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The Team

  • Eren Bali is the CEO and co-founder of Udemy. Eren leads engineering, acquisition marketing, product development, design and user experience. Prior to Udemy, he was a founding engineer of SpeedDate.com, and worked as Director of Engineering. He oversaw the site's growth from 0 to 10 million users and profitability in its first two years. Eren was a bit of a math genius in high school, during which he earned 2nd place worldwide in the International Mathematical Olympiads. Then, at the ripe young age of 15, Eren entered college at Middle East Technical University. He graduated with dual degrees in Computer Engineering and Mathematics.
  • Gagan Biyani is President and co-founder of Udemy. He is responsible for business development, partner marketing, public relations, investor relations and corporate operations. He built the company to its first 10,000 users and then raised $1,000,000 of funding from 11 angel investors whose portfolios include YouTube, LinkedIn, Zynga, Mint.com, SlideShare and Yelp. Prior to Udemy, he contributed to TechCrunch, an influential startup and technology blog. He started his entrepreneurial career at 16, when he founded a summer speech and debate class that made over $30,000 before he graduated High School. Gagan went on to attend UC Berkeley where he graduated with a degree in Economics after 3 years in school.
  • Dinesh Thirupuvanam is the VP of Marketing at Udemy. He is responsible for marketing & distribution of paid courses and has grown Udemy's distribution network to more than 1,000,000 people across 20 partner organizations. Prior to Udemy, Dinesh was the President and Co-Founder of the Viv Biz Club - a group purchasing organization for eco-minded small businesses. Prior to Viv, he worked at American Express in the Strategic Planning Group. Dinesh graduated from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Economics.
  • Archie is part of the marketing team at Udemy. Prior to joining Udemy, Archie co-founded Amplify Teaching, an angel funded start-up that leveraged tablet technology to improve teacher effectiveness and worked at a strategy consulting firm in Boston. Born and raised in New England, Archie graduated from Bowdoin College summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Economics and Government. Outside of work, he enjoys running, pick-up basketball and exploring cities.
  • Max Altschuler is part of the Business Development team at Udemy. Prior to joining Udemy, he obtained his Bachelors of Interdisciplinary Studies (Business/Design) from Arizona State University. While enrolled at ASU he traveled to 65+ countries and studied abroad in four of them. In 2009, he earned the EAP grant from the university for his shared-bicycle program business plan. He also started a social media management company in early 2011, in which he oversaw the completion of 75+ Facebook applications across five different countries. He is passionate about start-ups, entrepreneurship, traveling, sports, and animals.
  • Pedro Sanchez de Lozada is part of the Business Development team and the Social Marketing manager for Udemy. He is currently working towards his Bachelor's Degree in Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also Co-director of TEDxUChicago and VP of Marketing for the Road to Innovative Social Entrepreneurship. Among his passions are entrepreneurship, extreme sports, dance, and his collection of ceramic turtles.
  • Dan Murphy is part of the Business Development team at Udemy, he spends his days either searching for partners that are excited about promoting Udemy courses or working with our awesome existing partner network to promote courses. Since graduating from University as a mechanical engineer in 2004 Dan has co-founded 2 start-ups in Western Australia. He recently moved to San Francisco to join the Udemy team. In his free time Dan likes surfing, snowboarding and hanging out in cafes in The Mission District.
  • Tim Parks is part of the Business Development team at Udemy, focusing on the academic offerings for the site. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in International Relations in 2005, he spent three years as an analyst in Lehman Brothers Private Equity Division in New York City. Eager to be in a small business, he worked with South African fashion design entrepreneur Nkhensani Nkosi of Stoned Cherrie in strategy and business development and now is excited to be on the Udemy team.
  • Audrey Heinesen, Ed.D. is Director of The Faculty Project at Udemy. Audrey is an e-learning specialist with over fifteen years experience in high growth technology organizations and higher education with particular focus on developing online courses, schools, and academic programs. Audrey completed her doctorate at Teachers College Columbia University in Instructional Technology and Media, and most recently worked at The New York Times Company to lead the launch and development of The Times' online education initiative. Audrey is passionate about online learning, instructional design, and using technology for social good.
  • Holly McNamara is the Udemy Evangelist. Prior to Udemy, Holly had worked on multiple consulting projects, including the launch and book tour of the #1 NYT best seller, Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com. Holly worked alongside Tony as his Life Managing Director before, during and after the launch, wearing multiple hats. Holly grew up in a small town south of Boston, graduated from Cornell University with a degree in Structural Engineering, and moved to the west coast for her Masters in Structural Engineering at UCSD. After 7 years as a licensed engineer and 4 years in construction and project management, Holly took the leap into the entrepreneurial space and is very excited to be part of the Udemy team.
  • Alex Mozes is the Udemy Instructor Liaison. He worked 7+ years in corporate training as an educator & curriculum designer, teaching live classes to thousands of Bay Area professionals. He then became the training director for a team of 30 instructors, and developed and implemented a virtual training solutions for remote students And now, working with the pioneers of Udemy is running out of ways to count his blessings. He is the only native San Franciscan for miles, and is an avid camper, traveler, amateur astronomer, and voracious learner.
  • Gokce Cozen is part of the Marketing team at Udemy. She graduated from Middle East Technical University with a degree in Computer Science and she has a masters degree in the field of Digital Marketing. During her education, she worked at various start-ups and well-establised businesses. She shares her knowledge and experience about high-tech world and digital marketing in several blogs. Outside of work she enjoys hiking, biking and rock climbing. She is very excited to be part of the Udemy team.
  • Linos Owusu-Asare is a part of the Business Development Team at Udemy. His educational background comes from the University of Pennsylvania, with a concentrated focus in both Finance and Entrepreneurship. His previous experience with start-ups and tech-based businesses comes from a 6-month internship at Oneaway.me and the early development of his idea for a visual search engine (Project REACH) focused on list and rank based queries. Major interests of his includes basketball, soccer (go Man Utd!), comic-book movies, and being a part of making Udemy the number one online educational platform!
  • Cuneyt Mertayak is an engineer at Udemy. He has earned several degrees in computer engineering and mathematics from METU (Ankara, Turkey). He is a full time engineer and part time geek. Prior to joining Udemy, he was a research assistant at the college and worked as an engineer at two software development firms working on machine learning, signal processing and web applications. His motivation for being in the Udemy family is to contribute to the change of this world through education. Besides working, he enjoys web development, programming puzzles, jogging, playing computer games and geeky stuff like Lego Mindstorms projects.
  • Mustafa Demir is the Director of Engineering at Udemy. He graduated from Middle East Technical University, Department of Computer Engineering in 2005 and completed the M.S degree from the same department in 2008. Prior to joining Udemy, he had been working as a Application Development Consultant at the Innova. He has been involved in various enterprise software development projects, in which open source J2EE technologies are used. His main interests are agile methodologies, design patterns and test driven development. Besides working, he enjoys playing computer games, volleyball, billiard and table tennis. His reason for being in the Udemy family is to rock the education world.
  • Burak Oguz is a senior software engineer at Udemy. He graduated from Middle East Technical University, Department of Computer Engineering in 2006. Before Udemy, Burak worked on many research projects on trusted computing and IT security. He also developed many web applications within these projects. He is specialized in many programming languages and GNU/Linux. As a former entrepreneur, he is interested in working with startups, agile development and following new technologies. Currently, he is continuing higher education in METU Science and Technology Policy Studies. He enjoys swimming and participating in social responsibility activities.
  • Cansin Yildiz is an engineer at Udemy. His contributions to the company started at April 2011. Cansin is also pursuing his Master of Science degree in the Computer Science Dept. of Bilkent Univ. (Turkey). He works as a teaching assistant during semesters there. Cansin graduated from METU (Turkey) with a degree in Computer Science. He was an active member of Computer Club where he was part of the supervisory and management boards. Born in Turkey, he still lives there. In November 2010, he realized that academic life is not for him, start-up life is.
  • Anil Sevim is a Software Engineer at Udemy. He graduated from METU (Turkey) with a degree in Computer Science in 2011. During college, he has been working with several startups since 2009. In addition to these, he has done academic research in machine learning and published his first publication in 2010 as an undergraduate student. After finishing college, he joined Udemy immediately.
  • Goksel Eryigit is a Senior Front-end Developer at Udemy. After studying Geophysics Engineering two years in DEU, he decided to move into industry and started to work as a developer in the Ortadunya Interactive Agency. He worked at various graphic design studios, advertisement agencies, and interactive agencies over the course of 6 years. He is also currently part of the international jury of AWWWARDS.
  • Burak Bostancioglu is a Software Developer intern at Udemy. He is studying Physics at METU. He is co-founder of several facebook applications, which reach over 300K users in Turkey. He is the head of the METU-Computer Club(first head, which is from the Physics Department). He is also working on a project called Sunkym, which is an generic intelligent music recommodation system.He is also system developer of an open source project called LACE, which is a PHP-MVC framework. He was also an intern at Udemy last year.
  • Murat Akbal is a Software Developer intern at Udemy. He is studying Computer Engineering at METU. He is also co-founder of several facebook applications, which reach 300K users in Turkey. He was head of the METU Computer Club WEB-GROUP for two years and a member of the supervisory board at the METU Computer Club. In his spare time he works on a project called Sunkym, which is a generic intelligent music recommendation system.
  • Kiwi is a new Udemy pup. She was rescued by Muttville, adopted by Udemy's Evangelist, Holly, and ultimately taken in with a very warm welcome by the Udemy family. Don't be fooled by her young puppy features, as she is old and wise and very set in her ways. She works on looking cute, walking around the office space making friends, loves making people happy, and sitting in her mom's lap during meetings. She likes Udemy breakfast and lunch days because she is secretly fed by Goksel and a few others. Uncle Max loves to smush her and give her hugs, which she likes very much. Her new friend Moochie comes in from time to time, and she likes visiting with her too. Kiwi is so happy to be a part of the Udemy team and feels very loved! She doesn't know what she would do without them.

ADVISORS

  • Jon Bischke is Founder of RG Labs, a company that helps people make better decisions about people.
  • James Kenigsberg is Chief Technology Officer of 2tor.
  • Darian Shirazi is Founder & CEO at Fwix

INVESTORS

  • Russ Fradin is the CEO is Adify, which he co-founded with Larry Braitman and Rick Thompson. Most recently, Fradin was the Senior VP of Business Development for Wine.com, the Internet's largest seller of wine, where he was responsible for creating new revenue channels for the business
  • Mark Sugarman is Board Member at OPOWER. He is also Managing Partner at MHS Capital.
  • Keith Rabois is the Chief Operating Officer at Square and a prominent angel investor.
  • Rick Thompson is a serial entrepreneur, in a good way. Prior to founding Playdom, Rick co-founded and served as CEO and/or chairman of two successful Internet technology companies, Adify and FlyCast Communications.
  • Ben Ling leads the monetization efforts of YouTube at Google. He previously worked at Facebook, where he oversaw product marketing, developer operations and partner solutions for the Facebook Platform
  • Paul Martino is the CEO and cofounder of Aggregate Knowledge, which is the fourth company that he has founded over his 20 year technology career.
  • 500 Startups is an early-stage seed fund and incubator program located in Mountain View, CA. We invest primarily in consumer & SMB internet startups, and related web infrastructure services. Their initial investment size is typically $25K-$250K.
  • Joshua Stylman is co-founder of Reprise Media, which is an is an internet marketing firm that helps the world's largest brands connect with their customers online.
  • Larry Braitman is an online advertising veteran who co-founded Flycast Communications in 1996.
  • Jeremy Stoppelman co-founded Yelp Inc. in July 2004 with former colleague and friend Russel Simmons.
  • Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur and angel investor, a co-author of Venture Hacks, and a co-maintainer of AngelList.
  • Lightbank is a Chicago-based investment fund started by Groupon co-founders Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell. They've invested in nearly 20 companies, raised over $1.2 billion and created over $7 billion in equity value. Their companies employ more than 10,000 people in over 100 offices.