Helping brands take back the Internet since 2010

Chessy West is Kevel's CFO. Prior to Kevel, Chessy was a founding member of United Income, a fintech investment management startup that sold to Capital One. Before that, she was at HelloWallet, a SaaS fintech startup that sold to Morningstar. Chessy holds a Bachelor's in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an MBA From Georgetown University. Outside the office, you can find Chessy spending time with her husband and three kids.

Tim Ewald is Kevel’s CTO, and has spent the last 30 years building distributed software systems to solve problems in a wide range of domains, including image analysis, content management, video processing, databases, and ad tech. He brings his experience as an engineer, architect, and engineering manager to Kevel, where he is responsible for the entire cloud platform. Tim is an author and conference speaker, who holds a Bachelor's in Computer Science from Hampshire College. Outside of the office, he builds furniture using hand tools.

Tushar Kirtane is responsible for leading Kevel's product strategy. Prior to Kevel, Tushar was Director of Revenue for Pocket where he grew revenues through product & partnerships from 0 to over $15M. Tushar holds a Bachelor’s in Biomedical Engineering and an MBA, both from Duke University. Outside of work, Tushar once had the top post on /r/pizza and lives in North Carolina with his wife & two kids.

Sandy Grason has spent her career building lean, agile, high-performing teams. Prior to joining Kevel, Sandy was the Senior Director of Software Development at Charter Communications where she was responsible for the strategic direction and management of the backend video software development. Sandy is a former CEO, business strategist, consultant, published author, serial entrepreneur & mentor, lover of chocolate, movies, skiing & shoes (not necessarily in that order).

Derek Houdyshell is Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Kevel.  He is responsible for building and leading the global sales team strategy and execution. Derek has been driving adoption of ad tech monetization solutions for over 20 years. With over a decade of experience at two of the largest programmatic supply side platforms. He brought the first header bidding solution to large media owners at Index Exchange and introduced RTB solutions to publishers while at PubMatic. Before that Derek grew Glam Media into a top 10 global media company in terms of reach as measured by Comscore. He is passionate about making digital advertising a fair value exchange between consumers, platforms, and brands with better outcomes for all.

Dylan Hulser is the Vice President of Customer Success at Kevel, where he has played an integral role for the past eight years. Prior to leading the customer success organization, he held various roles within sales, then formed the Solutions Architecture team at Kevel. Now within Customer Success, he leads the global Support, Solutions, and Customer Success Manager teams. With a degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from Ithaca College, Dylan's expertise lies in the intersection of advertising, technology, and customer satisfaction. His journey in the advertising industry began with digital media buying for renowned brands under Proctor & Gamble's umbrella at their agency, MediaVest (now Spark). Later, Dylan joined Reddit as their 3rd revenue hire working in strategy for big brand advertisers, ad operations, and other monetization roles.

Seasoned leader with experience working in product, commercial, operational & marketing functions. Neil has scaled operations teams globally, defined & redefined product vision and roadmaps to meet market needs. Neil enjoys working as part of a close leadership team and balancing product roadmaps, with revenue growth, the required people, and team growth. Neil works from defining long range vision, through planning to launch and establishing the new business norms and continuous improvement.

Leslie Pierce-Connor has spent her career bootstrapping legal functions at startups, helping to build out the first-ever legal department at multiple growth-stage companies. She brings intensely practical experience in both legal operations and legal practice to the organization, with an emphasis on developing scalable, repeatable processes. Leslie also provides legal consulting services to charitable organizations. When not working, Leslie is an outdoor enthusiast, a calligrapher, a foodie, and a mom to both a two year old son and a six year old labrador retriever.

Mike Kohn is passionate about building healthy, inclusive cultures where people can bring their whole selves to thrive. Mike’s foundational experience as an HR Business Partner and as a human capital consultant at Deloitte launched him into his roles as a People executive and leadership coach at various scaling organizations. Beyond work, he spends time with his husband, Tony, and their dog, Spot, at spin classes, playing board games, hiking, or watching musical theater. He sits on the Board of Directors at FRESHFARM, a non-profit working towards improved food access, equity, and education.

Paulo has been building products for the digital marketing and advertising industry for over 18 years. After completing his BSc in Computing from London Met, he started his career developing products at companies such as Acxiom and Wunderloop – Europe’s first behavioral targeting technology. Paulo later founded ShiftForward, where he launched products such as the Private CDP and the Ad Forecaster and served as CEO, completing its exit to Velocidi in 2018 and later to Kevel in 2022. Paulo also helps tech startups as a board advisor and as a mentor in the Founders Founders community which he helped create in Porto, Portugal.

Matt has been an investor in and operator of early stage technology companies for more than 20 years. At Commerce Ventures, he leads the firm's retail-tech investing and has led investments in FleetOps, Grabango, Kevel, Mulberry, Pensa Systems, Rally, Simon Data, Syte and Trove. Commerce Ventures invested in Kevel in 2020 and Matt has worked closely with them since.

Philip joined Fulcrum in 2007 as the first Analyst. It was a special time to join as they were a startup themselves, and the experience growing with and alongside the firm has taught him a great deal. He have built a culture at Fulcrum that goes beyond business and has truly become a family. With the firm’s operational experience, he meets his teams with solutions, understanding what it truly takes to scale.

Tim Huntley graduated in 1989 from North Carolina State University with a BS in Computer Science, and is the former CEO of Ganymede Software, a venture-backed start-up he founded in 1995 with three friends from IBM.  Ganymede developed two award winning products, Chariot and Pegasus, for testing and measuring the performance of applications running over enterprise computer networks and was acquired in 2000 by Mission Critical/NetIQ, Following the acquisition by NetIQ, Tim was involved in a wide range of M&A, due diligence, and investment activities. These included the integration of WebTrends, the purchases of Marshal Software and SQL Probe from Subquery Innovations, and investments in @Stake and Lumigent Technologies.At present, Tim is the CEO of Centervention, a provider of social emotional learning interventions for students in grades K-8 and has been a member of the board of directors at Kevel since 2015.

Neil Callahan is a Founder and Managing Partner at Pilot Growth Equity and based in New York City. Neil has over 25 years of technology investing and operating experience and is a successful bootstrapped software entrepreneur. He has advised many of the world’s leading technology companies on strategy, product management, sales & marketing, infrastructure and operations. Prior to Pilot Growth, Neil was the Co-founder and CEO of Sitaro LTD.,which was acquired by CoActive Marketing Group. At CoActive, Neil was a member of the executive team as the President of the Digital Business Unit and as the EVP of Business Development. While at CoActive, Neil expanded the client portfolio into the automotive, technology, financial services and sports & apparel verticals. Prior to co-founding Sitaro, Neil was a Vice President of Marketing Technology & Strategy for Young & Rubicam / Wunderman. Neil began his career with Andersen Consulting as a software developer and an engagement manager, where he created technology solutions for the Fortune 50.

Jim loves what he does because he works with the same kinds of companies he's been working on for years. As a leader of these organizations, he wakes up every day thinking about how he can help his portfolio CEOs grow their business. Outside of Fulcrum, he is an active member of Atlanta’s entrepreneurial community. He is also a board member of Venture Atlanta and UNICEF Southeast Region.