Management Team / Advisory Board Bios
Gabriel Wyner - CEO and Founder
Gabriel is a best-selling author, passionate polyglot, and former opera singer who was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently resides in Chicago. In 2012, Gabriel published a widely-read Lifehacker article about his formula to fluency. In August 2014, his first book “Fluent Forever: How to Learn Any Language Fast and Never Forget It” was published. Gabriel has various levels of fluency in Spanish, German, French, Russian, Italian, Hungarian, and Japanese. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California in 2007 with dual degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Vocal Arts Performance. He also holds a master’s degree in Song and Oratorio from the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna.
John Rush - CTO
Prior to joining Fluent Forever, John managed a team of developers in the Games Test Organization at Microsoft Game Studios. His team built test workflow tools and core infrastructure components for PC and Xbox games testing. Before that, John worked at Adobe on the Audition product line after it acquired the bootstrapped startup Syntrillium, where he was the second developer on the team. John has a degree in Computer Science from Sacramento City College.
Heather Tucker - Head of Operations
Before joining Fluent Forever, Heather co-founded PhotographySchool.NL where she designed, developed, and delivered photography courses, workshops, excursions, photo shoots, and resources. Before that, she was a Travel Expert at Jetsetter, part of Gilt Group, where she worked with clients to create customized travel plans through Belgium and the Netherlands. She also worked at Victim Support, where she was responsible for setting up a Children and Young Persons Support Service and implementing it in South East London. Heather studied Psychology at The Open University before transferring to the University of Portsmouth Master’s Program for Criminology and Criminal Psychology.
Gaston Blanchet - Head of Growth
Gaston is the former co-founder and CMO of Trunkster, which crowdfunded $2 million in pre-sales,xxv and received a $28 million valuation on Shark Tank.xxvi At Language World USA, he helped obtain and manage a federal subcontract to train Special Forces in critical languages, and created a new revenue stream by targeting I-20 student visa holders. Before that, he worked at Berlitz in corporate sales, and developed teaching programs. Gaston studied Management, Entrepreneurship, and International Business at the University of Central Florida.
Evan Walther - Business Advisor
Prior to joining Fluent Forever, Evan had co-founded tech startups FitKey, Blue Ribbon Techs, and Pearescope. He’s helped startups raise funding and forge partnerships with major financial institutions like Sanlam Reality and Momentum Multiply. Before that, he was the Director of Operations at Ubiquitous Media (now Gloss Media) where he managed a dynamic team of media professionals. Evan is a graduate of Cornell University.
Valuation Notes
In connection with an equity financing of at least $1,000,000, the Company has the option to convert the Crowd Note into shares of a series of non-voting preferred stock, at the price per share of the new preferred stock sold in the equity financing, or a valuation cap of $8,500,000, whichever results in a lower conversion price. Please refer to the Crowd Note for a complete description of the terms of the Crowd Note, including the conversion provisions.
