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Management Team

Founder & PresidentMatt Lauzon

Matt Lauzon founded Gemvara (formerly Paragon Lake) as a student at Babson College. Gemvara was born when Matt and fellow students uncovered a niche in the jewelry industry at the intersection of e-commerce and mass customization. The vision was a shopping experience where jewelry lovers could have fun and get exactly what they wanted. Since graduating from Babson in 2007, Matt has led the company's growth from an idea in a dorm room to an online retailer serving customers throughout the United States and Canada. Investors include prestigious blue-chip firms Highland Capital and Canaan Partners. Matt earned a B.S. in Business Management from Babson College where he was an Arthur M. Blank Scholar. At Babson, he was named one of America's Top Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 25 by BusinessWeek, was the winner of the John H. Muller Jr. Business Plan Competition, and was awarded the Shelby Cullom Davis prize for social entrepreneurship. Most recently, Babson College awarded Matt with its Distinguished Alumni Award.

Matt also serves as one of six members named to the 2010 Future Leaders Group for the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange.

Chief Technology OfficerMurali Menon

Murali Menon joined Gemvara's team as the Chief Technology Officer in 2008. Murali has developed and delivered scalable enterprise software including e-commerce applications, data warehousing systems, core OS level platforms and high volume transaction processing applications. Most recently he was the VP of Engineering at Bladelogic and managed an R&D team of 70 people with operations in the US and India to deliver a cross-platform server configuration management application suite. He was the CTO and a founding member of SupplierMarket.com, which was acquired by Ariba. SupplierMarket.com developed an automated direct materials sourcing and collaboration solution for manufacturing buyers and suppliers. He has been a founder and technical advisor to several high technology startups and venture capital firms in the Boston area.

Murali has extensive R&D experience working as a senior researcher and program manager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. He holds two patents in the area of machine vision. Murali received a bachelor's degree, a master's degree and a doctorate in engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Chief ArchitectIwao Hatanaka

Iwao Hatanaka joined Gemvara as Chief Architect in 2008, bringing over 20 years of software engineering and product development experience. He was previously Chief Architect at n2N Commerce, where he was responsible for the overall architecture of n2N's Software as a Service, Web 2.0, e-commerce platform for large multi-channel retailers.

Prior to n2N Commerce, Iwao was Principal Software Architect at BEA Systems and led the design, development, and SOA enablement of the BEA RFID Edge, Mobile, and Enterprise product lines. Iwao successfully led the development and launch of the B2B XML platform for direct sourcing at SupplierMarket.com (acquired by Ariba). He also spent 13 years at IBM in various technical leadership and engineering positions in the System 390 Development Lab, Highly Parallel Supercomputing Lab, and Consumer Driven Supply Chain business unit.

Iwao holds several patents in the areas of enterprise software architecture and distributed computing. Iwao earned an MS in System Design and Management from MIT and a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics from Cornell University.

Vice President of OperationsRoy Albers

Roy Albers is a seasoned jewelry professional with extensive experience in diamonds, gemstones, and manufacturing. While senior vice president of operations of Slane & Slane, he managed explosive growth of six-times the sales volume. He was chief gemologist and vice president of gemstone acquisitions of Tiffany & Co. As a buyer of diamond and precious gems at QVC, he created the Affinity diamond brand. He also managed operations for luxury start-up Adornis and the New York operation of Swarogem. Roy travelled the world in search of the finest gemstones for Krementz Gemstones. He has served on the board of directors of the American Gem Trade Association and the American Gem Society.

Vice President of Content and MerchandisingCheryl Kremkow

Cheryl Kremkow is the former Editor-in-Chief of Modern Jeweler, a jewelry specialist magazine. In more than two decades forecasting jewelry trends around the world, she has visited diamond and gemstone mines in Africa, Asia, and South America and reviewed new designer collections in Brazil, Hong Kong, Italy, India, Switzerland, and Thailand as well as the United States. Cheryl's ecommerce experience includes serving as Director of Content for Gem.net, Swarovski's online consumer gem magazine and shop, and Vice President of Content and Executive Producer of Mondera.com. Cheryl also served as the International Colored Gemstone Association's director of communications for eight years, creating ICA's Gembureau. Previously she was editor of Jewellery News Asia in Hong Kong.

Director of Product ManagementHeath Alva

Before joining Gemvara, Heath Alva was general manager of Home & Garden for NameMedia, overseeing five web properties and taking them from a ComScore Media Metrix ranking of 15 to 8 in his first seven months. He was also Vice President for Digital Media of Athletes' Performance, driving a 42 percent increase in unique visitors. Earlier he spent seven years at AOL and as Director he was responsible for product development and content strategy for several of the company's high-traffic lifestyle channels. He was the project and programming strategy lead for the launch of the Webby-nominated AOL Diet & Fitness Channel, Food, Home, Horoscopes, and Health. As Internet Product Manager for Blackboard, he managed 30 online communities. He has a BBA in International Business and Marketing from George Washington University.

Director of Online MarketingDaniel Marques

Before joining Gemvara, Dan Marques was the Manager of Entrepreneur Development at Babson College, leading support and development programs for student and alumni entrepreneurs. Dan himself was 2006 NFTE National Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Previously he managed global organic search and web 2.0 initiatives for Vistaprint. He has been featured in articles on entrepreneurship and online marketing in The Wall Street Journal, Boston Herald, Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, DMNews, and BizTech Magazine. He has a BS in Business Management from Babson College.

Director of Customer CareStacey Scott

Stacey Scott's passion is creating a customer-centered culture, striving to do whatever she can to make sure the Gemvara customer experience always surpasses expectations. Stacey has a long track record of training professionals to understand complex products and services. Prior to joining Gemvara, Stacey was Director, National Sales for Koko Fitness where she was responsible for the company's premier product The Koko Smartrainer to the health and fitness industry. Before that she was Vice President, Network Sales at Send.com where she established a for-pay network of hundreds of local retail partners nationwide to stock and deliver the company's products. She has also helped build and train a national network of independent sales organizations for MicroFinancial, Inc. Stacey has also held major account sales positions with ADP and Estateworks and is a graduate of Westfield State College.