Raptive Media Solutions Management

Mr. A. Edward Knauf (CEO)

Chief Executive Officer of Raptive Technologies, Inc., the parent company of Raptive Media Solutions. He brings over 30 years of entrepreneurial management of high technology companies. 

In 1981, Mr. Knauf co-founded The Titan Corporation which grew rapidly, went public in 1985 on the New York Stock Exchange and was sold to L-3 Communications in 2005. 

In 1995, Mr. Knauf founded Avatar Solutions, a company that developed and licensed a software product to analyze legacy systems written in over 120 different computer languages to find year 2000 problems and analyze linkages between applications and databases. 

Mr. Knauf also was a limited partner in a venture fund and served on the Boards of five high technology companies helping them exit by sale to large companies. 

Mr. Knauf returned to Titan in 2003 to turnaround a commercial technology subsidiary that was losing over a million dollars a quarter.  After taking over the subsidiary, Mr. Knauf led the company back to breakeven and generating an EBITDA of over $2,000,000 dollars a year, in less than three months.  Mr. Knauf also led the process to sell this subsidiary in preparation for the sale of Titan to L-3.  

Contact Ed Knauf

Janet Pistone (President)

Janet Pistone is a 29+ year seasoned business executive in general management, sales and service. She is start-up savvy and grounded in larger company management. Pistone has held positions on the east and west coasts for premier companies that include Reuters, Dow Jones, Lotus Development and Interactive Data.

She founded and sold Golf Divas.  Prior to that she was with two start-up ventures, HorizonLive and Sentius Corporation.

Pistone graduated from Salem State College with a B.S. Business Education,
Attended Harvard University completing the Marketing Management Certificate Program  and has attended the International Management Institute, Switzerland

Contact Janet Pistone

Steve Durham (Chief Vision Officer/Operations)

Steve is the principle visionary behind the Raptive Media system and has been working on the cutting edge of such technologies for most of his professional career.  He has direct hands-on experience in all of the major disciplines relative to Raptive Media including audio and video production, advertising and marketing (as a professional copywriter for nearly 10 years), database design and programming, training systems design, and design and production of other computer-based information products. 

Although Durham’s career in various aspects of media extends back over 30 years, the past 10 years have been focused on the development of interactive video, beginning with a position with Horizonlive, where he worked with both Janet Pistone and Maria Vizzi. 

In 2007, Durham joined Raptive Technologies, Inc. to manage the media applications and operations division.

Mr. Durham attended James Madison University with a major in Communication Arts, minoring in Music. 

Contact Steve Durham

Maria Vizzi (Business Development)

Maria Vizzi brings over fifteen years of sales and business development experience to her position. She was most recently the Founder & President of Indoor Environmental Solutions, Inc. (IES) a New York City based, and family owned business she founded last year.

Prior to that, Maria served as Sales Manager for HorizonLive where she was challenged to introduce a relatively unknown company and its products to the market. Vizzi achieved top sales status during the duration of her employment. Previously Vizzi held sales management positions selling online sponsorships for Bertelsmann’s Parents.com Web site in New York, Disney.com in Los Angeles and Dow Jones/wsj.com in both New York and Los Angeles.

Contact Maria Vizzi

Board Members:

Henry D. Sedgwick: 

Mr. Sedgwick has been involved as a founder of several new ventures, six of which were sold to major companies. 

• Trig-A-Tape Corporation, a manufacture of price labeling systems acquired by Dymo Industries of Berkeley, California in 1963;
• Sedgwick Printout Systems, a leader in computer database creation and management acquired by The Courier Journal Louisville Times Company in 1972;
• Maine Auto Recycling sold to a major east coast scrap exporter in 1976.
• Private Products Corporation, a manufacturer of private label “Wet Wipes,” moist toilettes in a plastic container acquired by The Coca Cola Company in 1983
• SMR Management, a consolidation of 60 outpatient PT clinics sold to Benchmark in 1999
• Electronic Health Information Corp., consolidation of patient record management companies, sold to Warburg Pincus in 2003.

Mr. Sedgwick is a graduate of Harvard College, A.B., and holds a degree in Business Administration from the Centre d’Etudes Industrielles of Geneva, Switzerland, currently known as IMD of Lausanne, Switzerland.  He has been a lecturer at the business schools of Yale, Wharton, Columbia and New York University on the financing and management of early stage ventures.  He is co-author of The New Venture Handbook, published by the American Management Association and voted number one by Inc. Magazine.

Mr. Stephen Meyer

Mr. Myer is the financial member of the advisory group. He has more than 30 years of professional experience in senior financial and general management which included starting, developing, and financing technology-based companies, such as SAIC ($6 billion in revenue), The Titan Corporation ($2 billion in revenue), and REMEC. 

As CFO, he has engineered over $500 million in private and public, debt and equity transactions; and as General Manager grew an Information Technology (IT) business to over $40 million in annual revenue.  Mr. Meyer is currently Chief Operating Officer of Technology Associates International Corporation, a company that offers a wide range of IT professional services.