Management Team

mBLAST is made up of marketers, PR experts, and influencers: we understand what marketers need from influencers, how influencers need to interact with marketers, and how to make it all happen effectively and efficiently.

We’re experienced professionals with strong depth in leading edge technologies, organizational leadership, and startup management and exit success. In combination, the mBLAST leadership has directly led more than a half-dozen firms and been involved with more than 100 startups in the high-tech arena. This experience is powering mBLAST to a leadership position in Media and Marketing Relationship Management.

Gary Lee, Chief Executive Officer

Gary has over 25 years of experience in high-tech marketing, development and executive management in various global telecom and high-tech companies. His career includes a wide range of technical, marketing and management positions in global companies including Nortel, Sprint and General DataComm

Gary has served as Chief Executive Officer at FlexLight Networks and President and Chief Operating Officer at Home Wireless Networks, two venture-capital-backed start-ups. These two companies established business operations in North America, Europe, China and Israel and were backed by close to $100M in investment by Lucent, Telenor, Groupo Carso, BT, Accel Partners, and St. Paul Venture Capital among others. In both startups, Gary took the companies from concept to market launch and revenue.

He also was North American CEO of a global PR & Marketing Services agency, Mi liberty, working with global wireless and telecommunications companies around the globe both for b:b and b:c markets.

Gary earned his MBA from Belmont University's Massey School of Business and his BA in Computer Science from Furman University.

Gary's Profile: LinkedIn

Paul Pritchard, Chief Technology Officer

Paul participates in the strategic development and planning of mBLAST services and provides technical direction and design specifications for their development. Paul designs, develops, and implements mBLAST systems as well as supervises systems developers. He supports all phases of the customer provisioning process and customizes mBLAST to meet client needs.

Paul brings over 20 years of executive-level management experience as well as applied experience in software development, business systems architecture, and database modeling, covering a broad range of industries and applications. In addition to mBLAST, Paul has been involved with the development of another startup.

Paul earned his BA from Grace University.

Paul's Profile: LinkedIn

Mark Hatch, Vice President of Application Development

Mark comes to mBLAST with over twenty years of experience in software engineering and high-tech management along with an impressive start-up background. Recently he has led software teams in developing the on-line storage services space at Carbonite and Intronis. At ICC and OneCore Financial, he contributed to the development of Internet banking, brokerage, and customer service applications for the Financial Services Industry.

Prior to that, Mark designed and built software applications for multi-lingual Machine Translation systems (where he holds a patent on design), large-scale on-line database searching, and Internet-based interactive gaming software.

In addition to being a certified Scrum Master, Mark earned an MBA from Northeastern University and also attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He has taught Computer Science and Mathematics in the Massachusetts State College System for the past 20 years.

Mark's Profile: LinkedIn

Sue O'Keefe, Vice President, Marketing

Sue joined mBLAST from Telecommunications Magazine, where she most recently held the position of publisher, overseeing all sales, marketing and business development functions of the magazine and its associated web-based products. Before that, she served as the magazine’s Editor in Chief. Telecommunications Magazine is a leading industry publication and website devoted to global service provider technologies and deployments.

Sue started her career in newspapers, as a sports editor at the New Haven Register and then The Hartford Courant. Moving to Boston to attend graduate school, she worked as an adjunct professor in the Northeastern University School of Journalism, teaching both undergraduate and honors editing courses. She also has worked as a business editor at The Boston Herald.

She has won writing awards from the New England Press Association and the American Society of Business Publication Editors.

Sue graduated with a BA from the University of Connecticut with a dual major in Journalism and History. She received her MA Summa Cum Laude from Northeastern University.

Sue's Profile: LinkedIn

Edward Ferris, Vice President, Information Technology

Ed manages mBLAST's relationships with its outside IS partners. He brings over two decades of Information Systems design and management to mBLAST, with extensive experience as a CIO, CTO, IS director, network manager and consultant. Ed focuses on innovative and robust solutions to support the company's distributed and mobile work force, as well as supporting mBLAST's client base through the company's Web sites and other electronic products.

Prior to joining mBLAST in 1999, Ed was Director of Information Systems for the Professional Development Group, a technical training firm where he successfully created and managed an IT department through a period of over 200 percent growth, while simultaneously rolling out new systems company-wide and overseeing the development of custom applications. He developed process and workflow systems to support the company's growth. He also helped define products and develop new product delivery systems to shorten deliver times to customers.

Previous to his tenure at the Professional Development Group, Ed was IT Manager and Consultant for Analysis Group / Integral Inc. Ed helped develop group communications systems and knowledge sharing environments in support of a highly mobile, global consulting group.

He has also been a Project Manager at Media 1, Inc. and the proprietor of his own multimedia design and consulting firm.

Ed's Profile: LinkedIn