Collaborative Genealogy Site Promotes and Adds Essential Team Members

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA – May 19, 2011 – Geni, the collaborative family history community and home of the “World Family Tree,” today announced continued strong growth including the promotion and addition of key team members across the organization.

With a growing user base and more than 100 million family profiles added by the Geni community, 55 million of which are connected to the World Family Tree, the company promoted two essential employees to the executive team:

• Justin Balthrop is now chief technology officer, responsible for the technology strategy of the company.
• Michael Stangel takes over as vice president of engineering, overseeing the engineering and operations teams.

To further develop business initiatives and better serve its growing community, Geni also promoted and added the following employees:

• Michael Berkovich is promoted to technical lead, platform, responsible for core technologies such as Geni’s API and mobile offerings. He will interact with API partners to ensure that the API and Geni platform promote innovation in genealogy.
• Ian McDaniel is promoted to director of product development, overseeing design and front-end development.
• Greg Drewganis, formerly of Playboy Enterprises, Inc. and Encyclopedia Britannica, joins as director of monetization. He will drive efforts to increase Geni’s subscriber base and will work to form strategic partnerships that add additional revenue streams.
• Charles Edmonds, previously at MySpace, is now customer service manager, ensuring Geni community members continue to receive superior support and service.
• Michelle Kempner, former director of the solutions architecture group at Schematic, joins as user experience designer. She will ensure that Geni appeals to both expert and casual users alike.
• Alan Malloy, formerly of HubPages, joins as senior software engineer. He is the latest addition to the growing team of Clojure programmers working on Geni’s core technology.

“Public curiosity around family history and relationships to various historical figures and celebrities is at an all time high, and is driving millions of people to create and connect family trees,” said Noah Tutak, Geni CEO. “Collaboration is the future of genealogy, and Geni’s strong and growing team will help drive these efforts as well as our next phase of growth.”

Millions of Geni members, both casual and expert genealogists, are creating a single World Family Tree comprised of interconnected family trees from across the entire world. Visitors can sign up for free and easily add and find family members at geni.com.

About Geni, Inc.

Geni is an online collaborative family history community that provides casual and expert genealogists with an easy and comprehensive way to document personal family trees and join the World Family Tree. Members can add and invite relatives to build their family tree, with no limit on the number of people, documents, photos or videos added, while personally connecting with history and finding out how they are related to others in the World Family Tree. Privately held and based in Los Angeles, Geni is financially supported by the Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures and was founded by David Sacks, the original Chief Operating Officer of PayPal and founder of Yammer, Inc.

 

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