Our Team

BigTent Leadership

BigTent Team

Business Advisory Board

Debby Meredith

Debby has more than 20 years of experience managing product engineering teams and introducing new technologies to the market. She served in VP engineering roles at AOL, Netscape and Collabra Software, plus a myriad of interim VP engineering positions in Internet startups such as Friendster, Good Technology and Efficient Frontier. Given her broad set of operational skills and venture capital experience, Debby helps BigTent to assemble world-class engineering teams and deliver great internet products. She holds a MS in CS from Stanford University.

Fiona Wilson

Currently on the faculty of the Simmons School of Management, Fiona is interested in how technology intersects with social entrepreneurship. Her experience includes serving as VP of Marketing for CMGI (the Internet Investment & Development company) and Ogilvy & Mather Advertising in senior Media Research, Media Planning and International Account Management roles. Fiona is currently pursuing her doctorate in strategy and policy at the Boston University School of Management. Active in the community, she has served as a volunteer and board member for many non-profit organizations and loves hanging out with her two year old daughter.

Julie Herendeen

An Internet early bird, Julie advises BigTent on business and marketing strategy. Most recently, Julie held several executive positions at Yahoo!, including VP of Ad Solutions and VP of Network Products which included community offerings as well as the Yahoo! front page. Prior to Yahoo! she was VP of Marketing at Shutterfly and Senior Director of Products at Netscape. She began her career as a product manager at Apple. Julie holds an MBA from Harvard and BA from University of California at Berkeley.

Kristen Hughes

Kristen helps drive requirements for BigTent to help parents coordinate their family, community, and professional lives. Kristen has held business development positions in Bay Area software companies, was a venture capitalist at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, and is currently a corporate development executive at EMC Corporation. A working mother of two, she is also an occasional volunteer at her children's school.

Lisa Nash

Lisa is passionate about consumer marketing and has over twenty years of experience building brands and growing successful companies. She has had a hand in building up the product lines, databases, and marketing capabilities of companies like Yahoo!, E*TRADE, Charles Schwab, VISA and American Express. Most recently, Lisa has used her experience to launch Prosper.com and LN Marketing Associates, her own strategic marketing consulting company. In her free time, Lisa volunteers with several organizations that focus on empowering women worldwide.

Lori Laub Sinclair

Lori is passionate about customer satisfaction and plays a role advising BigTent on how to ensure a great customer experience in all dimensions. She has held executive positions as Vice President of Customer Care for Great Plains Software, Intuit Corporation, and Vantive Corporation and was Chief Information Officer at Remedy Corporation. She is the co-author of Delivering World Class Technical Support and an active volunteer in her son's school, her local community, the American Cancer Society, and the Canary Foundation.

Community Advisory Board

Aimee Moss

Aimee is interested in how online communities can complement and enhance offline communities, make lives easier for parents, and help volunteers utilize their time in the most efficient way possible, so as to combat "volunteer fatigue." A mother of two young children and an active volunteer with her local mothers' club and homeowners' association, Aimee has first hand experience juggling it all. She graduated magna cum laude from Smith College with a B.A. in education and a teaching credential and worked in educational administration before leaving the paid workforce to start a family.

Glennia Campbell

Glennia is a writer who blogs about her family's travel adventures at The Silent I and is a contributor to Kimchi Mamas and the Silicon Valley Moms Blog. She is the mother of a six-year-old son, and currently works full-time as a contract officer for Stanford University. A graduate of Barnard College and Northwestern University, Glennia has spent her professional career as a lawyer specializing in contracts and intellectual property. A life-long volunteer, Glennia has served as President of the Parents' Club of Palo Alto & Menlo Park (PAMP) and is currently a member of the Board of Directors.

Laura Puryear

Laura is excited to help BigTent find ways to build better communities among mothers. Laura has spent the past nine years at Bain & Company since graduating from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She is currently on a leave of absence after recently having relocated to Charlotte, NC. As a mom to three young daughters, she is an active volunteer with her daughter's school and with her church.

Lee Rumaner

Lee is President of Ainsworth Elementary School PTA in Portland, Oregon. The PTA has a mission to advocate for students and involve parents in their children's education. As part of this effort, the PTA manages a BigTent group that is open to all family and staff members of the school. Lee is a husband and father of three. In his spare time, he works as a process engineer for the Intel Corporation.

Maria Nicolacakis

Maria is active in many parent-related groups and is excited about Big Tent's efforts to help families stay organize. She has worked in government community relations, high-tech public relations and non-profit business development. Now, as a full time mother of two, Maria enjoys active involvement with her family and several cultural, educational and philanthropic organizations. She is currently a board member of the Coro Center for Civic Leadership and co-chairs the annual San Francisco Greek Film Festival.

— Maria holds a B.A. in International Relations from UC Davis

Marianne Wu

Marianne is a Partner at Mohr, Davidow Ventures, focusing on Clean Tech investments. A parent, she was in on the ground floor conceptualizing BigTent. Prior to joining MDV, Marianne was Vice President of Marketing at ONI Systems where she was responsible for product strategy and market development. Earlier in her career, Marianne was a consultant at McKinsey and Company. Marianne earned both her doctoral and master's degrees from the School of Engineering at Stanford University and her bachelor's in Applied Science at the University of British Columbia.

Mary Beth Hazelgrove

Mary Beth is the current president of Preemies Today, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to provide outreach and support programs to families affected by prematurity from birth through childhood. Mary Beth brings valuable educational and grass roots development experience to the organization. Previously, she taught elementary school and served in the Peace Corps. Mary Beth is married and the mother of two girls, ages six and four. Her own elder daughter was born 14 weeks premature.

Philippa Slayton

Philippa is a leader of Fremont Block Watch Network (FBWN), a non-profit organization that supports Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) efforts, promotes block watch best practices, and keeps the Fremont community in touch with day-to-day security concerns. Philippa is passionate about neighborhood groups. She sees enormous potential for such volunteer-driven groups to collaborate online and market to other groups interested in CERT, crime prevention, and community building. Through her own experience with BigTent, Philippa is excited to see users finding more creative ways to use the online platform to achieve better solutions.

Valerie Grabiel

Valerie is a firm believer in the power of communities to educate, support, and strengthen individuals and is eager to bring the organizing tools of BigTent to the heart of communities at the playground and beyond. She has over nine years experience leading marketing and community outreach initiatives on the national and grassroots level for WGBH, the nation's flagship public television station, her neighborhood community development organization Main Streets, and the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. A recent MBA graduate from the Simmons School of Management, Valerie lives in Jamaica Plain, MA and is a new mother.

* Portraits by Katya Zaytseva