Executive Management

Philip Rosedale | Founder and Chairman of the Board
Mark Kingdon | CEO
Frank Ambrose | Senior VP Global Technology
Sandy Gould | VP of Human Resources and Organizational Development
Tom Hale | Chief Product Officer
Howard Look | Senior VP Customer Applications
Brian Michon | VP of Core Development
Joe Miller | VP Platform & Technology Development
Marty Roberts | General Counsel
Cyn Skyberg | VP Customer Relations
Judy Wade | VP of Strategy and Emerging Business

Board of Directors

Mitch Kapor | Kapor Enterprises, Inc.
Jed Smith | Managing Partner, Catamount Ventures
Bill Gurley | Partner, Benchmark Capital
James Currier | Founder and President, Tickle, Inc.
Dana L. Evan | Strategic Finance and Operations Executive

Executive Management

Philip Rosedale founded San Francisco-based Linden Lab in 1999, and has led the creation of the virtual world of Second Life from initial concept to a market-leading virtual world, with a robust economy and a global population. As a pioneer in the virtual world industry, Rosedale is actively involved in the strategy, development and design of Linden Lab’s products, including the world of Second Life and the Second Life Grid platform. Rosedale is known for his entrepreneurial approach to new technologies, starting a network software company when he was 17. In 1995 he created an innovative internet video conferencing product, which was later acquired by RealNetworks, where he went on to become Vice President and CTO. In 1999, the advent of consumer broadband and better PC 3D graphics inspired Rosedale to leave RealNetworks and found Linden Lab, pursuing his lifelong dream of creating an internet scale virtual world. Rosedale holds a BS degree in Physics from the University of California at San Diego.

Mark Kingdon joined Linden Lab in May 2008 as Chief Executive Officer. Mark leads the day-to-day management and operations of the company, working closely alongside Linden Lab founder, former CEO and current Chairman Philip Rosedale. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Mark served as Chief Executive Officer of Organic Inc. a leading digital communications agency, building its reputation as a groundbreaking, innovative provider of user-centered design. While at Organic, Mark built the company's social media and social computing services and launched the company's emerging platforms practice. Prior to Organic, Kingdon worked with idealab!, providing strategic guidance and operational support to emerging companies. Before that, Mark was a partner with the consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PwC), where he held a variety of senior roles throughout his twelve-year tenure. He received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from UCLA.

Frank Ambrose joined Linden Lab in August 2008 as the Senior Vice President of Global Technology. In this role, Frank oversees the development of new processes, systems and tools to maximize the scalability of Second Life's network architecture. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Frank held several senior management positions at AOL, including serving as the Senior Vice President of Technology Infrastructure and Network Services. During his tenure at AOL, Frank lowered worldwide operating expenses by over $600 million and helped grow the user base to more than 30 million customers worldwide, with concurrent usage of almost 3 million. Prior to AOL, Frank spent 9 years with MCI Communications, holding various leadership positions within its International and Network Services divisions. Most notably, Frank was part of the team that integrated MCI's services with British Telecom's, a partnership that formed one of the first major international telecom joint ventures, Concert Communications.

Frank holds a B.S. in Finance from Siena College and is a decorated U.S. Navy veteran, having served as a Surface Warfare Officer in both engineering and operations capacities.

Sandy Gould is the VP of Human Resources and Organizational Development at Linden Lab. Sandy was the VP of Exec Recruiting and Organizational Development for RealNetworks for 10 years. At RealNetworks he was responsible for hiring the leadership team, training, orienting, and coaching the exec staff and building out career development and leadership development programs including the International High Potential Program. Sandy began his career as VP of Recruiting and Consulting Services at a boutique consulting firm in Seattle,Wa. Sandy has a Rabbinical Degree and trained a Yeshiva in NY, where he also trained as a Psychoanalyst.

Tom Hale joined Linden Lab in September 2008 as Chief Product Officer. Tom drives the product strategy for Linden Lab’s diverse offerings, reporting directly to Linden Lab’s CEO, Mark Kingdon. Hale brings over 15 years of experience in product development, marketing and management to Linden Lab having most recently served as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence (EIR) at Redpoint Ventures. Prior to Redpoint, Tom served as Vice President and General Manager for Adobe Systems’ Knowledge Worker Business Unit where he drove strategy for the Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Connect and Flash Media Server product lines. Prior to joining Adobe, Tom served a variety of senior roles at Macromedia, where he helped establish Flash as a web development standard and oversaw a learning and training business unit that generated over $100 million annually. Prior to his tenure at Macromedia, Tom was the director of sales and marketing at Fauve Software, an imaging software company. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University.

Brian joined Linden Lab in January of 2009 as VP of Core Development. In this role, leads Linden Lab’s core engineering team responsible for the hosted services and virtual world platform that power Second Life. Before joining the team, Michon was VP of Engineering at Intuit leading software development of web service and platforms powering both hosted and desktop software including Quickbooks™, TurboTax™ and Quicken™. Prior to Intuit, he was co-founder and VP of Apps.com - which was acquired by Intuit in 2000 - where he led the design and development of an online directory of business applications. Previously, he was Director of Engineering at the web marketing system integrator Think New Ideas and an engineering leader in Oracle’s Server Technologies group. He received his MS in Computer Science from Stanford and his BSCS from MIT.

Joining the company in April 2006, Joe Miller is responsible for extending the Second Life platform to reliably support very large member communities. He has spent nearly 30 years squarely at the intersection of engaging consumer experiences and interactive technologies, including senior executive positions at Atari, Koala Technologies, Epyx, Convergent, and Sega of America. He was a founder and CEO of the Knowledge Universe Interactive Studio, and president of MindQ Publishing, two companies focused on lifelong learning services and applications. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Miller's product design company, Perilux Group, was engaged to develop several award winning products now offered by LeapFrog, Bright Things, Apple, and Fitniks. His diverse career started at Battelle Memorial Institute, where he created a portion of the developer training curriculum for the PLATO educational network. He also was a co-founder and president of CyberVision, Inc., the developer and manufacturer of the CyberVision home computer, sold nationally by Montgomery Ward a long, long time ago...

Howard Look joined Linden Lab in December 2008 as the Senior Vice President of Customer Applications. In this role, Howard oversees the improvements to the Second Life experience and will develop new products and features that enhance the usability and overall customer experience of the Second Life Grid. Prior to joining Linden Lab, Howard served as Vice President of Software at Pixar Animation Studios, where he led the team that developed and maintained its proprietary filmmaking system. Prior to Pixar, Look helped found TiVo Inc., where he played an instrumental role in defining TiVo’s functionality and user experience while serving as Vice President of Application Software and User Experience. Previously, Look was Director of Applied Engineering at Silicon Graphics, where he led the team that created the “O2 Out of Box Experience,” the world's first Virtual Reality Modeling Language-based (VRML) 3D workstation setup environment. He also served as an engineer on the Inventor team, which later became the foundation for VRML.

Look received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

As General Counsel, Marty is responsible for managing the legal department and advising the company's board and management on legal issues and corporate governance matters. Before joining Linden Lab in July 2007, Marty was Deputy General Counsel of eBay Inc., where he managed regulatory affairs and legal operations. Previously, he was General Counsel of Shopping.com, where he helped lead the company through its IPO and subsequent acquisition by eBay, and of LookSmart, where he handled the company's IPO and many corporate transactions. Earlier in his career, Marty was Senior Counsel for the PMI Group and for Fair Isaac Corporation. Marty received his law degree from the University of Alabama School of Law and a BA in English from the University of Virginia.

Cyn Skyberg guides the Second Life support teams: billing, risk management, high end, technical, and inworld support, as well as all external sales and their management. Cyn has worked in the customer relations field for 15 years, and has been with Linden Lab since 2005. Prior to working with the customer relations team at Linden Lab, she held a directorship at the San Jose Museum of Art and a senior management role at the Portland Art Museum. Her varied background includes owning a coffeehouse in Colorado, working as a telephone cable contractor across the United States, sorting osteopathic remains in a natural history museum, and managing a large travel book and map business. Cyn has a BA with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara in Cultural Anthropology. Her senior thesis was, amusingly, "Complexities of Human Behavior in the Prehistoric Age".

Judy Wade joined Linden Lab in December 2008 as VP of Strategy and Emerging Business. In this role, Judy advises on Linden Lab’s overall business strategy, including acquisitions and partnerships, and identifies new opportunities to grow the business in key vertical and geographic markets focused on expanding Linden Lab's international presence. Judy was previously an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Kapor Enterprises, where her role included evaluating opportunities for using Second Life to deliver enterprise training. Prior to that, she was a partner of McKinsey & Company, where as a member of the company’s Organization and Strategy Practices, she helped Fortune 500 clients and growth companies with significant strategic and organizational transformations across multiple sectors. Before joining McKinsey, Wade was a semiconductor analyst at Hambrecht & Quist. Judy also takes an active role in her community, serving as a Trustee of UC Berkeley and on the Dean’s Alumni Leadership Council at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Additionally, she contributed her time and expertise to improving education and business development in Africa. Wade earned her Masters in Public Policy from Harvard and her BA from UC Berkeley.

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Board of Directors

In addition to Philip Rosedale, Linden Lab's Board of Directors includes:

Mitch Kapor is the founder of Kapor Enterprises, Inc. He has been a leading figure in the computer industry for 20 years. He was the founder and CEO of Lotus Development Corporation and the designer of Lotus 1-2-3, which sparked the desktop revolution in business computing. Mitch has been at the forefront of the information technology revolution for a generation as an entrepreneur, investor, social activist, and philanthropist. For the past 15-plus years, Mitch has been an investor and advisor to high-technology start-up companies including founding investments in UUNET Technology and Real Networks. He is currently a director of Linden Lab and Reactivity, Inc. From 1999 to 2001, Kapor served as a partner with Accel Partners, a leading venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. He has an undergraduate degree from Yale in linguistics and psychology and is an alumnus (but not graduate) of MIT's Sloan School of Management. He held an Adjunct Professorship at MIT's Media Lab from 1994-1996. His writing has appeared in Scientific American, Wired, Forbes, the Harvard Business Review and the New York Times.

Jed is the Managing Partner of Catamount Ventures. Catamount was founded to focus on the underserved seed/early stage venture investment market. Catamount is investing out of its second fund and has approximately $45M under management. Prior to Catamount, in 1997 Jed was the founder of drugstore.com (NASDAQ: DSCM), and served on its board of directors with John Doerr, Brook Byers, Peter Neupert, Howard Schultz and Jeff Bezos. Prior to drugstore.com, Jed co-founded and spent four years at Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software. Before that, Jed was Vice President of Sales at Tribe Computer Works (a networking hardware and software company that was successfully sold). Jed began his career in technology working for Tom Siebel at Oracle Corporation, ultimately serving as District Manager for Eastern Region VARs. He is a recipient of the Albert Einstein High Technology Award. Jed holds a BA from Middlebury College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Bill Gurley joined Benchmark Capital in 1999 after spending two years as a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering the venture capital business, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston focusing on the personal computer hardware and software business. His research coverage included such companies as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. In both 1995 and 1996, Bill was a member of the Institutional Investor All-American Research Team. Prior to his investment career, Bill was a design engineer at Compaq Computer, where he worked on products such as the 486/50 and Compaq's initial multi-processor server. Before Compaq, he served in the technical marketing group of Advanced Micro Devices' embedded processor division. Bill is the author of the Above the Crowd newsletter which focuses on the evolution and economics of high technology businesses.

James Currier is the Founder and President of Tickle, Inc. James graduated from Princeton in 1990. He worked for GTE New Ventures in Hollywood until 1992, funding broadband service startups in the entertainment industry. He then worked at STAR TV in Hong Kong. Beginning in 1994, he was an associate at Battery Ventures funding early stage software and communications companies. He received his MBA from Harvard in 1999, graduating with distinction.

Dana Evan brings a unique combination of strategic and executional strengths to more than 20 years of leadership experience in global finance and operations management. Most recently, Ms. Evan served for 12 years as CFO of VeriSign, Inc., where she was a founding executive and a significant contributor to the company's growth and profitability. She led VeriSign's worldwide operations related to finance and accounting, real estate and property management, legal matters and investor relations, as the company grew from a small venture-backed start-up in 1995 to a global corporation of nearly 5,000 employees. Ms. Evan was a key member of the executive management team, helping to set business strategy and manage company operations as revenue reached nearly $2 billion dollars, driving profitability and cash flow of nearly a half billion dollars per year. During her tenure, Ms Evan led the company's institutional financing rounds, including its successful IPO in 1998 and follow-on financing initiatives. She also was instrumental in driving, executing and integrating approximately 60 merger and acquisition transactions. As the company's chief financial spokesperson, she has been featured in numerous business and financial press, including the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Financial Times.

Before joining VeriSign, Ms. Evan provided consulting services in the capacity of CFO, vice president of finance, and other executive roles for both public and private companies. Prior to that, Ms. Evan spent six years in various positions at KPMG LLP. Ms. Evan is currently a director of Omniture, Inc. (OMTR) and Linden Lab/Second Life and an advisory board member of VinTrust. For the past two years she has served on the board of MySQL, a venture-backed startup which was recently acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1 billion dollars in February 2008. Ms. Evan has also recently undertaken angel venture investing activities and advisory services for companies and entities in the technology and media arenas.

Ms. Evan is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a B.S. in Commerce with a concentration in Accounting and Finance from Santa Clara University. She is actively involved with several charitable organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club of America, The Health Trust, and the University of Santa Clara Business School. She resides with her husband and two sons in Saratoga, California.

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