Our company is fortunate to have an engaged and active Board of Advisers; senior executives with deep domain knowledge in various aspects of our business, committed to helping us.
Working with them, we will fulfill the commitment to build solutions that improve the lives of dealership owners and personnel.
Chris Maresca
Chris is a Founding Partner in the Olliance Group, the leading Open Source strategy consultancy. In his leadership role at the Olliance Group, Chris Maresca’s innovative thinking has been instrumental in creating Open Source business and technology strategies for clients such as Microsoft, Sun, Nokia, Wells Fargo, Intel and other Global 500’s, and for over 40 Open Source startups. His blend of expertise in open source technology, business strategy, and as a startup executive, has enabled top-tier VCs to understand and participate in the Open Source revolution.
Chris has been a contributing member to the Open Source community since the late eighties. In mid-‘90s, he was one of the pioneers responsible for introducing Linux into the US Government. Prior to founding Olliance, Chris served as consultant to the financial and shipping industries, designing trading and supply chain intelligence systems. He was a VP of Engineering at several VC funded startups during the dot.com boom, version 1.0 (1997-2001).
Chris has tremendous insights into OpenSource and Software-as-a-Service best practices, including Community building and product evolution, and will work with Golden Eye to ensure that we continue to challenge the status quo.
John Csernotta
John is the National Director of Account Management responsible for overall client service activities at all JD Power and Associates OEM Automotive clients.
Prior to joining JD Power and Associates, John was Dealer Principal and Operating Partner of two dealerships (domestic and Asian import) in the Chicago metropolitan market. Under his leadership, both dealerships significantly increased new and used vehicle sales volume, market share, customer satisfaction and profitability, and were recognized as meeting the certification standards for each respective OEM.
Prior to his retail dealership experience, John spent 20 years with the Ford Motor Company in a variety of senior management roles in Marketing, Sales and Service. While at Ford and Lincoln Mercury, he developed and implemented the Ford Blue Oval Certified, Lincoln Premier Experience and Mercury Advantage dealership certification programs. The programs resulted in significant increases in the SSI and CSI industry ranking for Ford and Lincoln Mercury, the brand(s) marketing effectiveness was improved through a combination of dealer facility enhancements and national/regional brand advertising synergy, and Ford/Lincoln Mercury dealer profitability was significantly increased.
John’s automotive knowledge is built upon 24 years of industry experience. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Brand Week Magazine and numerous major daily newspapers and has been a keynote speaker at the Promotional Marketing Association in Los Angeles.
Working with the rest of the Golden Eye team, John will focus on what practical steps we can take to effectively “improve the lives of dealership owners and personnel”.
Ken Goltara
Ken is the former Vice President, Business Technology Services for Toyota Motor Sales (TMS), U.S.A., Inc. He retired from Toyota in October, 2008.
Ken was responsible for supporting the technology activities of TMS, including technology planning, business process analysis and software development. He supported the technology needs of Toyota's field operations, including education and training on business systems to Toyota's associates and dealership personnel located in the U.S. and Mexico.
Prior to his current position, Ken served as the Vice President of Automotive Systems, responsible for the strategy, development, and integration of business systems for Toyota, Lexus and Scion business units.
Ken joined Toyota in 1997 as Corporate Manager of Business Systems Development, where he served until his promotion to vice president in 1999. His career spans more than 30 years in information systems, with 20 years focused on the automotive industry. Before joining Toyota, Ken was Director of Systems Development at Isuzu Motors America. Prior to that, he spent ten years in a variety of management positions with Nissan Motor Corporation, U.S.A.
At Golden Eye, Ken will focus on helping the team think through Dealership Service Level Agreements, OEM Factory Integration, and IT-Business Governance.
Michel Josephs
Michael Josephs presently serves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO), of StrataCare Inc., a national Medical Review company that provides an MBR SaaS to some of the largest Self-Insured companies and Third Party Administrators in the country. In this role, Michaels responsibilities include overseeing the creation and delivery of StrataCare's SaaS technology platform to its client, as well departmental areas of technology project management, information systems and technology infrastructure, release management, product management, application development, software quality assurance and technical services. After joining StrataCare in 2006 as Vice President, Production Technology, he was promoted to the role of Chief CIO in March, 2008, increasing his sphere of accountability to include the alignment of StrataCares technology strategy and investment with its business imperatives and the needs of its clients.
Prior to joining StrataCare, Michael served as Director for Technology Development at E*TRADE Financial in their retail lending channel. Michael was also the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Triad Financial Corporation, a subsidiary of Ford Financial focused on non-prime auto finance. In addition to providing senior leadership for all Triad IT and Telecommunications operations, Michael had Profit & Loss (P&L) accountability for Triad's Direct-to-Consumer (internet) lending channel, as well as executive accountability for Triad's Customer Care Call Center operational performance.
Prior to engaging with Triad, Michael held diverse technology management roles ranging from the deployment of new digital information technologies to our national intelligence community (the MITRE Corporation), to serving as Vice President of Product Development (Concept Five Technologies) while managing a joint product partnership with Hitachi-Japan.
At Golden Eye, Michael will focus on technology-enabled best practices for customer support and service, and how best to design a solution architecture that will serve our community well into the future.
Eric Gist
Eric is a former Los Angeles-based partner in the Accenture Customer Relationship Management global practice. He retired from Accenture in December of 2007.
A specialist in customer interactions, Eric has more than 21 years experience in building and deploying large scale integrated customer solutions. He had operational responsibility for Accentures Sales Transformation practice his work includes optimizing sales force performance and sales operations; conducting sales force capability and value diagnostics; developing sales force organizational structures; and integrating sales and marketing processes.
Eric was also responsible for launching and scaling Accentures Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) practice. This practice focused on the adoption of SaaS-based solutions for enterprise companies to enable new marketing, sales and service capabilities.
Eric has authored several articles including Changing Sales Force Behavior to Achieve High Performance, and Selling in Turbulent Times, and A New Look at Managing Incentive Compensation.
Working with Golden Eye Customer Engagement & Support Leadership, Eric will bring proven best-practices from other pioneering SaaS companies to our processes, and help us build a world-class organization.