Executive Bios

Rajeev Raman
Chief Executive Officer and Founder

Rajeev is the founder and CEO of mywaves. His vision to deliver free video to mobile phones around the globe is predicated on his desire to empower consumers with anytime-access to their favorite entertainment. The direct-to-consumer premise has taken off and driving unprecedented growth for a mobile start-up.

Prior to founding the company, Rajeev was an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Menlo Ventures where he incubated mywaves and assisted with other investment activities. Before that, Rajeev was a founding executive at Questra Corporation, a Menlo Ventures portfolio company, where he led business and product development. He also served on Questra’s board of directors. Rajeev has held consulting and technical positions with such companies as Motorola Semiconductors, Infineon, LSI Logic, and Intel, as well as ETI and American Heart Association.

Rajeev has a BSEE, an MS in Imaging Science and an MBA in Finance from the University of Rochester.

Susan Cashen
Vice President, Marketing

Susan runs mywaves’ global marketing activities, driving user acquisition, brand and corporate awareness for the company, as well as content partnerships and programming.

Susan brings 20 years of consumer marketing experience to mywaves, having worked with many of the top brands in the digital entertainment space.  Before joining mywaves, Susan worked for DVR pioneer, TiVo. She started in 1999 with the marching orders to build TiVo into a consumer brand and in 2003, assumed responsibility for TiVo’s outbound marketing managing customer acquisition and retention, advertising, direct and online marketing and PR. In 2005, Susan worked as a consultant for SutherlandGold, a firm that specializes in building brand awareness for consumer technology and digital media companies.

Susan holds a B.A. with honors in Russian studies from Hamilton College, Clinton, NY.

Esther Chung
Vice President, General Counsel

Esther oversees legal, finance and other administrative activities at mywaves, bringing almost a decade of experience working with emerging growth companies in the mobile technology, telecommunications, consumer services and software sectors.

Esther joins mywaves from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where she was a member of the firm’s Emerging Companies Group in Silicon Valley, focusing on formation, venture capital financing, mergers and acquisitions, licensing and general corporate counseling.  She has worked with such companies as Agito Networks, Calient Networks, Jaxtr, Kiva Systems, as well as the country’s leading venture firms including Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures and VantagePoint.

Esther earned her JD from New York University School of Law and BA in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Mike Kelley
Vice President, Engineering

Mike brings over 20 years of engineering experience to mywaves, holding executive management positions for both start-ups and public companies. His impressive career highlights a wide range of product experience including mobile software, platforms and developer ecosystems, consumer and professional media, as well as Internet/web hosted solutions.

Prior to joining mywaves, Mike was senior vice president of product development and engineering, responsible for worldwide software development of the ACCESS Linux platform. He began his career in 1983 developing hardware and software products for high-end 3D graphics production at some of the early leaders in the industry, including Vertigo, Inc. In 1989, he joined Apple’s Advanced Technology Group. In 1996, Mike joined SGI as senior director for Cosmo Software. He then became senior director for the Advanced Graphics Division, developing SGI’s high-end graphics supercomputers and strategic technologies such as OpenGL. From 1999 to 2003, Mike was vice president of engineering at ePeople, developing award-winning Web based enterprise software for collaboration, CRM and knowledge management.

Brian MacDonald
Vice President, Sales

Brian runs advertising and partner sales for mywaves, working with the world’s leading brands, agencies, handset manufacturers and wireless carriers. He brings more than 15 years of executive-level experience in consumer products and the wireless market to the company.

Previously, he was VP of Carrier Sales at Danger, Inc., where he negotiated agreements with wireless operators in North America and Europe, introducing Danger’s innovative handsets, including the SideKickTM to the consumer market. Before that, he was VP of Marketing and Business Development at iPass, Inc. where he grew the company’s network reach to over 180 countries. Brian also has held executive positions in London and Brussels with IBM/Lotus and Global Telesystems. Prior to that, he co-founded and served as CEO of a banking software company in the UK, which he sold to Lotus in the early 1990s.

Brian earned a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara, did his graduate work in political theory at Georgetown, and held a fellowship in philosophy at Oxford. He holds a patent in multi-mode presence management and directory services integration.

Sterling Mace
Vice President, Operations

Sterling brings a unique combination of operational experience, creative problem solving and rigorous, data-driven decision making to mywaves. Her Business Operations team is responsible for executing on relationships with advertisers, content owners and distribution partners with the highest level of responsiveness and professionalism.

Prior to joining mywaves, Sterling worked in Yahoo’s Digital Home group where she was responsible for innovating new products that extended Yahoo’s presence onto the TV. At Yahoo, Sterling helped launch Yahoo’s first TV product – after only 4 months on the job.

An entrepreneur at heart, she has started and run her own 40-person electronic payments company and also has solid operational experience, having run the OEM group of Motorola Broadband San Jose.

Sterling studied Finance and History at the University of Virginia, where she received her B.S. with honors. She pursued an MLA at Stanford University and has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Scirocco Michelle Six
Chief Architect

Six’s experience, creativity and tenacity to overcome seemingly insurmountable engineering hurdles enabled the mywaves Chief Architect to lead her team to create the first global, carrier agnostic, and handset agnostic mobile video service.

Six built her first computer at age ten with the help of her father. Since that time, she’s honed her engineering skills and now specializes in large scale distributed systems; search systems, information architecture, categorization and discovery, digital video and music, streaming media, server design, open source methodologies and development, and cross platform integration.

She has over 20 years engineering and architectural experience working with a variety of companies including: Microsoft, MyPlay Dow Jones, and Napster.

Sherry Willhoite
Vice President, Product

Sherry brings over a decade of experience in product strategy and development to her role in managing product development at mywaves. Her experience in the online community space through work at Yahoo!, Friendster and Spark Networks and her own on‑line consulting company, Threxy., Inc, will be pivotal in defining the ultimate consumer experience for the mywaves user.

For the past three years, Sherry was Chief Product Officer of a company she founded in 2005, Threxy, Inc, an online design, marketing and development firm. Previously, Sherry was the VP of Product Strategy at Spark Networks working with a $72 million revenue suite of products. Before that, Sherry led product development at Friendster.  Sherry began her career as a product manager at Yahoo! During her six-year term at Yahoo!, Sherry was an integral part of the development and management of Yahoo!’s community products, including Chat, Personals, Messenger and Greetings.

Sherry is industry-known as a “go-to” executive. One who will work for the overall strategy of the product while delving deep into critical feature requirements. Her long-standing reputation is led by her instincts of the industry and her ability to communicate with both the product and business sides of
an organization.