Management Team / Advisory Board Bios
Ricardo LasaCEORicardo Lasa is a seasoned entrepreneur and the CEO and Co-Founder of Kliken. Ricardo has led Kliken to become one the leading marketing platforms for small business owners with partnerships with the leading e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce, Ecwid, Wix, Square and many others. Ricardo holds an MBA and a MS MIS from the University of South Florida and sits on the advisory board of the ISDS School of Information Science.
Donald BerndtChief ScientistDon Berndt first met Ricardo Lasa (Kliken CEO) as a student in his database class at the University of South Florida (USF) after joining as a new professor more than two decades ago. He continued to see Ricardo as a student in the new Master of Science program, as a colleague when Ricardo taught programming as an adjunct faculty and as a serial entrepreneur. Don served on the Board of Directors of Web Piston, a website builder founded by Ricardo, where online advertising was a key to customer acquisition. Don and Ricardo applied a variety of emerging data science techniques, successfully improving paid search results and co-founding SiteWit Corporation (websites with intelligence) to bring the technologies to market (now DBA Kliken – inspired by the legendary Kraken and the Dutch word for click – “klikken”). For Don, this was a chance to use a wide range of data and text mining approaches in the field, balancing his on-going academic work. Don Berndt is a faculty member in the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Stern School of Business at New York University. He also holds a M.S. in Computer Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a B.S. from the University of Rhode Island. His research and teaching interests include the intersection of artificial intelligence and database systems, data warehousing, data and text mining, as well as a long-standing interest in parallel programming. Along with his academic focus, he has been involved in a series of entrepreneurial ventures prior to co-founding Kliken.com, including co-founding Medegy, Inc. in the USF Business Incubator focused on healthcare data warehousing. Dr. Berndt also worked at Yale University and Scientific Computing Associates, Inc., where he worked on scientific computing and the development of commercial versions of the Linda parallel programming environment. He also developed artificial intelligence applications in academic settings and at Cognitive Systems, Inc.
Don works around 20 hours per week for Kliken., Christopher LordCTOChris has overseen the IT and Data infrastructures for Kliken since the Company's founding. He brings decades of experience in both Software Development and IT management.
James McCartChief AI OfficerJames 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. Besides his work at Kliken, James has experience in healthcare informatics research, where his work has been published in leading academic journals. He also taught graduate-level courses as an adjunct faculty member.
Jesse Baynard II VP of Engineering One of the original founding employees of SiteWit. Jesse is responsible for leading the development efforts of the company.
Charles FoxCOOCharles Fox, MSc, ACA, is the Chief Operating Officer at SiteWit Corp. He has spent the last 13+ years focused on operational & financial management and controls in both public accounting and industry in sectors such as investment management, payments & FinTech and SaaS. Charles holds an MSc. in Economics from the University of Dublin, Trinity College and is a qualified accountant and a member of Chartered Accountants Ireland.
Marc FratelloDirectorMarc is a serial entrepreneur who has started, operated and sold a number of technology based companies.
Marc is an investor, board member and CEO mentor to Dealer Wizard, Kliken, That’s Us Technologies, Red Rover, Haddy, Marxent Labs and Trucks.com.
Marc holds a MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of Business and undergraduate degree from Franklin & Marshall College and resides in St Petersburg, Florida.
Marc works 20 hours per week on Kliken.
Jonathan GordonDirectorJonathan is a successful executive, entrepeneur and investor with 40+ year history of building technology companies from early and mid-stage through to exit. Experience includes enterprise software, system software, semiconductors, and instrumentation companies. Focused on maximizing shareholder value through business development and in building sales and market channels, timely product development, and cost effective management of operations leading to profitability. Additional expertise in IP monitization. Contact base is diverse with numerous high level relationships worldwide
In January 2006, Jonathan co-founded Stage 1 Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm. Investments include e-Centives (sold to Catalina Marketing), AdelaVoice, Marxent Labs, Maple Farm Media, Carvoyant, Par Elastic, Instream, Veloxum, XPeerient, Delfigo Security, Wing Power, Phantom Alert, OnePin, Cuesol (sold to MobileLime), go2 (merged with 80108), SiteWit and Auspice (sold to Arris), Kliken, and KiteDesk.
Jonathan works 20 hours per week with Kliken.
Marc SokolBoard MemberMarc is a systems software designer/developer with Fortex in the 70s, co-founder/compiler designer/entrepreneur with Realia in the 80s, engineering/strategy/marketing executive with CA in the 90s, venture capitalist with JK&B Capital in the 2000s, and ran marketing and business development at NeuLion, Inc.
Now a partner and investment committee chair at Florida Funders, Chairman of VirtualZ Computing, and President of GovTech startup Commack Solutions.
Marc works 5 hours per week at SiteWit Corp. (d.b.a. Kliken).