Some of the Gang at mSpoke


Our Management Team


Dave hangs at the architecturally unique Mellon Arena, long-time home to many Pittsburgh sports activities.

Dave Mawhinney, Co-Founder & CEO

"The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going beyond them to the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke

Dave Mawhinney is a dedicated entrepreneur with a passion for achieving what others think impossible.

Dave has made a career of turning great ideas into successful internet companies since the 1990s. He was most recently a General Partner of PNC Technology Investors. He co-founded three successful startup ventures before that, including Premier Health Exchange (acquired by Medibuy), Hawk Medical (acquired by McKesson), and Industry.Net (merged with AT&T Business Network to form Nets, Inc.). Mr. Mawhinney holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and a B. S. in Physics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Dave is a dedicated basketball coach, and we think he has a coaching analogy for every business situation! He lives with his wife Kristan and three sons in Fox Chapel, PA.


Dean enjoys Pittsburgh's three rivers from the cockpit of his kayak.

Dean Thompson, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

"Artificial Intelligence: the art of making computers that behave like the ones in movies." – Bill Bulko

Dean has always had an interest in making technology work for people. As a high school student, he wrote custom applications for local businesses in Wilmington, NC. Dean was a co-founder of fault-tolerant, distributed transaction processing software provider Transarc (now IBM Pittsburgh Lab) and Premier Health Exchange (acquired by Medibuy). He was also CTO of E-transport (acquired by Descartes) and Medebiz (acquired by Moai).

Dean holds a B. S. in Applied Math/Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Dean lives with his wife Lauren in Ligonier, PA where he enjoys whitewater kayaking and other extreme sports.


Sean gets a pop culture fix at the Andy Warhol Museum on Pittsburgh's North Side.

Sean Ammirati, Co-Founder & VP, Business Development & Product Management

"Never innovate to compete, innovate to change the rules of the game." - David O. Adeife

Sean embodies extraordinary. From his humble beginnings as a FoxPro programmer for hire in 8th grade (his client would send a car for him) to a resume that reads like a Who’s Who of A-list employers, Sean has been driving to make a difference. Once an aspiring programmer, Sean has found his niche as a new technology evangelist. Currently, this manifests itself in his passion for helping publishers to revitalize their online content with mSpoke’s adaptive personalization solutions.

Prior to joining mSpoke, Sean was a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Industry Center and served on the Editorial Advisory Board and as a columnist for Information Week. He holds a B. S. in Computer Information Systems from Grove City College.

 

Our Advisors

"I not only use all of the brains I have, but all I can borrow."
-Woodrow Wilson

At mSpoke, we're serious about building the best personalization solutions in the world, and we believe in borrowing brains from the best. To that end, we've assembled an advisory board of leading experts in media studies, intelligent technologies, distributed systems and e-commerce. They ask hard questions, so we find better answers. Thanks, guys.

  • Jamie Callan, Associate Professor, Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
  • Jaime Carbonell, Professor & Director, Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
  • Thomas C. Cotton, President, Conductor
  • Michael Dickey, CEO & Founder, Atomic Labs
  • Jeff Eppinger, Professor of the Practice, Institute For Software Research International - Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science
  • Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
  • Blair LaCorte, Operating Partner, TPG Ventures
  • Alfred Spector, Chief Technology Officer, IBM Software (ret.)
  • William Uricchio, Professor & Director, Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology