A Diverse Team Led By Industry Icons And Emerging Visionaries

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Martin Schmitt

Co-Founder, CEO
A car nut since childhood and a tech geek since adulthood, Martin is the founder and CEO of NewCars.com. After its acquisition by Cars.com, Martin continued on as VP of R&D. Martin was also the VP of Engineering at Shopzilla, where he led a team to build the Internet’s largest shopping comparison engine. Martin is also the co-founder of Kay Angel, a Haitian orphanage for HIV positive children.

Signature Scent: Motor oil + homemade grape juice
Secret Skill: Changing your manifold gasket
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Uzi Eliahou

Co-Founder, President
A big thinker, Uzi’s experience with AI runs back to his days in the Israeli military. Uzi’s ability to think outside of the box has helped him launch new businesses and bring fresh perspectives to stale situations. His tech experience includes being the chairman & CEO of Matchcraft, one of the world’s premier digital marketing firms. Uzi also headed up internet strategy for Packard Bell and NEC computers. When not brainstorming at CarLabs, Uzi can be found trying to save the world.

Happy Place: A blank white board
Secret Skill: Hiking the PCT
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Isabel Sopoglian

COO
Isabel is the rational, level-headed force that keeps CarLabs together. She naturally provides the structure and discipline that this group of goofball brainiacs require to stay on course. Prior to CarLabs, Isabel was the VP of Search Marketing for Cars.com and a core member of NewCars.com. Isabel is also the founder of Project Visable which helps fight hunger among LA’s homeless children.

Happy Place: In the garden
Secret Skill: Speaks 4 Languages
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Sam Havens

CTO
An insufferable geek & chronic learner, Sam comes to CarLabs naturally embracing new strategies and technologies. After publishing a paper on General Relativity, Sam become an accomplished Math & Physics teacher. At CarLabs, Sam mastered full stack development and has been the driving force behind most of our new products, including Carla. Sam’s teaching experience comes in handy as he tries to the explain the complexities of AI, API, UI and many other technological acronyms to the rest of us mortals.

Signature Scent: Strong beer & stronger baby wipes
Secret Skill: Knee deep in complex theory
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Sandy Ganz

VP, Engineering
Sandy is the data king of CarLabs. He’s the guy that keeps the infrastructure running smoothly and manages all of the new data efficiently. Prior to CarLabs, Sandy played a large part in launching the world’s most successful podcast and also was VP of search & Inventory at Shopzilla. As an automotive enthusiast and passionate mechanic, Sandy’s technical knowledge is almost as impressive as his garage.

Signature Scent: Coffee with a side of beef jerky
Happy Place: Under the hood
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Amelia Dalgaard

Director, Editorial & Content
Amelia (aka Motorhead Mama) started her career as a tv writer and producer. She was a part of the hit show VH1’s ‘Pop Up Video’ & the collosal flop Bloomberg’s ‘The Morning Music Wire.” Amelia also led the Southwest team for Design Within Reach as the company went from one store to 25 and through its strong IPO. Since launching the Motorhead Mama site, Amelia has test driven over 100 cars and crashed very a few.

Personal Kryptonite: 1st gen Prius
Signature Scent: Brake dust + Hawaiian Tropic
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Brendan Flynn

VP, Marketing
Brendan’s connection to the automotive world runs as deep as his ability to embrace its future. As one of the driving forces behind the LA Auto Show & The Connected Car Expo, Brendan understood the significance of data and AI in the automotive space early on. Brendan’s additional clients have included Yokohama, Yamaha, Jiffy Lube & Enterprise car rental.

Secret Skill: Skateboarding
Signature Scent: Lithium ion
Miracle

Miracle Everett

Director, Product
Miracle is CarLabs’ product guru and a woman who gets stuff done. In her former life, Miracle managed a portfolio of 30+ Fortune 500 companies for a global cloud-based communications service. At CarLabs, Miracle’s no nonsense approach equates to exceptional productivity. Her BS in Biology is also handy if any team members need to locate their spleen.

Secret Skill: Painting Portraits

Personal Kryptonite: Time Wasters
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Jesse Johnson

DevOps Engineer
Jesse came to CarLabs with a mountain of DevOps experience and it shows. After cutting his teeth at Mindspark, Ask.com and Wayin, Jesse’s ability to tackle any tech issue with velocity and grace is outstanding. An accomplished outdoorsman, Jesse recently moved himself & his family from Boulder to Los Angeles, where he is tackling the urban jungle in his M3.

Signature Scent: Taco grease + climbing chalk
Dream Car: McLaren P1
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Kevin Park

Data Scientist
Kevin is the kind of guy that reads Math books for fun and it shows. His ability to apply his mathematical skills to data & statistics for CarLabs is nothing short of magical. Kevin joined the team after receiving his Masters in statistics at Oregon State, where his final project was to create an algorithm to classify plankton. We figure if he can tackle the global aquatic ecosystem, cars should be a piece of cake.

Secret Skill: Can tell the difference between a Detritus Blob & a Trichodesmium Bowtie
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Ted Zilist

Developer
Ted is a chemist who knows how to code. This dynamic skill set has brought Ted everywhere from the labs of a cosmetics company to leading an engineering team tasked with creating a node debugging tool. Easily embracing new technologies, Ted is constantly learning and enhancing his skill sets. Ted accumulates github stars like the rest of us accumulate single socks.

Secret Skill: Knows a lot about eye crème
Personal Kryptonite: A world without pizza
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Barack Karavani

Developer
Barak is an award winning software developer with a personal passion for robotics and artificial intelligence. He has led engineering projects at several companies including the Honest Company and Edmunds. He has extensive training in building large scale systems, artificial intelligence, advanced data structures and web applications.

Barak received his B.S. and M.S. in computer science from Cal State University Northridge.
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Danny Carrillo

Developer
Danny is a full stack developer who comes to CarLabs with extensive telecommunications experience. As the founder of VoiServe, Danny did everything from building the PHP framework to business development and marketing. Danny is a graduate of Pierce College where he focused on computer science. As a new dad, when he isn’t maintaining Linux web servers, he’s chasing lost sleep patterns.

Happy Place: Family time
Secret Skill: Stealth mode

Advisory and Board Members

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Tom Mcalear

Advisory Board Member, Angel Investor
Tom is the former COO of Daimler -Chrysler Services and retired in 2002 after over 27 years in the industry. He held executive management positions in Sales, Service, Marketing, Insurance and Financial Services. Since his retirement Tom has been a consultant to Fortune 500 companies as well as small business owners. He has been an owner of a multi-franchised car dealership and currently is Chairman and part owner of several supplier companies.

Happy Place: Playing/laughing with grandkids
Secret Superpower: World's best wife
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Mitch Golub

Board Member, Angel Investor
As the President and Founder of Cars.com, Mitch transformed the company into the leading online automotive destination with $600m in revenue. Previous to Cars, Mitch spent 21 years at the Tribune Co, where he led the the company’s new business initiatives, including the creation and management of 9 start ups in digital, print and broadcast. Mitch is currently the president of MFG Digital where is he is an investor and board member with a focus on digital start ups.

Signature Scent: Blueberries
Secret Skill: Saugatuck, MI
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Kevin Keegan

Board Member, Angel Investor
Kevin comes to CarLabs with a wealth of experience in the insurance and automotive industries and has been at the forefront of driving change. He is adept at listening to every team member with a respect and accessibility to help us grow as a team. Kevin’s executive experience includes being President at both InsWeb and Marshall & Swift and Senior VP at JD Power and he is currently the US Ambassador for the International Insurance Society. Kevin also knows anyone you’ve ever wanted to meet.

Signature Scent: Learning from customers
Personal Kryptonite: Being mistaken for the English football star
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Professor Moshe BenBassat

Advisory Board Member
Professor Moshe BenBassat has been researching, practicing and educating Artificial Intelligence for several decades. During a long academic career with positions at Tel Aviv University, USC, and UCLA, Professor BenBassat made significant contributions in Pattern Recognition, Artificial Intelligence, Optimization, Data Science and Machine Learning.

Following his invention of “service chain optimization” (patent awarded), he founded ClickSoftware which have been leading this space since its inception in 1997. Moshe served as ClickSoftware’s CEO until 2015, at which point it was acquired for close to $0.5 Billion.
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Ryan McManus

Advisory Board Member
Ryan McManus is SVP of Partnerships and Development for EVRYTHNG and President of EVRYTHNG Inc, an IoT Smart Products platform company; and also serves on the Board of Directors for Nortech Systems. He has over 20 years’ experience as a leader in both digital business start-ups and large corporate digital transformations. He previously founded Accenture’s Digital Business Strategy and Transformation practice and served as the Accenture Strategy COO and a leader in the firm’s Corporate Strategy, M&A and International Expansion businesses. He is the author of several articles on digital business and corporate strategy, serves on two advisory boards with the Aspen Institute and has served as an adviser to Fortune 100 companies, technology startups and non-profits.

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