Team

The Team

We're looking for new Sparks. If you're passionate about crowdsourcing, volunteerism, and bring craft to your work, we want to talk with you. Visit our hiring page... and be sure to volunteer on Sparked before you do - so that we can see you strut your stuff. We're currently seeking software engineers.

Ben Rigby
Co-Founder and CEO/CTO
Ben co-founded Sparked in 2008 - aiming to apply his expertise in software development and product design to the nascent field of crowdsourcing for good.

Ben graduated from Stanford University with Honors, Distinction, and Phi Beta Kappa. After a 2 year stint as Lead Engineer at a social software company that was acquired by Student Advantage, he co-founded Akimbo Design in 1997. Akimbo developed and managed award-winning Web sites for marquee brands like Nokia, The North Face, Sony Pictures, and Calvin Klein. His company produced three Web design books, won dozens of awards, and had work featured in most major media publications. In 2002, Ben took a position as CTO of DFILM, a web and mobile applications company that licensed its white-label software product to Sam Adams Beer, Hyundai, Old Navy, IBM, The Sierra Club, and Scion. In 2004, Ben shifted gears to the social sector, founding Mobile Voter, which was the first organization in the world to engage young voters via text messaging (SMS). With grants from Pew Charitable Trusts and MacArthur Foundation, Mobile Voter registered tens of thousands of voters. In 2007, Rigby wrote Mobilizing Generation 2.0 (Wiley Press) - a social media handbook for nonprofits.

Joseph Pigato
VP, Marketing
Joseph Pigato has spent thirteen years dedicated to building innovative web- and computer-based products and services, leading sales, marketing, and management teams. Joseph headed the marketing department for Score Education Corp., and led an intensive national marketing campaign after it was acquired by Kaplan, owned by The Washington Post. He then co-founded an online learning and interactive media company in San Francisco, and sold the company to a Sydney-based global training organization. He subsequently headed the parent company's U.S. sales efforts and global interactive media team, which won an unprecedented number of industry awards. Joseph then served as a Asia Pacific web consultant, based in Singapore, for Symantec, while also helping clients such as HP and INSEAD. He later headed a social web company creating custom high school and college micro-communities for the massive student market in India, while based in Mumbai. He now serves on advisory boards for Mind InFormation, OnTheGo Education, and Facile Studios. Joseph is a graduate of Stanford (BA) and Wharton (MBA). Joseph has volunteered as a tutor in Mumbai, a business consultant in South Africa, and a youth basketball coach and tutor in East Palo Alto, California.

Jordan Snodgrass
Senior Engineer
Jordan Snodgrass has been programming websites since the dawn of the web nearly 15 years ago, starting with a pre-Mosaic database of ANSI artists and groups from the heyday of the BBS sub-culture. His creative programming continued with a 5-year stint in the skateboarding industry where he was lead developer for Tum Yeto, Inc. as well as the largest skateboarding e-commerce site at the time, Skateboard.com. Jordan's ties to the creative field also extend to music, where he became the official "web lackey" for San Diego's Rocket From The Crypt, maintained a family-tree style database of the San Diego music scene, and co-founded the experimental music label Imputor in 1999. When he is not busy programming websites he is busy hosting them - co-founding the custom web-hosting firm Bit Box in 2002. Recent projects include pickRset.com, where fans can vote on which songs they want to hear at their favorite bands' shows.

Mark Nelsom
Software Engineer
Mark Nelson was introduced to the internet in the early nineties and was changed forever. Early dreams of becoming an architect-slash-astronaut fell to the wayside as he decided to focus his efforts on learning to how to make a career out of building websites. It began with playing with basic HTML using a geocities account and the slowest modem ever. 15 years later, armed with a degree in Information Systems from the University of Wisconsin and a half-dozen years of experience as an independent contractor, he made the move to the Bay Area to join the startup community. Before joining Sparked, he worked at Proven.com where he helped develop a marketplace to help small and medium businesses find and hire skilled employees. Outside of work, Mark is a CrossFitter, a gamer, a Labrador lover, and an enthusiastic self-taught chef (he occasionally blogs about it here).

Melanie Brown
Lead Account Manager
Melanie spent seven years working at Macromedia (now Adobe) in various capacities including human resources, project management, internal communications and web production. She was bitten by a nasty travel bug in 2003 and spent years vacillating between trips abroad and contract work as a project manager in the web industry. Melanie volunteered in many of the countries she visited, including teaching Tibetan Monks English in India, building beds for orphans in Burma, and tutoring tourism students in Brazil. On her travels Melanie discovered that her real passion was helping other people, and she returned to school in 2009 to pursue a master's degree in counseling psychology. Melanie is excited to bring her experience out in the world, her experience working on the web and her passion for volunteering together at Sparked.com.

Toby Childs
Client Concierge
Toby graduated from Bates College in 2010 with a double major in Philosophy and Studio Art. Volunteering throughout College, Toby has a deep respect for the amount of help one can provide an organization. His love of traveling lead him to study art and culture in both Florence as well as Ghana. After relocating to San Francisco, Toby was eager to join the Sparked team. Out of the office Toby can be found either hiking or exploring used book stores.

Miriam Feiner
Captain of Volunteer Happiness
Miriam graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Human and Organizational Development and a concentration in Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness. After college she worked for The San Francisco Department of the Environment, implementing their innovative school lunchroom composting program. Miriam continued on in the world of environmental justice and education as Program Director for a small nonprofit school garden program in the Hunters Point/Bayview neighborhood. Over the past few years Miriam lived in rural Connecticut, working for an educational farming program. She ran the farm's value added products business, overseeing all production, marketing and sales of their tasty pickles and preserves. In a recent move back to the Bay Area, Miriam has joined the Sparked team and is excited to be working with the volunteer community.

Val Ornoy
Adviser
Val has 15 years of strategy, business development and legal experience, including founding two high-tech companies. Most recently, Val was Senior Director of Strategy and Business Development at Motorola, where he held global responsibility for three verticals in the company's mobile devices group

Sundeep Ahuja
Co-Founder and Adviser
Sundeep is currently CEO of blissmo.com, purveyor of exceptional organic and eco products that are safer and better than conventional alternatives. Previously, Sundeep was a co-founder at richrelevance, a venture-backed startup which powers product recommendations for enterprise-class ecommerce sites, including Sears.com and Burton.com. Prior to richrelevance he was a Product Manager at MySpace, where he owned all "platform" products including search, commerce and photos, and Marketing Director at Kiva.org, where he helped launch the non-profit. Before that, Sundeep was a Product Manager on eBay's Buyer Activity team.

Jacob Colker
Co-Founder and Advisor
Jacob Colker is a recognized leader in political activism and issue advocacy, and a leading voice in the use of technology for community engagement. Jacob has managed political campaigns in California, Illinois, and Maryland, and he was one of the first field directors in the country to leverage Facebook in a major political campaign to win a statewide election. Jacob has also managed issue advocacy campaigns for The International Campaign for Tibet, The 1Sky Campaign, and other non-governmental organizations, both in the U.S. and around the world. Jacob co-founded Sparked in 2008.