Team

Dries Buytaert Co-founder, Benevolent Dictator

Dries is the original creator and project lead for the Drupal open source web publishing and collaboration platform. He serves as president of the Drupal Association, a non-profit organization formed to help Drupal flourish. A native of Belgium, Dries holds a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University.

Drupal.org ID: Dries blog: http://buytaert.net
Jay Batson Co-founder, Company Craftsman

Acquia is the second technology company Jay has (co-)founded, and is also his second commercial open-source effort (the previous having been Pingtel, which was acquired by Bluesocket in 2007.) Jay's work passion is to build great companies that build things that users are passionately happy with. When not obsessing about products, he builds miles on his custom Serotta, is a rabid pro cycling fan (getting his news at VeloNews - a Drupal site!), and spends time under the headphones listening to and spinning all styles of house and trance music.

Drupal.org ID: batsonjay blog: http://underheadphones.com
Jeff Whatcott Communicator in Chief

Jeff joined Acquia from Adobe, where he managed marketing, product management, and evangelism for several platform and infrastructure products. He is a father of four, a passionate amateur photographer, and an armchair economist. Jeff grew up in Idaho and studied economics and earned his MBA at Brigham Young University.

Drupal.org ID: jwhatcott blog: http://jeffwhatcott.com
Barry Jaspan Principal Engineer

Barry is an entrepreneurially-minded computer programmer with a strong focus on computer security and privacy. Prior to Acquia, Barry spent two years as a Drupal core developer; he also created interMute, the first commercial web annoyance blocker, and Spamnix, a spam-blocking product. Barry is a maniacal whitewater kayaker and rock climber and generally spends his time wherever rocks, water, and gravity meet.

Drupal.org ID: bjaspan blog: http://jaspan.com
Gábor Hojtsy Code Gardener

Gábor is an open source enthusiast and contributor. He started his open source work as part of the PHP.net team, where he was the documentation team lead. With experience organizing open conferences and meetups, reviewing books, teaching courses and collaborating on all kinds of open source projects, he settled around Drupal over the past few years. In his spare time, Gábor likes to sing and act, especially in musicals.

Drupal.org ID: Gábor Hojtsy blog: http://hojtsy.hu/
Douglas Hubler Propellerhead

Douglas joins Acquia from Pingtel. He brings a variety of experience working on web related consulting adventures. Douglas enjoys deleting code much more than writing it, solving problems that have not been solved before and finds great satisfaction in open source environments. He enjoys birdwatching and playing hockey. BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Massachusetts - Amherst.

Drupal.org ID: dlhubler blog: http://hublers.blogspot.com
Kieran Lal Drupal Community Adventure Guide

Kieran earned his nickname, Amazon, by following a dream that he was biking through the Amazon river basin. That spirit of adventure continues in his multiple roles within the Drupal community today. He enjoys hiking, wine, and his wife Denise's gourmet vegan cuisine in San Francisco.

Drupal.org ID: amazon blog: http://association.drupal.org/blog/67
Robert Douglass Senior Drupal Advisor

Robert’s Drupal adventure started in 2003. Along the way he co-authored the first book published about Drupal, was technical editor of Pro Drupal Development, became the maintainer of numerous modules, and organized Drupal’s “Google Summer of Code” involvement. Robert loves classical music and open source software dearly, and looks to each as a source for motivation and optimism.

Drupal.org ID: robertDouglass blog: http://www.robshouse.net
Bryan House Head Zymurgist

Bryan joined Acquia from EMC, where he managed product and outbound marketing for Documentum’s collaboration, document management and search technologies. Prior to EMC, Bryan worked in product marketing and product management in the collaboration technology space, after brewing beer professionally for seven years. Bryan lives in the Boston area and is an ardent Red Sox fan, he earned his MBA at Harvard.

Drupal.org ID: bhouse
Chuck D'Antonio Head Concierge

Chuck joined Acquia from HP, where he managed a global SOA software consulting practice, completing a journey that started at Systinet. Prior to Systinet, he was a principal consultant at eFORCE and Context Integration. Chuck is a father of two children and a black lab. Chuck enjoys cooking, sailing, and reading. He's a lifelong resident of Medford, MA and was graduated from Bates College in 1995.

Drupal.org ID: crdant blog: http://chuckdantonio.com
Paul Lovvik Principal Engineer

Paul joined Acquia from Openwave Systems, where he was the architect and lead engineer of a development team working on a JavaScript application that serves as the front end of a highly scalable, feature-rich email system. Prior to Openwave he worked at Sun Microsystems on installation, radio frequency identification (RFID), and many projects aimed at developing a market for various Sun technologies. In his spare time, he enjoys reading and building electronic projects. Paul earned his BS in Computer Science at California State University in San Bernardino.

Drupal.org ID: paul.lovvik
Heidi Deschamps Empress

Heidi joined Acquia after working in the IT Department of AEW Capital Management for 8 years. Heidi graduated from Simmons College in 1998 with a degree in psychology, which she finds use for daily here at Acquia. Heidi lives for working out and when she is not sweating it out at the gym, you can find her doing anything outdoors; hiking, biking, rollerblading, or downing a pint of Cool Whip on the beach.
Peter Wolanin Momentum Specialist

Peter Wolanin made the leap (or perhaps just one step in a biased random walk) from being Senior Scientist at a bio-tech to working on what he truly loves, Drupal. Peter spent a large fraction of his non-working waking hours in the last couple years re-working Drupal core and maintaining contributed modules. In the free time that he hasn’t devoted to Drupal he enjoys watching and reading science fiction, hiking, getting involved in politics, and working on his town’s environmental commission. Peter graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in Physics and a certificate in Engineering Physics and then went on to obtain his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Michigan where his research focus was biophysics.

Drupal.org ID: pwolanin
David Rothstein Code Plumber

David came to Acquia from a career in astrophysics, where an interest in online science education led him to build a number of PHP-based websites and eventually steered him towards Drupal. He is passionate about using Drupal to improve education and make the world a better place. David holds degrees from Haverford College and Cornell University. Outside of work, he enjoys Ultimate (frisbee), karate, hiking, and the outdoors.

Drupal.org ID: David_Rothstein
Ethan Fremen Senior Teleoperated Monkey

Ethan joined Acquia after years of internet consulting and an intensive year-long Drupal experience with a now-defunct Boston area news daily. He enjoys making machines collaborate with each other in the service of connecting minds together. When not making the internets go, he enjoys culturing pond scum, cycling, and esoteric epistemology.

Drupal.org ID: mindlace blog: http://mindlace.net/
Elaine Archdeacon Matchmaker

Elaine comes to Acquia with a lengthy background working in high-tech start-ups. Her passion has been to demonstrate that software and services can be represented to customers efficiently and fully via the telephone and the web. She has successfully initiated Telesales programs for numerous companies over the years, including PC Docs, Revit Technology and Imprivata. She is keen on the win-win situation she sees at Acquia, confident that she can engineer a sales model that matches Drupal users with the services they need and want. She blends a seriousness of purpose about business with a high spirited sense of humor, believing that hard work can and should be fun as well as challenging. With two children, one living in Los Angeles and one away at college, Elaine finds herself with more time on her hands than she is used to. She spends this time shopping, working out and nagging her husband.
Kent Gale Chief of Surgery

Kent joined Acquia from Angus Systems and brings a range of customer support and operations experience. Previously he held operations and customer management positions at e-learning and telecommunication firms. Prior to that he built a world-class support organization serving customers on three continents and supporting multiple products at ON Technology. His "thing" is figuring out how to delight customers by assembling the people and systems needed to deliver great service and support. When not keeping up with his two very active girls he enjoys tinkering in his workshop, reading about new gizmos, practicing karate, and pondering the cosmos.
Michael Haag Customer Advocate / Quality Evangelist

Michael was an actual (albeit minor) rock star in the L.A. club scene during the mid-80's, and helped subsidize his musical career by working at serial tech startups. Romance (and a desire for more interesting weather) led him to Boston, where his avocation and vocation eventually switched places. He now lives with his lovely wife and their two beautiful boys in Malden, MA, and has transferred his sports allegiances to the Sox, Pats, and Celts. When not working Michael can usually be found with his hands on a guitar or his nose in a book. He has abiding interests in intellectual property, on-line music distribution, Austrian economics, and libertarianism. And of course making his customers happy.

Drupal.org ID: mhaag
Jeff Noyes Director of Simplicity

Jeff joins Acquia as a usability specialist and interaction designer. He comes to us from Fidelity Investments where he was responsible for end-user research, conceptual and detailed design, prototyping and usability testing of Fidelity.com. Jeff's passionate about keeping things simple, succinct - but cool and clean. His goal over the years to come will be to embrace our community and make Drupal configuration and deployment easy for everyone. Outside of work, Jeff's life is his wife and two boys - and would have it no other way.

"Design for your grandmother - and you'll succeed at designing for everyone"

Drupal.org ID: Noyz