LOS ANGELES, February 21, 2011 —Geni, the world leader in collaborative genealogy, today announced the promotion of Noah Tutak to chief executive officer. Tutak, who served as Geni’s president since July of 2010, will assume the role from Geni’s founder David Sacks, who will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.
“This is a smooth transition that we’ve been planning for some time,” said Sacks. “Geni has made excellent progress under Noah’s leadershipand I’m happy for him now to fully take the reigns.”
Under the guidance of Tutak Geni has become the world’s leading collaborative genealogy product, offering features similar to those on Wikipedia for group editing and revisions. The site has grown to more than 6 million users that have created over 100 million profiles, more than half of which have been connected in the World Family Tree. Additionally, Tutak oversaw the development of Geni’s crowd sourced translation engine (tr8n), which has turned the site into a truly international community that is available in more than 70 languages.
Tutak, 37, joined the company in March 2007, and has also served as Vice President of Product Management, Vice President of Communications, and Director of Customer Service. He holds a BA in Pure Math from Cal State University, Northridge.
Tutak said, “Geni’s approach to collaborative genealogy is unrivaled, both in terms of community participation and technological innovation. It is a true honor to serve as the CEO and to continue pushing the genealogy space towards greater heights.”
About Geni, Inc.
Geni is solving the problem of genealogy by creating a single family tree of the world. Using the basic free service at Geni.com, users can build their family tree, invite relatives to join it, find relatives in other trees, and then merge trees. The largest tree on Geni contains over 50 million people. Geni’s pay services include enhanced research tools as well as keepsake products created from family tree data. Geni welcomes both casual genealogists and experts who wish to discover new relatives and stay in touch with family. Geni is privately held and based in Los Angeles, California. Its financial backers include Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures. It was founded in 2006 by serial entrepreneur David Sacks, who was the original Chief Operating Office of PayPal and also the founder of Yammer, Inc.