick helped develop a peer-to-peer, self organizing network system. While at Apple Inc. from 1998 to 1991, Patrick helped develop networking software, including the industry's first secure network booting solution.
Patrick graduated from Rice University with a BA in Mathematical Science in 1998. He is married with two children.
Anette Goodwin, VP of Marketing
Annette Goodwine, vice president, Marketing, is responsible for the development and execution of the company's brand strategy, marketing communications, online marketing, and user acquisition and retention activities. With more than 19 years of experience in brand and consumer marketing strategy work, Annette is aptly skilled to help Tokoni grow its user base and generate purposeful brand equity with detailed consumer intelligence research, strategic brand positioning, and results-oriented marketing and merchandising campaigns.
Previously, Annette held several positions at eBay Inc, most recently as senior director, Corporate Communications where she was accountable for internal communications for eBay's then global employee community of 14,000. In this position, she established the company's first corporate marketing function and worked with executive staff on the internal brand and culture development.
As senior director, Consumer Marketing Annette was head of eBay brand management, including architecture, brand identity, research and brand tracking, and offline advertising for ebay.com. Notably, she led development of the company's first fully integrated offline television campaign in 2003. In the position of director, Merchandising and Promotions, Annette led development and execution of ebay.com site merchandising, promotions management and strategic partnerships.
Annette holds a MBA from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and a B.S. in Marketing from the University of California, Berkeley. She is married and has one son.
Board of Directors
Alex Kazim
View bio above.
Mary Lou Song
View bio above.
Rajiv Dutta
As President of PayPal, Rajiv Dutta is responsible for building PayPal into the global standard for digital payments. PayPal enables any individual or business with an email address to send and receive payments online securely, easily and quickly. In 2006, PayPal is on a run rate to process more than $35 billion in total payment volume.
Prior to joining PayPal, Mr. Dutta was President of Skype, eBay's online voice communications business. Skype is the world's fastest-growing Internet communication company, allowing unlimited free voice, video and instant messaging communication between Skype users. With over 136 million registered users, Skype is available in 27 languages and is used in almost every country around the world.
Mr. Dutta joined Skype from eBay, where he was Chief Financial Officer. During his tenure as CFO, eBay's market capitalization increased six-fold, revenue grew from $750 million to $4.5 billion, and the employee base grew from just under 2,000 to nearly 12,000 employees. Mr. Dutta also served as Chief Strategy Officer for the company and led the New Ventures Group, which oversaw eBay's entry into the global classifieds market and the acquisition of Shopping.com. Mr. Dutta joined eBay in 1998.
Prior to eBay, Mr. Dutta was the worldwide sales controller for KLA-Tencor, overseeing the sales finance function for the company's global operations. Prior to KLA-Tencor, Mr. Dutta spent 10 years at Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., where he held a variety of positions including group controller of the Life Science Group, the largest manufacturing group in the company.
Mr. Dutta received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with honors from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University in India, and a Master of Business Administration from the Drucker School of Management, Claremont Graduate School, California.
Henry Gomez
Henry Gomez is President of Skype, the global Internet communications company. As part of Skype's leadership team, Henry serves as a key advisor to Skype CEO, Niklas Zennström, and as Skype's principal liaison to eBay and PayPal.
Henry joined Skype in November 2005 as general manager for Skype North America. He built Skype's U.S. and Canadian business operations from scratch before becoming the company's Chief Marketing Officer and Director of Country Operations in July 2006. In that position, Henry was responsible for Skype's brand and product marketing, local promotions, global public relations, and business development.
Prior to his roles at Skype, Henry was Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications and Government Relations at eBay Inc., Skype's parent company. He joined eBay in early 2000 and eventually held global responsibilities for public relations, community development, internal communications, and government relations.
Prior to joining eBay, Henry was Vice President, Corporate Affairs for Home Box Office (HBO), the premium television network, where he oversaw all aspects of the network's corporate public relations, affiliate marketing communications, regional press initiatives, and special events. Henry began his career at the public relations firm of Hill and Knowlton, Inc. and later moved to Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart. While at these firms, Henry worked with clients such as PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Playboy Enterprises, American Airlines, Scott Paper Company, AT&T, and Ford Motor Company. Henry holds a Bachelor of Arts from Boston College.
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