GuideSpark Team

Leadership

GuideSpark’s leadership team brings together experts in employee experience, responsive software design, and communication design to deliver a breakthrough platform for employee communication.

Keith Kitani

Co-Founder and CEO
Keith is CEO and co-founder of GuideSpark, and brings over 20 years of digital communications and eLearning expertise to creating, building and leading GuideSpark as it transforms workplace communications. Keith’s career has been focused on building companies that develop digital solutions to connect people and information. He and his co-founders created GuideSpark to bring technology and innovative content together in a way that transforms employee communications, leading GuideSpark into a team of nearly 300 professionals and serving 650 customers including 20 percent of the Fortune 500.
Prior to founding GuideSpark in 2008, Keith served as Senior Director and Entrepreneur in Residence for Adobe where he led efforts on the company’s new SaaS business. In 1999, Keith co-founded Presedia, which developed eLearning and digital presentation solutions. Presedia was bought by MacroMedia in 2003 and Keith joined MacroMedia as VP, Project Management and Operations, where he managed a team and business that he grew into $50 million in annual revenue. Keith received his B.A. in Electrical Engineering and his M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Earl Charles

Chief Financial Officer
Prior to joining GuideSpark, Earl served as the CFO of Bromium, where he was responsible for corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and infrastructure. Earl was instrumental in closing the company’s acquisition by HP, Inc. Previously, Earl was the CFO at AOptix and eMeter. At eMeter, he negotiated financing to fuel the company’s sales growth while improving its systems and infrastructure.
Earl also worked at XenSource, a server-virtualization software company, where he served as CFO and was instrumental in negotiating the agreement for the company’s acquisition by Citrix Systems. Earl has held similar positions at Cupertino Electric, mycfo.com, Prism Solutions, and R2 Technology, Inc. Earl was a partner and a 20-year veteran at Deloitte & Touche LLP, a public accounting firm, and holds a BBA from the University of Notre Dame.
Charles Lee

Charles Lee

SVP, Head of Studios
Charles Lee serves as GuideSpark’s Senior Vice President and Head of Studios. GuideSpark Studios delivers engaging, end-to-end content products and services in support of the entire GuideSpark customer base and ecosystem. He leads an in-house team of multimedia experts that design and produce several thousand videos and digital documents, year after year. Charles is an award-winning media industry veteran, with over 15 years owning and operating his own creative agencies.
His career includes working with the 2000 Democratic National Convention, the buildout of the broadcast studio facility that is now NPR West, and winning a 2008 PrimeTime Emmy® Award for Disney Channel Games in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media Programming. Charles has opened and managed agencies in Los Angeles, Miami, Portland, Panama City (Republic of Panama) and Cebu City (Philippines). Prior to joining GuideSpark, Charles was the Chief Digital Officer for Mod Op, a global marketing and advertising agency. Charles received his B.A. in Economics from Pomona College.

Elizabeth Daggert

VP of Engineering
Elizabeth Daggert serves as Vice President of Engineering at GuideSpark. In this role she oversees Software Engineering, Quality Assurance, and Operations. Elizabeth brings over 20 years of software development and leadership experience, including both creating her own startup and leading large development teams at Microsoft and Ericsson.
In her career, she has brought nine new products from inception to market, as well as seven additional releases of new versions in existing product lines. In her previous role at GuideSpark as Sr. Director of Software Architecture, she led the technical implementation of GuideSpark’s newest 1.0 SaaS product: GuideSpark Communicate Cloud. Elizabeth received her B.S. in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering from the University of Washington.

Chris Saito

VP of Sales and Marketing
Chris Saito is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at GuideSpark, where he oversees the day to day operations of the Sales and Marketing Teams. Prior to GuideSpark, Chris held executive positions at Technicolor, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., and several start-ups in Silicon Beach. Chris is a diversified business executive with over 20 years of experience in engaging customers at all levels in an organization to deliver results.
A passion for combining SaaS applications and content to impact business operations and drive revenue growth, Chris specializes in launching new technology platforms that offer compelling content services that deliver impactful user engagement. Chris also serves as Vice Chairman of Media Operations for the Tournament of Roses Volunteer Organization and sits on the board of the Chilo Foundation that helps feed the homeless in his home town. Chris is a graduate of San Diego State University.

Board

GuideSpark’s board team brings together experts in employee experience, responsive software design, and communication design to deliver a breakthrough platform for employee communication.

Ryan Floyd

Managing Director, Storm Ventures
Ryan is a founding Managing Director of Storm Ventures. At Storm Ventures, Ryan focuses on enterprise IT and web opportunities. He has primarily invested in SaaS (Crowd Factory / Acquired by Marketo, BlackStratus), mobile (Appcelerator) and cloud/internet related investments (Hubpages, Kidaro/Acquired by Microsoft, MetaCloud, Spalshtop and Swiftstack). He has also invested in semiconductors/components as well (SandForce /Acquired by LSI and Ignis Optics /Acquired by Bookham).
Prior to founding Storm Ventures, Ryan directed the business development activities at E-TEK Dynamics where he focused on building strategic OEM and customer relationships, scaling E-TEK’s manufacturing operations as well as directing the equity investing and acquisition activities until E-TEK merged with JDS Uniphase in 2000. Prior to joining E-TEK, Ryan was with Summit Partners, a private equity firm, where he focused primarily on IT, including Summit’s investment in E-TEK Dynamics in July 1997. Ryan received his B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University.

Pete Sonsini

General Partner, New Enterprise Associates
Pete joined New Enterprise Associates (NEA) in 2005 and focuses on early-stage enterprise software, systems and consumer internet companies. He is the co-head of NEA’s enterprise software practice group, and serves on several boards for NEA portfolio companies. Past investments include Xensource (acquired by Citrix Systems) and Teracent (acquired by Google).
Prior to NEA, Pete was Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at VMware where he struck the company’s initial OEM deals and grew annual sales through OEMs from $0 to $40 million in four years. Pete ran product management at Mirapoint and worked in sales and marketing at Hewlett-Packard as Worldwide Product Manager for the mid-range server business. Pete began his career at Montgomery Securities in the Technology Corporate Finance group. Pete received his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and his B.A. in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Kevin Lynch

Former SVP & GM, Adobe
As Senior Vice President and General Manager of Document Services at Adobe, Kevin oversaw Adobe’s digital document solutions, including Acrobat, Reader, the PDF ecosystem and its Software as a Service offerings Acrobat.com, FormsCentral, and EchoSign. Under Kevin's leadership, Adobe’s Document Service business grew to more than $785 million, and Adobe Acrobat has been identified as the industry standard for working with PDF documents, which is among the most commonly used document format globally.
Kevin joined Adobe in December 2005 as part of the company’s acquisition of Macromedia, Inc. He was Vice President of e-Learning and Collaboration at Macromedia. Prior to Macromedia, Kevin served as president and CEO of Presedia, Inc., the inventor of rapid e-learning Software as a Service solutions, which Macromedia acquired in January 2003. Kevin previously served as president and CEO of Kalyn Corporation and held management positions at Hal Computers and nCHIP, Inc. Kevin holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and graduated from Rice University with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, magna cum laude.

Keith Kitani

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, GuideSpark
Keith is CEO and co-founder of GuideSpark, and brings over 20 years of digital communications and eLearning expertise to creating, building and leading GuideSpark as it transforms workplace communications. Keith’s career has been focused on building companies that develop digital solutions to connect people and information. He and his co-founders created GuideSpark to bring technology and innovative content together in a way that transforms employee communications, leading GuideSpark into a team of nearly 300 professionals and serving 650 customers including 20 percent of the Fortune 500.
Prior to founding GuideSpark in 2008, Keith served as Senior Director and Entrepreneur in Residence for Adobe where he led efforts on the company’s new SaaS business. In 1999, Keith co-founded Presedia, which developed eLearning and digital presentation solutions. Presedia was bought by MacroMedia in 2003 and Keith joined MacroMedia as VP, Project Management and Operations, where he managed a team and business that he grew into $50 million in annual revenue. Keith received his B.A. in Electrical Engineering and his M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Craig Sherman

General Partner, Meritech Capital
Craig Sherman is a managing director at Meritech Capital, a late-stage venture capital firm focused on category-defining companies including Salesforce, Netsuite, and Facebook. Craig joined Meritech in 2011 and has since led the firm’s investment in Guidespark, as well as Ariosa Diagnostics (acquired by Roche), Evernote, Lynda.com (acquired by LinkedIn), and Zulily (NASDAQ: ZU). Prior to Meritech, Craig was Chief Executive Officer of Gaia Interactive, which he grew from a half million to over a 20 million monthly visitor pioneer in social games and online communities.
Prior to Gaia, Craig was Chief Operating Officer of Ancestry.com, where he helped lead the company’s pivot from a free family social network to a family history subscription service and grew the company from under $10 million to $150 million in sales and from tens of millions in losses to tens of millions in profits. Before Ancestry.com, Craig held senior positions at AIG. Previous to AIG, Craig was Chief Executive Officer of Cendant Japan, a joint venture startup he founded with Cendant and Mitsubishi Corporation that he helped grow from inception to over $20 million in sales and profitability.

Brian “Skip” Schipper

Chief People Officer, Yext
Skip Schipper joined GuideSpark’s board in April 2017. He currently leads the people team for Yext (NYSE: YEXT). Prior to joining Yext, Skip led the HR function for Twitter; the HR and Administration functions for Groupon; and was the global head of Human Resources for Cisco Systems with over 75,000 employees and operations in over 200 countries.  Prior to joining Cisco, Schipper led HR for the Platforms and Services Division (PSD) of Microsoft and held executive roles at Andor Capital Management, DoubleClick, PepsiCo, Frito Lay and Compaq.
Schipper holds a bachelor’s degree from Hope College and an MBA from Michigan State University. In 2014, Schipper was elected to the board of directors of DHI Group, Inc. (NYSE:  DHX) where he chairs the compensation committee; in 2007, Schipper was elected to the board of Verified Person, Inc, a leading provider of background screening services.

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