Meet Our Team:
Jeffrey R. Barth, President and Chief Executive Officer, 31
In 1993, Jeffrey Barth co-founded Potomac Interactive Corporation (PIC) -- one of the first companies to foresee the commercial potential of the World Wide Web. PIC's first Web project was to support the Office of the Vice President to develop the White House's first Website. Other clients included The Chicago White Sox, Philip Morris, Microsoft, Olin Corporation, US GSA, Doonesbury and the Grateful Dead. Mr. Barth and his partner grew the firm from a two-person operation to an organization of more than 40 individuals. He and his partner sold PIC to NetResponse in 1997. Previously, Mr. Barth was involved in a variety of leading-edge technology projects, including work for Meridian Corporation, the U.S. Department of Energy, APCO Associates, Whittle Communications' Channel One and Indiana University's Center for Technology in Education. During the 1992 Presidential transition, he was assistant to Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich. A Chicago native, Mr. Barth received his M.B.A. degree from Georgetown University and B.A. from UCLA.

Kristian Hammond, Chief Technological Visionary, 42
The technical visionary and chief scientific advisor for Recommender, Inc. is Kristian Hammond, Ph.D. Since 1986, Dr. Hammond was the founder and the Director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Chicago and currently heads the Information Laboratory at Northwestern University. His work has been concentrated in the case-based reasoning field of artificial intelligence, and examples of his work are found at www. infolab.cs.uchicago.edu/entree/. Dr. Hammond has received support from DARPA, AFOSR, Rome Labs and the NSF. He is a frequent member of the Program Committees of AAAI and IJCAI. He chaired the DARPA Case-Based Reasoning Workshop and recently gave an invited talk on Case-Based Reasoning to the National Meeting of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Hammond also has acted as a consultant for Boeing Aerospace, Lockheed and Andersen Consulting. Dr. Hammond has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Philosophy, both from Yale University.

B. Scott Beeson, Vice President, Marketing, 41
Scott Beeson brings with him a diverse, entrepreneurial background centered around launching new businesses and building strategic relationships to support expansion. While serving as a new business consultant to top executives at Jos. E. Seagram & Sons, Ltd., Mr. Beeson led Seagram's entrance into wine cooler and "mixer" beverage categories. Mr. Beeson was the Marketing and Business Development Director, Asia for the spice and flavor giant McCormick & Co. and pioneered the expansion of the company's consumer and institutional business in ten countries from Japan to Indonesia. Most recently, he was Marketing and Account Director at Hanson, Dodge + Sutter (H,D+S), an advertising and Website design agency in Milwaukee, and oversaw the firm's largest account, the Trek Bicycle Company. As Marketing Director for the agency, Mr. Beeson developed strategies that helped the company reach new levels of customer service. Mr. Beeson has a B.A. from Middlebury College in Vermont and M.B.A. from The University of Virginia's Colgate Darden Graduate School of Business.

Jim Silverstein, Vice President, Systems Development, 29
Jim Silverstein is responsible for software development and quality assurance. He joined Recommender, Inc., during the summer of 1998 and is involved in all aspects of Recommender, Inc.'s product development. Prior experience includes the position of Director of Quality Assurance at NetDox Incorporated, a company that develops secure Internet communication and commerce. Mr. Silverstein was the development manager for Trigony Inc. and held senior development positions with Motorola and Nortel. Mr. Silverstein graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a B.A. in Mathematics and did graduate work in Computer Science at the University of Texas.

Robin Burke, Senior Software Engineer Consultant, 36
Robin Burke is the co-developer of the Find-Me technology and provides software engineering consulting to the company. He is a Research Specialist in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. Together with Kristian Hammond, he developed the FindMe technology underlying Recommender, Inc., at the University of Chicago's Intelligent Information Laboratory during the mid-1990s. Dr. Burke is the author of 18 articles on intelligent information systems, and he has continuing research interests in intelligent information access and applications of artificial intelligence in electronic commerce. He received his M.S. from Yale University in 1990 and his Ph.D from Northwestern University's Institute for the Learning Sciences in 1993.

Shayla Thiel, Senior Content Manager, 27
Shayla Thiel oversees the development of Recommender systems. This includes the sourcing, acquisition, and maintenance of content and the management of the knowledge engineering process. Previously, Ms. Thiel was an Affiliate Sales Manager and Manager of Affiliate Communications for Classified Ventures, where she worked with 27 newspapers nationwide on growing and managing their online classified advertising products. Ms. Thiel also worked as a Community Content Developer for Edmund's Publications, Inc., Online Music Editor for Washington Post/Newsweek Interactive and New Media Producer for The Chronicle of Higher Education. She has a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communications from the University of Iowa and an M.A. in Communication, Culture, and Technology from Georgetown University.