Ricardo Lasa – Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer

Ricardo is a hard working serial entrepreneur that is highly involved in the technology and business community in Tampa Bay. Prior to co-founding SiteWit, Ricardo started Web Piston Website Builder, now one of the leading platforms for small businesses to build their website and market their products and services. Through running Web Piston Ricardo realized there had to be a better way to buy paid search and started to work on SiteWit with Don in 2006. Web Piston is a thriving company built on sound business principles, profitable and growing even in these dire times of the “Great Recession.” Ricardo is focusing all his efforts now in growing SiteWit and helping Search Engine Marketing firms provide better online marketing for their clients through a simple and cost efficient mechanism.

Ricardo holds a bachelors degree in Management information systems, a Master of Business Administration with emphasis in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, and International Management, and a Master of Science in Management Information Systems with emphasis on Database Architecture and User Interface Design, all from the University of South Florida Business School. Ricardo also attended the Harvard Business School Launching New Ventures program in 2009 and is looking forward to joining the HBS Owner/President Management program in 2010. Ricardo sits on the board of directors of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum, the advisory board of the Management Information Systems from the University of South Florida Business School, and the board of directors of Filasa, a real estate development firm headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

Don Berndt Ph.D. – Co-Founder, Chief Scientist

Don is a professor in the College of Business at the University of South Florida.  His research interests are centered on business intelligence technologies such as data warehousing, data mining, and text mining.  A particular emphasis of his work is the application of these technologies in healthcare, including data and text mining for electronic medical records.  More recent work has focused on information markets as another mechanism for prediction and collective intelligence (working together with Ricardo on Agorx).  He has published more than 75 research papers on these topics and worked with a number of entrepreneurial technology firms, as well as other organizations throughout his career.

His first exposure to entrepreneurism was a position as a LISP programmer at Cognitive Systems, an artificial intelligence start-up associated with Yale University.  That was followed by work in scientific computing and healthcare analytics at other companies. Working with Ricardo on SiteWit has provided an opportunity to apply data warehousing and data mining technologies to website traffic analysis and the development of learning algorithms for managing paid search.  Don received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the Stern School of Business at New York University and M.S. in Computer Science from Stony Brook University.

Chris Lord – Chief Operating Officer

Chris is a detail oriented software developer with substantial experience in application development, database architecture, and e-commerce development. Before working as the CTO at SiteWit, Chris gained experience working as a Senior Ecommerce Developer at Rivergy, Inc (2001-2005) and Web Piston (2005-2008). He developed a major shopping cart platform used by thousands of business owners in several countries. He has maintained and architected multiple commercially available eCommerce applications, billing services, and integrated multiple 3rd party APIs, used by every level of business, including some Fortune 500 companies.

Here at SiteWit, Chris is focused on solving scientific and technological issues. He oversees all technical decisions relating to our products and application environments, as well as the network and hosting infrastructure of SiteWit, its cloud implementation, and establishing the core functionality within our app. In a typical day, Chris holds the roles of being a CTO, a DBA, and a developer. Chris specializes in .NET Programming (VB, C#), SQL Server, Application Architecture, JavaScript, JQuery, JSON, SOAP, Rest, and much more. He holds numerous certifications from both CIW and Microsoft.

James McCart Ph.D. – Chief Innovation Officer

As VP of R&D for SiteWit, James leads key initiatives such as SitWit’s optimization engine. He also plays a lead role in the facilitation of company R&D initiatives, from conceptualization through execution. James brings unique previous experience as a Research Health Science Specialist at the US Department of Veterans Affairs, where he led and worked on healthcare informatics research such as text mining, information retrieval, and natural language processing within a national electronic health record. He also has experience in computational approaches to systemic risk based on fine-grained financial data.
James received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Management Information Systems from the University of South Florida and holds a B.S. in Information Systems from Purdue University. He also serves as an adjunct faculty member at the Muma College of Business and the Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida.

Jesse Baynard – Chief Engineering Officer

Jesse holds a Masters degree in Information Systems from the University of South Florida. Since graduating in 2000, Jesse’s primary focus has been in turning complex business problems into simple and effective technology solutions. These solutions have spanned across numerous vertical markets including healthcare, back office management, and e-commerce. Now as a member of the SiteWit management team, Jesse is dedicated to bringing clarity and expertise to the problem of search engine marketing inefficiencies. Intrigued by the power of mining behavioral analytics in predicting behavior, Jesse believes that this technology is the best automated approach for a problem that is far too complicated for click-through or simple ROI ratios alone. In his spare time he is involved in the Tampa Bay area tech community, an avid photographer and parent of two children.

Karl Burdis – Partner Manager

Karl graduated from the University of Tampa with a bachelor's degree in Exercise Science and Human Performance. Since joining SiteWit in 2014, Karl has worked in a variety of different roles across the company including Customer Service, Sales, Marketing, Business Development before transitioning  to Partner Management. Karl has a deep understanding of Digital Marketing and the Web Hosting industry, he is responsible for setting up and managing White Label, Affiliate and Channel distribution partnerships for SiteWit/Kliken and works with our high level Partnerships such as One.com, Automattic, Ecwid and many others.

Karl is the head of the SiteWit VIP program. A program focused on helping medium to large businesses better their paid search efforts by automating Google Ads bidding and optimizing campaigns through software and consulting. Karl is also a retired DI, DII and Olympic athlete.

Bill Pesci – Product Manager

As Product Manager, Bill focuses on client feedback to detail improvements and new features for Kliken’s platform. Bill holds a Masters degree in Management Information Systems from the University of South Florida, with a bachelors in Business Management. Through his master's program and early times at SiteWit, Bill discovered a passion for data science and analytics.
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Starting off as a support driven developer, Bill worked between the support team and development team to improve internal processes, as well as expand the products functionality for end users. Overtime, his knowledge of both sides provided a needed bridge between business and development. Bill also works closely with Karl, in ensuring the customer success of each new partnership through various manners.