Manish Chandra, Chief Executive Officer & Founder
Our fearless leader, Manish is both boss and idea guy. He's the consummate visionary, thinking up about sixteen new ideas for Kaboodle a day. He pushes us to do more for Kaboodle - faster, better, and on a budget (forgoing extravagant expenses like company phone lines). Manish can also now talk trends and designers with the best of them. He freely dispenses home decorating advice and can spot a Marc Jacobs handbag a mile away. He's even considered buying his very own man-purse.
Prior to his much-cooler time at Kaboodle, Manish was the VP Marketing at Versant and part of the executive team at Versata that took the company public. Additionally, Manish has held R&D and Product Management roles at Sybase and Intel. In addition to the fashionista training he's pursued since joining Kaboodle, Manish has also taken a handful of college classes, earning a Bachelor of Technology from IIT Kanpur in India, an MS in Computer Science from UT Austin, and an MBA from Haas.
See what Manish is shopping for now, including his quest for a new cell phone.
Keiron McCammon, Chief Technology Officer & co-Founder
There's never a dull moment for Keiron, who is responsible for managing all the great features that go into Kaboodle. He also works hard building the complex technology behind Kaboodle (like the "Add to Kaboodle" button) that makes it really simple to use. As if building the world's coolest shopping platform isn't exciting enough, Keiron also gets his adrenaline pumping through adventure sports like scuba diving, snowboarding and paragliding.
Before Kaboodle, Keiron was VP and CTO of Versant and also spent time working for Thomson and Siemens. Keiron has a BS in Computer Science from Exeter University in the UK, and co-authored the page turner, "Core Java Data Objects" published by Sun Microsystems and has given tutorials on Java, J2EE, EJB and JDO at a numerous technology conferences.
Although his background suggests he wouldn't be the most fascinating dinner party guest, you could be convinced otherwise if you check out his blog or his Kaboodle profile.
Shari Gunn, Vice President of Advertising and Business Development
Shari is Kaboodle's online sales and marketing whiz. She's the person dreaming up and developing the media programs and partnerships that integrate Kaboodle's fabulous advertisers into the community. When she's not coming up with genius ideas for Kaboodle, Shari can be found painting, blogging and indulging her passion for shoe shopping. Although she is a recent transplant to Northern California, Shari is quickly surpassing the rest of the Kaboodle team with her encyclopedic knowledge of Peninsula-area restaurants.
Prior to Kaboodle, Shari was Director of Marketing for Hearst Digital Media in New York. There, she led the Marketing & Advertising Solutions Group for a network of over a dozen magazine and non-magazine sites. She also spent time at Primedia in Los Angeles, where she was most recently Vice President of Marketing for Primedia's Automotive Enthusiast digital team. Shari is the co-founder of FreeRealTime.com, the first site on the internet to offer real-time stock quotes to individual investors for free. She holds a MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA.
Check out Shari's Kaboodle profile to see this expert traveler's list of globe-trotting "musts".
Erika Lenkert, Vice President of Content
Erika is our queen of content. She has the fun task of conceptualizing and overseeing how to serve up Kaboodle's incredible community finds and original content in the tastiest, most useful and enjoyable ways. Lucky for us she's as addicted to shopping, scoring online deals, and finding and sharing the next must-have as she is throwing dinner parties, coloring with her three-year-old daughter Viva, and escaping to tropical destinations.
Long before kicking it at Kaboodle, Erika had already parlayed her passions into a career. As the founding executive editor for Glam.com she reveled in her passion for fashion (and celeb gossip, food, home decor, and travel). She also swirled and sipped her way to the bank as founding editor-in-chief for WineShopper.com (now Wine.com), and whipped up a reputation as a lifestyle expert as a contributor to InStyle, Food Network, Everyday with Rachel Ray, Travel & Leisure, Food & Wine, San Francisco and Los Angeles magazines. On the side she has authored several lifestyle books, including The Real Deal Guide to Pregnancy and The Last-Minute Party Girl.
A native San Franciscan, Erika continues to enjoy the thrill of the retail hunt. You can see her food faves, beauty best bets, and home must-haves on her profile.
Gautam Golwala, VP of Engineering
As the guy responsible for the engineering behind Kaboodle, Gautam is our magic man, though what he does requires a lot more skill than conjuring the supernatural. How? Think of it this way: If Kaboodle started as a quaint cottage for a group of retail-loving friends, Gautam, with his team, is the builder responsible for transforming it into a skyscraper that accommodates millions of socializing shoppers yet remains cozy, welcoming, and fun during ongoing construction. That's no easy feat!
Before joining the team in 2005, Gautam garnered a Master's degree from University of Pennsylvania. He then honed his skills around building scalable consumer-oriented websites at Yodlee, a personal finance solutions and applications company, where, as a senior manager and architect, he spend half a decade building online banking solutions and financial applications.
When he's not stepping up to the latest performance challenges, making more room for our ever-growing user base, or building new features, Gautam fills his time reading (check out his book list!), listening to rock and electronic music, and playing with his two kids.
