Management Team

Michelangelo Volpi

Chief Executive Officer

Joost Name: michelangelo

Mike Volpi joined Joost as CEO in June of 2007. In this capacity he sets corporate strategy and oversees all the business operations.

Prior to Joost, Mike was the Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Routing and Service Provider Technology Group at Cisco Systems, where he lead Cisco's overall strategy for the Service Provider market, and was responsible for all of Cisco's routing and access products. In 2007, this was an $11 billion business for Cisco.

Mike also served as the company's Chief Strategy Officer, where he was responsible for Cisco's corporate strategy as well as business development, strategic alliances, advanced Internet projects, legal services, and government affairs.

For the 13 years he was at Cisco, Mike was instrumental in the creation of the company's acquisition and investment strategies, as Cisco acquired more than 70 companies during his tenure.

Before joining Cisco, Mike was at Hewlett Packard's optoelectronics division, serving as a product development engineer and product marketing manager.

Mike serves on the board of directors the Clearwire, Inc. He has master's and bachelor's degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar. Mike grew up in Italy and Japan and is fluent both languages, as well as English. A long time Bay Area resident, Mike, his wife Toni, and his kids Marco and Alessandra currently live in London.

Danny Passman

Global Head of Programming

Joost Name: passmand

Danny Passman joined Joost as Global Head of Programming in 2008.

He is responsible for creating programming strategies that drive overall viewership and promotional strategies that highlight specific videos and areas of content. He is also tasked with shaping the content strategy for Joost.

Before he joined Joost, Danny worked at Dailymotion where he was responsible for driving U.S. traffic through content acquisition and curation. Previously, Danny worked in series development at fuse and VH1.

Danny has a bachelor's degree from Boston University and currently lives in New York City.

David Clark

EVP of Advertising and Marketing

Joost Name: dave

David joined Joost (known then as The Venice Project) in 2006 to lead the company's global advertising sales strategy. Today, David also leads the company's marketing efforts and heads Joost's North American operations.

Previously, David served as vice president for MTV Networks Global Marketing Partnerships, where he oversaw advertising sales and integrated marketing for MTV Networks International's MTV, VH1 and Nickelodeon branded businesses across the globe.

Before joining MTVN/Viacom, David acted as chief operating officer of Shanah.com, a startup which he co-founded. David began his career as a marketing manager at Simon & Schuster and also worked in marketing at IBM.

David, his wife Kyle, and his sons Nicholas and Reed live in New York City.

Henrik Werdelin

Chief Creative Officer

Joost Name: henrik

Henrik Werdelin is responsible for the creative development of Joost, including both its product and its brand. Henrik joined Joost as one of its first employees in 2006 and has worked closely with the company's marketing, content and creative direction since then.

Before joining Joost, Henrik was the vice president of product development and strategy for MTV Networks International, where he spearheaded the development of many of MTV's award winning innovative products, including TV formats, broadband channels and mobile games. Before joining MTV Networks International, Henrik worked for the BBC as an associate producer and for MTV France, GameOne and MTV Games Europe, where he was responsible for content and creative strategy.

Henrik also founded new media agency tripledash, which created digital strategies and products for major blue chip clients, such as BBC Worldwide, Coca-Cola and Walt Disney Television.

Henrik graduated from Aalborg University in Denmark and received a master's degree in journalism from the University of Westminster. A native of Denmark, Henrik currently lives in London.

Jason Gaedtke

Chief Architect

Joost Name: fritzkarma

Jason Gaedtke joined Joost in March 2008 as Chief Architect. In this role, he leads the overall direction and development of Joost's technology.

Jason joined Joost from CableLabs, where he was the company's Chief Scientist. In this role, he was responsible for research, innovation and outreach in a number of strategic areas, including peer-to-peer architectures and services, network and metadata management and online gaming platforms.

Before CableLabs, Jason served as Chief Architect and Comcast Fellow and led a team of architects within the Interactive Media division of Comcast (CIM). This group was responsible for the design and implementation of Fancast.com, as well as maintenance and evolution of the Comcast.net portal. Earlier, Jason held similar technical roles within Comcast's Communications Engineering and New Media Development groups.

Jason graduated with a Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from the Milwaukee School of Engineering. He lives with his wife in Evergreen, Colorado, although he spends most of his time commuting between his home and Joost offices in Leiden and New York.

Kyle Forster

Vice President of Product Management

Joost Name: kyle.forster

Kyle Forster joined Joost in 2007 to start up and lead the company's product management function. In this role, he oversees the product management organization and the product development cycle, working closely with the business and engineering teams.

Kyle joined Joost from Cisco, where he was product manager of multiple Cisco wireless products, including a $100m portfolio of wireless LAN controllers and multiple v1.0 products. He began his career at Cisco as Mike Volpi's technical assistant, where he authored executive thought pieces and helped to drive strategic planning processes for the Routing and Service Provider Technology Group.

He worked in product management at Microsoft as a part of the Microsoft Exchange team. Prior to Microsoft, he worked at Scient, an e-business consultancy, where he served multiple clients as a wireless subject matter expert and led the engineering team of the Wireless Rapid Prototyping Environment.

Kyle received an M.B.A. from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford's Graduate School of Engineering, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. Kyle also studied at Cordon Bleu. Kyle and his fiancée currently live in London.

Lisa Gelobter

Vice President of Business Operations

Joost Name: LisaG

Lisa Gelobter joined Joost in 2008 to lead the company's business operations. In this role, she is responsible for overall business operations and intelligence, including content, advertising and revenue flow, and internal and external facing intelligence systems. She also manages the content operations, transcoding operations and business support organizations.

With almost 20 years of business and technology experience, Lisa has a particular expertise in digital media. Before joining Joost, Lisa worked at NBC Universal, where she served on the senior management launch team for Hulu and was the vice president of operations at nbbc, a marketplace for digital video syndication. She also led product development functions and organizations at Brightcove, Miva, TheFeedRoom and Macromedia.

Lisa attended Brown University and studied computer science. She's a professional gymnastics photographer covering national and international elite competitions, and is fluent in French.

Matt Zelesko

Senior Vice President of Engineering

Joost Name: mzelesko

Matt Zelesko joined Joost as senior vice president of engineering in October 2007. In his role at Joost he is responsible for all engineering operations. He brings more than 13 years of networking and communication systems experience, and more than 17 years of combined software development and software management experience, to Joost.

Before he joined Joost, he was vice president of engineering for Comcast Interactive Media (CIM. At Comcast, he was responsible for the development and delivery of all CIM web properties, including the Comcast portal (www.comcast.net and Fancast (www.fancast.com).

Before Comcast, Matt was vice president, engineering for Voyence, Inc., a network compliance, change and configuration management provider acquired by EMC, and vice president, engineering, at Ipsum Networks, a venture-funded startup providing Route Analysis and IP-layer network management solutions. Prior to Ipsum Networks, Matt was the director of engineering for the Gigabit Technology Group at Cisco Systems. Matt joined Cisco throught he acquisition of Granite Systems, where he was an early member of the software team and a key contributor to the software architecture.

Matt was a Ph.D. candidate in the Distributed Systems Group at Stanford University focusing on communication systems architecture. He has an M.S. in computer science from Stanford University and a B.S. in computer science from Cornell University. He co-authored "Specializing Object-Oriented RPC for Functionality and Performance." He lives with his wife and three children in Doylestown, a suburb of Philadelphia.

Owen O'Donnell

Chief Financial Officer

Joost Name: celticbhoy

Owen O'Donnell joined Joost in 2007 as Chief Financial Officer. In this role, Owen has direct responsibility for all financial areas of the company, including budgeting, financial control and funding. He also supervises the administrative areas of Joost, including the legal, human resources and general administrative functions.

Before joining Joost, Owen was CFO of King.com, one of the world's largest skill game businesses, and Betfair, the world's largest online betting exchange, where revenues tripled under his stewardship.

He also served as director of finance and performance measurement at Pearson PLC and was CFO of two divisions at the Financial Times Group, including FT.com, which he drove to profitability during his tenure. At AC Nielsen, he served as CFO of the company's joint venture in Eastern Europe, and doubled the size of the business.

Owen is a Chartered Accountant who trained with KPMG. He earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Glasgow University. Owen is also a non-executive director of Rank Group PLC, a leading European gaming and leisure business based in the UK and listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Stacey Seltzer

SVP of Content Acquisition, International and Business Development

Joost Name: sjseltzer

Stacey Seltzer is Joost's senior vice president of international and business Development, and is responsible for identifying opportunities for Joost's expansion overseas as well as strategic partnerships. He also leads the content acquisition team. Stacey joined Joost in 2006 as senior vice president of content strategy and acquisition. In that role, he led the company's content strategy and acquisition efforts and negotiations.

Prior to joining Joost, Stacey worked in finance, building teams and advising startup companies with growth strategies. At investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., Stacey set up the European Foreign Exchange Research & Trading operations, accelerating the growth of the company's most profitable division. Stacey also worked in the corporate mergers and acquisitions division at Citigroup and at New Vantage Group, an angel investment and venture capital fund.

Stacey received an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School with a dual concentration in finance and economics and a bachelor's degree from Brown University. Stacey and his wife Cate live in London.