Chris Brandenburg

Co-Founder, Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer

Chris is the Co-Founder and CTO of Millennial Media. He has an extensive background architecting, implementing and operating complex, highly scaled, intelligent transaction systems. Chris is a technology leader in advertising, optimization and wireless technologies.

In his role as CTO, Chris leads the development and operations of the company’s MYDAS platform as well as the technological roadmap for the company.

Chris has held senior engineering and leadership roles in several of the most successful startups in the Baltimore region including leading engineering and operations for Advertising.com (acquired by AOL), and serving as senior software engineer with Solipsys (acquired by Raytheon). He has consulted with behavioral targeting companies on the development, integration, and implementation of targeting technologies.

Stephen Root

Chief Operating Officer

Steve has served as Millennial Media’s Chief Operating Officer since 2007. In this role, he is responsible for the company’s global day-to-day operations and results. Steve is also responsible for translating the company’s strategies into execution.

Over the past 20 years, Steve has focused on leading teams of people to deliver outstanding results. Steve has a strong track record of building world-class teams, creating high performance work environments, and executing a company’s vision.

Prior to joining Millennial Media, Steve held a variety of executive roles at Advertising.com – including senior vice president of operations, senior vice president of sales and most recently, chief operating officer. During his tenure at Advertising.com, Steve was instrumental in the company’s industry-leading acquisition by AOL LLC. Prior to Advertising.com, Steve served in executive and senior management roles at TESSCO and Procter & Gamble.

Steve has a BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Mechanical Engineering, and an MS from Stanford University in Control Systems.

Michael Avon

Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer

Michael Avon serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Millennial Media, where he is responsible for the company’s overall financial, legal, and corporate development activities. He has spent the past decade building early-stage and growth companies as a venture capitalist, operator, entrepreneur, and attorney.

Most recently, Michael was a Principal at Columbia Capital, a leading communications and media-focused venture capital fund, where he focused on digital media, wireless and consumer internet investments, such as Avail-TVN, Social Gaming Network, Webs.com, Gizmoz, GoAhead Software, and Millennial Media. Michael was also a venture capitalist with Toucan Capital, and led Business Development at FOLIOfn.

Earlier in his career, Michael served as a corporate finance and transactional attorney at Gunderson Dettmer, focused on serving the needs of emerging growth companies and venture capital funds.

Michael is an advisor to numerous early stage internet companies and venture funds, including LaunchBox, FounderFuel and QED Investors.

Michael has a BA, with Distinction, from the University of Virginia and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He currently resides with his wife and two children in McLean, VA.

Matt Gillis

Senior Vice President, Global Monetization Solutions

Matt Gillis is the Senior Vice President of Global Monetization Solutions at Millennial Media, focused on expanding the company’s tools and monetization services for media and application developers.

Matt is a mobile industry veteran with more than 15 years experience with wireless software and content. Prior to Millennial Media, Matt spent over 10 years in the operator business, where he successfully built and managed critical relationships with content and software publishers and developers. Most recently, Matt led boutique mobile games publisher, Cosmic Infinity, to their eventual acquisition by Japanese mobile videogame giant Capcom. Since the acquisition, he served as the Executive Vice President of Publishing (Americas/EMEA), bringing top-selling games such as “Street Fighter”, “Resident Evil”, and “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire” to mobile phones everywhere. With Capcom, Matt was responsible for sales, marketing, and licensing, elevating Capcom Mobile to a Top Five mobile publisher.

Matt is a regular speaker at industry events, and has spoken at a variety of mobile, developer, and games conferences around the world.

Matt graduated with a BA from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Find Matt on Twitter @gillisusa.

Marcus Startzel

General Manager, North America

Marcus Startzel is the General Manager, North America at Millennial Media. He is a veteran of interactive media, and he serves the key role of inspiring the advertising community to leverage the uniqueness of mobile to achieve their broader business goals. Marcus built and leads the world class team at Millennial that works with 22 of the top 25 Ad Age advertisers and has been designated as the preferred mobile advertising platform by major agency partners.

Prior to joining Millennial Media, Marcus held various media sales leadership positions. including Advertising.com where he gained expertise in all areas of interactive advertising, from hyper-local targeting to broad reach executions. As VP, Sales at Advertising.com, Marcus inspired his team to lead the company to great success in the digital media space by developing creative and winning selling strategies. Marcus is a former U.S. Naval Submarine Officer and qualified nuclear engineer.

Marcus is a Stevie Award winner and a regular speaker at industry events like ANA, Advertising Week, J.D. Power Automotive Roundtable, and Internet Week.

Marcus graduated from the United States Naval Academy with Merit, and currently resides with his wife and three sons in Annapolis, Maryland.

Find Marcus on Twitter @startzel.

Isaac Babbs

Senior Vice President, Business Development

Isaac Babbs is the Senior Vice President, Business Development, at Millennial Media, and he is responsible for developing global partnerships and initiatives for the company. A long-time mobile, technology, media and entertainment executive, Isaac brings over 25 years of experience to the team.

Prior to Millennial Media, Isaac was VP Business Development at Qualcomm and VP/GM Qualcomm Services Labs, Inc., where he directly led an internal incubator for commercializing and launching mobile services from within the company. He successfully led teams that launched, initiated, and managed mobile projects in mobile health, context marketing, media enablement, communications 2.0, location, mobile commerce, and video delivery focus areas.

Prior to Qualcomm, Isaac was founder, CEO, & chairman of Tapatap, Inc., a leading mobile social games company which he sold in March 2009. Before Tapatap, Isaac served as VP/GM of InfoSpace Mobile Games, where he headed the Atlas Studio. Before InfoSpace, Isaac was founder, president and CEO of Atlas Mobile, Inc. a mobile gaming company specializing in multiplayer tournament games for prizes that was acquired by InfoSpace, Inc. in July 2004. While at Atlas Mobile, Isaac successfully led the company in launching the largest and fastest growing multiplayer tournament-for-prizes service in world with over 13 million tournament games played in its first year. Isaac conceived the idea to create and implement Atlas’ unique tournament for prizes system.

Prior to Atlas Mobile, Isaac was president of Sorrent (which became Glu Mobile), a leading mobile game company where he was responsible for all business aspects of the company including carrier distribution, publishing, marketing and business development. He was also responsible for signing and launching basketball star Yao Ming as the first major professional athlete to make his electronic character debut in a cell phone game.

Prior to Sorrent, Isaac was an executive at Macromedia where he co-founded shockwave.com US and shockwave.com Japan, the #1 interactive entertainment sites in their countries. Isaac was also GM/VP of Macromedia’s audio/video division which he led and then successfully sold to Apple Computer. The division’s main product, Final Cut Pro, is the world leader in non-linear video editing.

Prior to Macromedia, Isaac was vice president of entertainment marketing at Silicon Graphics, Inc., where he leveraged SGI’s technology and brand to grow the company’s share of the global entertainment content creation and production market. Babbs also held senior management positions at Alias/Wavefront, an SGI company, and Alias Research, Inc., leading providers of 3D animation and design software for the entertainment and design industries.

Isaac started his professional career at Hewlett-Packard and has a BA in Chemistry from the University of Oregon. Isaac is based in Silicon Valley where he interfaces on a regular basis with the Valley’s leading media and technology companies, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.

Ho Shin

General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer

Ho Shin joined Millennial Media in January 2011 as its General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer, and is responsible for the Company’s global legal and privacy matters. Currently, he also serves on the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, to which he was appointed in 2011.

Ho brings over a decade of experience in the internet and digital advertising business to Millennial Media. He was previously the General Counsel of Advertising.com where he was responsible for all global legal and privacy matters for the world’s largest third-party internet advertising network. During his time at Advertising.com, Ho participated in the acquisition and integration of numerous companies, in negotiating and launching international joint ventures, helped guide the company through its acquisition by AOL, and assisted in a $60 MM round of Series E financing.

Immediately prior to joining Millennial Media, Ho was General Counsel of Octagon Athletes and Personalities, the leading athlete representation, sports marketing and event marketing company globally, and a subsidiary of the Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG). At Octagon, Ho was responsible for Octagon's legal department, which provided a full range of services to the company, including drafting and negotiating commercial transactions, handling commercial litigation and arbitration, and other corporate counseling.

Ho began his career as a litigation associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C. After that, he spent several years as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Commercial Litigation branch, where he primarily litigated savings & loan cases.

Ho received his JD, magna cum laude, from Georgetown University, and received his BS from the University of Maryland.

Gavin Stirrat

Managing Director, EMEA

Gavin Stirrat is the Managing Director of Millennial Media’s EMEA operations. Gavin joined Millennial Media in early 2010 and is responsible for the growth of business across the region. He works closely with Millennial Media's key strategic partners to ensure that they are taking full advantage of the wide range of opportunities mobile offers for consumer engagement. Over the last 18 months, Gavin has been responsible for growing the EMEA team in London, and he is looking forward to continuing to expand Millennial Media’s geographical footprint across the region.

Gavin’s career started at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he worked as a consultant on a number of blue chip clients including Compaq, BP, British Energy, House of Fraser and Barclays. He then moved to Advertising.com where he spent 7 years working across a number of senior roles in the operations, product and business development teams. He was responsible for growing the operations team from two people supporting the UK to over thirty supporting a pan-EU business, rolling out innovative behavioural and branding products, speaking at trade events, and growing some of the largest advertiser, agency and publisher accounts including Capital One and Microsoft. He then moved client side at Greetz where he successfully launched a B2C online greeting card solution, before finally moving to Clash Media where he led the global operations and technology teams.

Gavin sits on the Mobile Leadership Council and Mobile Steering Group of the IAB, regularly participates in other industry group initiatives including the MMA, and is a seasoned speaker at mobile and digital events.

Gavin holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Studies with Marketing from Glasgow Caledonian University.

Find Gavin on Twitter @gavjs.

Robert Woolfrey

Managing Director, Southeast Asia

Robert Woolfrey is the Managing Director of Millennial Media’s Southeast Asia operations. In his role, Robert is responsible for growing Millennial Media’s business in the region, building relationships with publishers and the application community, and working with premium brands and agencies to help them execute effective mobile advertising campaigns.

Robert has been a dedicated market maker in mobile advertising and applications monetization for the last eight years, and has held senior positions at multiple award winning companies. Robert started his career in San Francisco where he developed partnerships with major brands such as Google, NASA, Oracle and Sun Microsystems, and relocated to Singapore in 2005, where he began working with top brands and agencies to drive mobile advertising adoption. In 2007, he led efforts to open new revenue streams from mobile advertising in the region, and as a result, his company was awarded the Best Consumer Application and Best Overall Innovation at 3GSM Asia in 2007.

Robert is on the Board of Directors, AsiaPac, for the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA).

Robert received a Bachelor of Commerce Honors Graduate from Memorial University in Canada.

Find Robert on Twitter @robwoolfrey.