Our advertising expertise leads to your success
With over 800 combined years of software experience, Marin’s engineering and product teams bring the industry’s most innovative solutions to online advertising. We understand not only how to build leading cross-channel platforms – we empower clients to get the most from them in the competitive online advertising space. Our sales and marketing teams continually develop great client partnerships, building features the market wants and needs.
Senior Management
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Chris Lien
Chief Executive Officer, Founder & Chairman of the Board
Mr. Lien is Marin’s founder and Chairman of the Board, and rejoined the Company as Chief Executive Officer in August 2016. From September 2015 to August 2016, Mr. Lien has served on boards of private companies as well as Marin Software. From May 2014 until September 2015, Mr. Lien served as executive chairman of Marin Software, and from the founding of the Company in 2006 to May 2014, he served as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Lien has been a member of the Board since 2006.
Previously, Mr. Lien served as Chief Operating Officer of Adteractive, Inc., an online performance marketing company, from 2004 to 2005. In 2001, Mr. Lien co-founded and served as Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of Sugar Media, Inc., a broadband services platform, until its acquisition in 2003 by 2Wire, Inc., a leading supplier of DSL equipment and services, which was subsequently acquired by Pace plc in 2010. Prior to that, Mr. Lien served in various capacities at BlueLight.com, LLC, Kmart Corporation’s ecommerce and Internet service provider subsidiary from 2000 to 2001, including as Chief Financial Officer and acting Chief Executive Officer. Prior to BlueLight.com, Mr. Lien spent 10 years at various investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Evercore Partners, with his last role as Managing Director.
Mr. Lien holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College, where he was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mr. Lien’s presence as a member of the Board brings his thorough knowledge of the Company into the Board’s strategic and policy-making discussions. He brings his extensive experience in finance, digital marketing and executive roles in the information technology industry into deliberations regarding the Company’s strategy and operations.
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Wister Walcott
Co-founder and EVP, Product and Technology
Wister is responsible for the Marin product and development teams. The original product architect for the Marin application, he now serves to fulfill our technology vision and product execution on behalf of our customers. A noted industry speaker, Wister has deep domain expertise in digital marketing topics including Social advertising, Retargeting, SEO, SEM, revenue attribution, and optimization. From 2004 to 2005, Wister was the Vice President of Marketing at Composite Software, an enterprise data integration software provider. Prior to that, Wister served for over 10 years in various leadership and product management roles at Siebel Systems, a CRM software provider now part of Oracle, and at Oracle directly, where he focused on enterprise applications, including SaaS-based, data warehousing, and marketing automation apps. Wister holds a B.S. in Computer Science (with honors) from Harvard University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.
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Brad Kinnish
Chief Financial Officer
Brad brings over 20 years of accounting and finance experience to his role as Marin Software’s Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining Marin in March 2017, Brad was at Deutsche Bank as Co-Head of the Software Investment Banking practice. Prior to Deutsche Bank, Brad worked as an investment banker for Thomas Weisel Partners and Credit Suisse. Brad began his career at Ernst & Young in the Audit and Assurance Services practice and is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive). Brad received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Washington.
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Jonathan (Jay) DeGooyer
SVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary
Jay brings fifteen years of in-house and private law firm experience to his role as Marin Software’s General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. Prior to joining Marin in 2015, Jay briefly served as an outside legal consultant for Bromium, Inc., a next-generation endpoint protection company headquartered in Cupertino, California, following close to six years at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California. Jay served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel of HP’s Enterprise Group, where he was responsible for driving legal strategy and support across multiple disciplines. During his tenure at HP, he also held senior legal roles supporting HP’s global supply chain, direct procurement operations, and strategic alliance teams. Before joining HP, Jay was a litigation attorney with Morgan Lewis in San Francisco. Jay received his J.D., cum laude, from the University of San Francisco School of Law and earned his B.A. from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
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Wesley MacLaggan
SVP, Marketing
Wesley MacLaggan has been working with Marin Software since 2008. He is currently Senior Vice President of Marketing at Marin Software. Previously he lead the Product team where he was responsible for driving Marin’s roadmap and working closely with engineering to deliver innovative advertising solutions to the market. He has over a decade’s experience developing and delivering analytical enterprise SaaS applications, including four years with Applied Predictive Technologies working on their platform to help retailers maximize the return on their promotional spending. Mr. MacLaggan began his career providing strategic guidance to companies in a range of industries with Mercer Management Consulting. He holds an Economics degree from Dartmouth College.
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Tal Nathan
SVP, Customer Success Operations
As head of Customer Success Operations, Mr. Nathan serves as Marin Software’s primary voice of the customer. He is responsible for all customer experience operations including customer on-boarding, support, analytics, as well as learning and development.
Mr. Nathan brings more than fifteen years of customer success experience to Marin. Prior to joining Marin, Mr. Nathan worked at StrongView, a leading email and multi-channel marketing company based in the Silicon Valley. During his tenure at StrongView, as SVP Client Services, Mr. Nathan oversaw the complete customer experience from 2010 until it’s acquisition by Selligent in 2015. Prior to that Mr. Nathan served as VP, Client Services West for Epsilon, a global marketing services provider, and VP, Client Services Engineering for infoGroup. Mr. Nathan has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA.
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Doug Pan
SVP, Engineering
Doug has over twenty years of experience in the software industry. Prior to joining Marin, Doug was Senior Director of Engineering at TuVox, an Internet-based speech application company that was acquired by West Interactive. Before that, he was Chief Engineer at Agility Design Solutions that provided a MATLAB to C compiler to implement algorithms in hardware or software. Earlier, Doug was Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering of Talkway, a VC-funded Internet company providing virtual communities with a targeted advertising business model and later a streaming video service with several global 500 companies as clients. He started his career as a developer on the Purify team, a C/C++ memory error detection tool that was acquired by IBM Rational Software.
Doug holds two B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from University of Washington where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Computer Systems Lab at Stanford University. -
Matthew Tucker
SVP, Business Operations & Partner Development
Matthew has over 15 years of enterprise sales and service experience at leading adtech companies in the UK and the US. Matthew now leads Marin's global Customer Success and Partnerships team from San Francisco. Before joining Marin, Matthew was a part of the management team of the IMW Group, which included the largest European SEM agency, The Search Works, which sold to affiliate Tradedoubler in 2007. In 2009 Matthew joined Marin in London, UK to launch our EMEA hub and to drive sales in the region. Two years later he moved to the US to lead strategic accounts, with commercial responsibility for some of our largest customers, including Apple, The Home Depot and Ancestry. Today, Matthew's team of 60 account managers have a charter to drive performance success for our customers across the US, EMEA and APAC. With 75% of our time online being consumed with search and social engagement, Matthew understands how to drive revenue outcomes for our customers, and great brand experiences for consumers. Matthew received his Bachelor of Arts degree from London Guildhall University.
Board of Directors
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Gordon Crovitz
In February 2018, Gordon co-founded and serves as the co-CEO of NewsGuard Technologies, which gives consumers information about the news brands they access online. He co-founded Journalism Online, LLC, a provider of e-commerce solutions for publishers, in April 2009. From 2008 until April 2009, Gordon was an active angel investor in, and advisor to, privately held media and technology companies. Prior to that, Gordon worked at Dow Jones from 1980 until December 2007 in a variety of positions, most recently as a publisher of the Wall Street Journal and executive vice president. Gordon is a member of the boards of directors of American Association of Rhodes Scholars, Blurb, Business Insider, Dun & Bradstreet, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ProQuest and Star Tribune Media. Gordon holds an A.B. in Politics, Economics and Rhetoric and Law from the University of Chicago, a B.A. in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Gordon brings to our board of directors a diversity of distinguished experiences and seasoned business acumen, particularly extensive experience in the media and publishing industries. His service on a number of company boards provides an important perspective on corporate governance matters, including best practices established at other companies.
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Donald Hutchison
Since 2002, Don’s principal employment has been as an angel investor in start-up technology companies. From June 2006 to July 2008, Don was the Co-Founder and Chairman of the Board of Directors of Recurrent Energy, a solar energy provider. Prior to that, Don served as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of work.com, a joint venture established by Dow Jones and Excite@Home. Don previously served in senior positions at Excite@Home and Netcom Communications. Don has previously served as a member of the board of directors of many privately-held companies, including, W&W Communications, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, which was acquired by Cavium, Inc. Don holds a B.A. in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara, and an M.B.A. in Finance and Organizational Development from Loyola Marymount University.
Don brings to our board of directors significant experience analyzing and investing in other technology companies, as well as management and leadership experience as a former founder and executive of technology companies.
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Brian Kinion
Brian is currently the chief financial officer at Upwork. Brian has more than 25 years of experience in leading finance organizations in public and private companies during periods of rapid growth and cash constraints, including multiple IPO’s. Prior to joining UpWork, Brian was the chief financial officer at Marketo. Before Marketo, Brian held a variety of finance leadership roles at SuccessFactors (acquired by SAP), CoTherix, Inc. (acquired by Actelion Pharmaceuticals), ClearSwift, and DigitalThink, among others. He has established an expertise in SaaS/Cloud business modeling, reporting and planning after supporting high growth subscription businesses at both SuccessFactors (acquired by SAP in 2012) and Marketo (taken private by Vista Equity Partners in 2016). He began his career as an auditor at KPMG, earned a bachelor’s of science in accounting and an MBA (finance concentration) from St. Mary’s College of California.
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Chris Lien
Mr. Lien is Marin’s founder and Chairman of the Board, and rejoined the Company as Chief Executive Officer in August 2016. From September 2015 to August 2016, Mr. Lien has served on boards of private companies as well as Marin Software. From May 2014 until September 2015, Mr. Lien served as executive chairman of Marin Software, and from the founding of the Company in 2006 to May 2014, he served as the Company’s Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Lien has been a member of the Board since 2006.
Previously, Mr. Lien served as Chief Operating Officer of Adteractive, Inc., an online performance marketing company, from 2004 to 2005. In 2001, Mr. Lien co-founded and served as Chairman and Chief Financial Officer of Sugar Media, Inc., a broadband services platform, until its acquisition in 2003 by 2Wire, Inc., a leading supplier of DSL equipment and services, which was subsequently acquired by Pace plc in 2010. Prior to that, Mr. Lien served in various capacities at BlueLight.com, LLC, Kmart Corporation’s ecommerce and Internet service provider subsidiary from 2000 to 2001, including as Chief Financial Officer and acting Chief Executive Officer. Prior to BlueLight.com, Mr. Lien spent 10 years at various investment banks, including Morgan Stanley and Evercore Partners, with his last role as Managing Director.
Mr. Lien holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College, where he was elected as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Mr. Lien’s presence as a member of the Board brings his thorough knowledge of the Company into the Board’s strategic and policy-making discussions. He brings his extensive experience in finance, digital marketing and executive roles in the information technology industry into deliberations regarding the Company’s strategy and operations.
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Daina Middleton
Daina Middleton has served on our board of directors since October 2014. Ms. Middleton is CEO of Ansira. Prior to her current role, Ms. Middleton spent time as a leadership development coach and headed up global business marketing at Twitter. Prior to those roles, during her time as CEO of Performics, the performance marketing agency grew from being a small, U.S.-only organization to a global powerhouse with offices in 34 countries in just 4 ½ years. Prior to Performics, Ms. Middleton pioneered social media at the digital creative agency Moxie. Ms. Middleton began her marketing career at Hewlett-Packard, where she managed every marketing function during her 16-year tenure, pioneering both digital and search. Ms. Middleton received a bachelor’s degree in technical journalism from Oregon State University.
