Company Advisors

Bill Watson - In addition to strategic consulting in travel marketing, distribution and business development Bill has been a leader and innovator in the travel industry for over 25 years. He is currently the co-Founder and Managing Partner of Venturism LLC  a business development company that incubates and accelerates new ideas in the travel and hospitality industry as well being the Senior Partner / Co-Founder of The Prism Partnership, a leading travel and hospitality consulting group based in Boston. He was formerly COO and EVP of Best Western International, the world’s largest hotel chain and served as Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing at ITT Sheraton Corporation where he had responsibilities for travel industry marketing, worldwide strategic planning and the ITT Sheraton Reservations Corporation. He has been on the boards of public companies including Micros Systems Inc. and Signature Inns as well as  private companies such as Passkey and TLX Inc., which experience enables him to bring a unique focus to consulting clients. Bill also served as the Chairman and Vice Chairman of Pegasus Systems, Inc. the holding company for The Hotel Industry Switch Company (THISCO) and the Hotel Clearing Corporation (HCC). His work in developing THISCO was cited by Dan Tapscott in his book, The Paradigm Shift, as one of the top ten examples of “having the visionary thinking required for success in today’s world of electronic marketing.”

Chuck Sullivan is the Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing and Enrollment Officer at K12. Previously, he was the Senior Vice President, Global Online Services for Hilton Worldwide where he had global responsibility for the Hilton Worldwide online presence across ten brands and 3,900 hotels. Prior to Hilton, Mr. Sullivan was the group head of Marketing Delivery at Chrysler Group LLC, where he led media planning and buying, online marketing and campaign measurement. Chuck has also held executive leadership positions at Organic, Inc., a digital marketing services agency and a division of Omnicom Group, Inc., Ford Motor Company, Andersen Consulting Strategic Services and Caterpillar Overseas S.A. Chuck holds an MBA in marketing and finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a BA in marketing from Michigan State University. He is a respected leader in the marketing and advertising industry. Chuck is a member of the AdCraft Club and has previously served on the Hospitality, Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Americas Board and the Marketing Sciences Institute (MSI) Board of Advisors.

Mike Avon has spent the past fifteen years building early-stage companies in the digital media and mobile markets as a venture capitalist, operator, entrepreneur, and attorney. He currently serves as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President at Millennial Media, the largest independent mobile advertising company, where he is responsible for the company’s overall financial, strategic, legal and corporate development activities. Prior to joining the Millennial Media executive team, Mike was a venture capitalist at Columbia Capital, a leading communications and media-focused venture fund, where he led the firm’s digital media, mobile media and consumer internet investments. In his role at Columbia, Mike was involved in the founding of several of his portfolio companies, including Millennial Media. Mike received a BA with distinction from the University of Virginia and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He lives in McLean, VA with his wife and two children.

Daniel Klaussen is Senior Director of the Innovation Strategy Department at Marriott International where he works on IT business partnerships and planning. He was previously a Product Manager at Three Pillar Global where he worked with PBS on mobile strategy, mobile apps and mobile web. His past positions include Director of Knowledge Management at iXL, Group Product Manager at Netscape (Navigator, Communicator product lines), Sr. Product Manager Collabra Software (Collabra Share) and for Borland International (Paradox). Daniel enjoys consulting on a regular basis with startup companies and other challenging software projects. He is a full time dad and enjoys teaching kids robotics, programming and electronics and is an avid Adventure Racer. Daniel studied Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Jim Leroux is a co-founder and partner in Ashby Point Capital, a private equity firm that invests in, and provides strategic advice to, leading payments industry companies. Mr. Leroux is the former President of SVM, a global leader in gift and prepaid cards, and one of Ashby Point Capital’s portfolio companies.

Mr. Leroux’s expertise is in assisting companies to develop and implement their growth strategies in the areas of payments (credit, debit, prepaid, emerging payments, etc.), payments transaction processing and financial services.  This includes helping these companies to complete strategic transactions such as mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, outsourcing and similar transactions. Mr. Leroux also has extensive experience working with companies on legal and regulatory compliance matters.

Previously, Mr. Leroux was Partner and General Counsel at First Annapolis Consulting where he specialized in the payments and transaction processing practice areas, including projects involving card issuing, prepaid cards, merchant acquiring, retailer services, electronic banking, loyalty/rewards, item processing and transaction processing. He helped a major retailer negotiate the sale and outsourcing of its $4 billion credit card portfolio and worked with a regional bank on a $2 billion credit card joint venture. He also helped an early stage company (subsequently acquired by PayPal) negotiate an extensive strategic partnership with a large financial institution, including the financial, marketing and technology components of the partnership.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Leroux was an attorney for Bingham Dana, LLP (now Bingham McCutchen) in Boston, specializing in mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic transactions in the financial services area and also providing financial and legal advice to early-stage technology companies. Mr. Leroux graduated from Tufts University with a B.A. in economics and received his Juris Doctor, Magna Cum Laude from Boston College Law School where he was a member of the Order of the Coif and Boston College Law Review.