Executive Chairman
Karen Francis joined AcademixDirect as Executive Chairman in 2009. Karen’s management career has spanned many industries enabling her to bring deep experience to the team, particularly in advertising, marketing and education. Most recently, Karen was Chairman and CEO of Publicis & Hal Riney, an advertising agency based in San Francisco and owned by global holding company Publicis in Paris, France. Prior to that, Karen has held senior executive positions with Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Internet Capital Group, and Bain & Company management consulting. Karen has a proven track record of generating top and bottom line growth by building great brands, aggressively improving operating financials, and developing effective teams.
Karen is also on the Board of Directors of Mamapedia.com, and has contributed as an advisor to technology companies for the last ten years including comScore, XLTech Group, Redloop Media, and Scanscout. She also served as a member of the Board of Trustees for Dartmouth College for nine years enabling her to understand and follow trends and issues in higher education today.
The owner of a zinfandel vineyard in Healdsburg, CA, Karen participates actively in the wine country and wine collecting. She enjoys hiking and cycling and is a member of the Napa Valley Vine Trails Coalition, an initiative to create more trails in the area.
Karen holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College. She speaks French and studied at l’Universite de Toulouse, France.
Founder and Board Director
Al Abhari founded AcademixDirect in 2004 and serves as the visionary and a Board Director. Al is an innovative entrepreneur with significant expertise in online consumer advertising and how to grow Internet businesses to profitability.
Al brings a unique combination of intuitive marketing sense, industry insight, and technology background that has been solidified by a decade of business building in the online media space. During the last five years, Al has created several successful student-oriented online portals for college-bound students searching for the ideal colleges and universities. Today, AcademixDirect is a rapidly growing company and a premier provider of online advertising focused on student recruitment for the post-secondary education sector.
Prior to AcademixDirect, Al founded Streetline in 1999, a digital marketing company specializing in online advertising services for the leading insurance carriers across the United States. He built Streetline into one of the top three online media providers serving 500+ insurance carriers and agents across the US. In 1996, Al founded Trade Connections, a b-to-b barter exchange that leveraged technology to manage systematic barter transactions between manufacturers, retailers, and service providers. Trade Connections was sold to the American Trade Association in 1998.
Outside the office, Al has a passion for endurance sports such as cycling and running, along with high performance and classic cars. He loves spending time with his wife and two daughters.
Al holds a BS in Management Information Systems from San Jose State University. He speaks Farsi fluently.
Chief Operating Officer
John Adractas joined AcademixDirect in 2009 to lead the daily operations. John is an entrepreneurial general manager with diverse experience ranging from strategy to operations to venture funding.
Most recently, John managed Google’s Earth, Maps, and SketchUp teams within the Online Sales & Operations group from 2006-2008. He led his teams to build ultra-scaled support operations that achieved 70%+ efficiency improvements, drove deeper product adoption via user education, prioritized user critical bug fixes/features, and prevented abuse.
Prior to Google, John was a venture capitalist in early stage software with Voyager Capital. Also, he was a founding team member and held numerous operating roles at an enterprise software start-up, Zeborg, and a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and the Mitchell Madison Group.
A classical and jazz musical aficionado, John played piano professionally for over a decade. John volunteered with TechnoServe in summer 2006 in rural Mozambique to help two social entrepreneurs develop an eco-tourism business plan (…hotel opening in late 2009!).
John holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BA in both Mathematics and Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Greek with functional fluency and is learning Hindi.
Chief Technology Officer
Satish Ramakrishnan brings more than 20 years of experience managing technology to his position as AcademixDirect’s chief technology officer.
Prior to joining AcademixDirect, he was the CTO of CoreObjects, where over a five-year period he helped grow the company from 40 employees to nearly 500 and to establish it as the leader in new produce development services by assisting in the launch of close to 40 companies and 75 products. He has also held executive positions at PointCast (AOL), KnowNow Inc., Good Technologies (Motorola) and Women.com (NBC Universal), as well as key positions at Wipro and BEA.
Satish earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Mysore in India.
Chief Financial Officer
Jeff joined AcademixDirect in May 2009 to lead the accounting, finance, human resources and legal operations. Jeff is a finance executive with experience ranging from daily accounting operations, financial planning and analysis, treasury, IPO preparation, M&A to venture funding.
Jeff previously led the finance functions at MySQL, the leading global open source database software provider. Under Jeff’s leadership from 2005-2008, the finance team built scalable systems and processes that supported 50+% compound annual growth and revenues soaring to $100MM, growing 5x greater than finance team headcount. In addition, he led the transition away from Swedish Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and building US GAAP public company capabilities. When MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1 billion in February 2008, Jeff led diligence efforts and ensured a successful integration of MySQL finance systems and staff.
Prior to MySQL, Jeff held finance executive positions at Omnicell Inc. and Redback Networks.
Jeff holds an MBA from Golden Gate University and a BA in Accounting from San Jose State University. Jeff speaks passable English and fluent account-a-nese.
Board Director
Jamie Claire joined AcademixDirect as its second founding member. Jamie brings significant experience in operational organization and contract development from her prior experience with major U.S. and international companies.
Prior to AcademixDirect, Jamie was responsible for Contracts Development and Corporate Compliance at Toshiba International Corporation in San Francisco. During her tenure at Toshiba, Jamie was responsible for contract formation of the company’s largest sales, implementation of corporate policy, and cross-functional execution involving sales, finance, administration, engineering, and aftermarket departments.
Before Toshiba, Jamie worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers Corporate Finance group and the law firm of White & Case in Tokyo, Japan.
Jamie earned a Juris Doctor and Certificate in International Law from Golden Gate University, and a BA cum laude in Asian Studies and Political Science from Tufts University. She speaks Japanese fluently.
Board Director
Gustavo Joined Kennet in 2005 and focuses on investments in software, Internet and technology-enabled services. He works extensively with portfolio companies on optimizing the efficiency of their respective sales models.
Gustavo brings a decade of experience working with high-growth technology companies from different vantage points, including financial advisor, employee, and venture investor. Beyond his role at AcademixDirect, Gustavo is also a member of the Board at TradingPartners, a Board Observer at Intelepeer, and an angel investor in Designer Apparel.
Before Kennet, Gustavo worked at Trinity Ventures in Menlo Park, CA. Prior to venture capital, Gustavo worked in marketing and business development at Saltare, an enterprise software startup funded by DFJ and Sutter Hill. He began his career in the technology investment banking division of Robertson Stephens. Gustavo has also consulted for companies like WebMD.
Gustavo holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA from Swarthmore College. He speaks Spanish fluently.
Board Director
Javier has led Kennet’s US investment activities since 2000. He is a specialist in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Internet business models, and an experienced coach to young companies as they seek to scale their market reach.
Javier’s influence can be seen in the success of companies such as project management software vendor Daptiv and healthcare analytics business Medefinance. He has also been instrumental in a number of successful exits for founder-led businesses including most recently NetPro and Adviva. Javier is also a member of the boards of Kapow Technologies and IntelePeer. Javier is an active speaker and lectures regularly on entrepreneurship and bootstrapping.
Before joining Kennet, Javier led investment bank Broadview’s West Coast software and services practice, and specialized in helping founder-led, bootstrapped businesses achieve high exit values. He has invested and/or advised on a number of successful companies and high value exits including Etek, Webex, Looksmart, Blue Mountain Arts, When.com and Rightworks. Javier has also been an entrepreneur, having founded a software company targeting the financial services market. Previously, Javier gained international experience in corporate finance and capital markets at Morgan Stanley in New York and in London.
Javier holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS/BA in Finance and Computer Science from Georgetown University. He speaks Spanish fluently.