We come from a long line of innovators, leaders, and storytellers.
Deb Liu joined Ancestry in March 2021 as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Prior to joining Ancestry, Deb was a senior executive at Facebook where she created and led Facebook's Marketplace, where millions of people buy and sell from one another. She also led the development of Facebook’s first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network, in addition to building the company’s games business and its payments platform, including Facebook Pay.
Named by PaymentsSource as one of the most influential women in payments and one of Business Insider's most powerful female engineers, Deb has worked in the tech industry for over 18 years. Prior to Facebook, she spent several years in product roles at PayPal and eBay, including leading the integration between the two products.
Actively involved with promoting diversity and women in tech, she is the founder of Women in Product, a nonprofit to connect and support women in the product management field. Deb serves on the board of Intuit, and she’s a seed investor and advisor to several startups. She also holds several payments and commerce-related patents.
Deb received a BS in Civil Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She lives in California with her husband and three children, and she enjoys chronicling their family adventures in her Mommy School comic.
Howard Hochhauser joined Ancestry® in 2009 as Chief Financial Officer and in February 2012 added the position of Chief Operating Officer. Howard also served as interim CEO of Ancestry from October 2017 to May 2018 while the Board conducted a comprehensive search for a permanent CEO. During his tenure, Howard has helped lead the Company’s initial 2009 public offering, its go-private transaction in 2012, seven acquisitions and all of its public equity and debt financings. He was part of the team that helped grow the company from approximately $200 million in revenue in 2008, to more than $1 billion in revenue in 2017, a compound annual growth rate of over 21%. Prior to joining Ancestry, Howard served as Chief Financial Officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and earlier in his career was a Vice President of Equity Research at Bear Stearns & Co. and a Staff Accountant at KPMG Peat Marwick. Howard has received numerous awards, including Best CEO of 2018 by the Utah Technology Council, #1 Internet industry CFO of 2012 by Institutional Investor magazine and CFO of the year in 2012 by Utah Business Magazine. He serves on the board of Silicon Slopes and on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of Envision Utah. He is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University and a B.S. from Boston University.
David Graham has served as Senior Vice President of Family History Product since November 2020. David has been at Ancestry® over 20 years, holding a number of different roles helping the company continually grow and innovate. In that time he has built a passion for both family history and for creating products that make a positive impact in people’s lives. Prior to his SVP of Family History role, he was VP in our Emerging Businesses organization serving as General Manager of the Archives® business. He also launched We Remember®, our free memorial service where anyone can collect and preserve memories of loved ones, as well as StoryScout™, which tells compelling stories about your ancestors from our historical records by just providing basic information about a grandparent. Before his Emerging Businesses role, David held various Product Management leadership roles, launching or working on key features such as Ancestry Hints®, search, online family trees, and our community collaboration experiences. David has an M.B.A. and B.A. in Media Arts from Brigham Young University.
Mike Linton joined Ancestry® as Chief Revenue Officer in September 2019, to lead consumer and product marketing with a focus on accelerating growth and continuing to build a global brand that consumers love and trust. Prior to Ancestry, he served as CMO of Farmers Insurance where his responsibilities included marketing, research, strategic planning, internal and external communications, customer experience and the company’s digital and mobile efforts. In his 30-year marketing and general management career Mike has also worked at Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, BestBuy and eBay, to name a few. Linton is on the Board of Directors of Medical Solutions and The Wine Group and advises a number of early stage companies. Among numerous awards, Linton has won 4 Effies, a Valiente and was named by Ad Age as one of the most influential 30 marketers. In 2017, he was named one of the 50 Most Innovative CMO’s in the World by Business Insider. Linton received his degree from Bowling Green State University and Duke's Fuqua School of Business.
Julie Miller joined Ancestry® in August 2019 as senior vice president, Chief Communications Officer, responsible for leading strategic communications and promoting the overall reputation of Ancestry with authentic, transparent and engaging storytelling. Julie is an accomplished senior executive with extensive experience developing impactful and integrated communications strategies to drive growth. Passionate about leadership and developing world-class, highly motivated teams, Julie has a proven track delivering successful global communications programs to build brand equity and trust, increase consideration and amplify the business to internal and external audiences. Prior to joining Ancestry, Julie served as vice president of Corporate Communications at Intuit, Inc. where she led communications for Intuit’s corporate brand and flagship consumer brands, including TurboTax. Julie also deep expertise in reputation management, executive positioning, public affairs and financial communications. Before joining Intuit, Julie held multiple communications leadership roles in consumer, healthcare and high-tech in both corporate and agency environments including Anacomp, Inc. and Sharp Healthcare Systems. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from the University of California, San Diego and an MBA from San Diego State University with an emphasis in Marketing.
Carla S. Newell has served as Chief Legal Officer and Chief Risk Officer for Ancestry® since September 2016. She has worked with companies covering a wide range of sectors including cyber security, enterprise software and services, ecommerce and social media, witnessing the evolution in business models across these sectors and their impact on more traditional businesses. Prior to joining Ancestry, Carla spent more than a decade as Operating General Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV), a leading growth equity investor, where she led legal, investor relations and fundraising for the firm and its multi-billion dollar funds. Among TCV's portfolio companies are many of the world's most successful and recognizable consumer technology brands, including Expedia, Facebook, Fandango, Netflix, Spotify, and Zillow. Additionally, Carla is an expert in structuring and negotiating complex business, investment and strategic transactions, including M&A. Prior to Technology Crossover Ventures she spent 15 years working with high growth technology companies as a Partner at two leading technology focused law firms, Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian LLP and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich. Carla earned a Juris Doctorate from The University of Michigan Law School and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Ron Park joined Ancestry® as EVP of Health and DNA in April 2020 to lead Ancestry’s efforts to advance personalized, preventative health through actionable insights and help people achieve better health outcomes. Prior to Ancestry, Ron was the co-lead of Roche/Genentech’s global personalized healthcare center of excellence, where he was instrumental in efforts to accelerate the use of genomics, real-world data and digital health to enhance efforts to develop and deliver medicines to benefit patients with serious diseases. Ron also served in a variety of other strategic and operational roles in Roche/Genentech, including General Manager of Denmark and Iceland (where he also served as Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce, Denmark). During this time, Ron worked across multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology, respiratory, immunology and ophthalmology. Before Roche/Genentech, Ron worked in McKinsey and Company’s healthcare practice in Silicon Valley developing growth strategies for biotech and medical device clients. Ron started his career in primary care medicine, first as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Internal Medicine at UCLA, then at Kaiser Permanent in Northern California. Ron has an MD and an MBA from Stanford University, and BA in Biology from Harvard.
Sriram Thiagarajan has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Ancestry, since November 2020 and is responsible for ensuring Ancestry’s customers have the best product experience powered by its software products, advanced technologies and cloud platform. Sriram leads the overall vision, strategy and execution for all aspects of Ancestry’s product engineering and technology development including architecture, data science and product analytics, platform engineering, cloud operations, cyber security, corporate infrastructure and business systems. Sriram joined Ancestry in 2017 as Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer, and in December 2019 added the position of SVP Platforms. Sriram is a seasoned, growth minded technology executive with 20+ years of experience in scaling businesses and delivering growth by leveraging advanced technologies and software solutions at Fortune 500, Venture and Private Equity backed companies.
Prior to Ancestry, Sriram served as SVP & Chief Information Officer at Infoblox, where he was responsible for Information Technology and Cybersecurity. Before Infoblox, Sriram was the Global Head of IT & Corporate Engineering at Twitter, where he helped architect and scale corporate infrastructure, enterprise applications and integrations to revenue and billing platforms, to help prepare the company for its IPO. Prior to Twitter, Sriram served as VP of Payments Infrastructure & Corporate Systems at Yahoo, and its premium services monetization platform and enterprise systems organizations. Earlier in his career, Sriram held leadership roles at Verisign and Ernst & Young. Sriram holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Florida Atlantic University, FL. and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics & Communications Engineering from Anna University, India.
Evan Wittenberg has served as Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer at Ancestry® since July 2017. He oversees the company’s People and Places team, which is responsible for all HR functions including talent acquisition and development, total rewards, facilities and leadership development. Wittenberg has an extensive track record of helping world-class organizations grow and foster their talent while evolving their cultures to support continued expansion. Prior to Ancestry, Wittenberg served as Chief People Officer at Box, having led the company’s Human Resources function through explosive growth and a public listing in 2015. In his leadership role, he oversaw all recruiting and talent development initiatives, in addition to compensation and benefits, performance management and succession planning. Prior to Box, Wittenberg was the Chief Talent Officer for HP; created and ran the Global Leadership Development function at Google; was Director of the Graduate Leadership Program at The Wharton School; and was part of the cultural integration of two world class academic medical centers which created New York Presbyterian Hospital – The University Hospital of Columbia and Cornell. Evan received his BA with Distinction in Psychology and English Literature from Swarthmore College, and his M.B.A. with Honors from the Wharton School, specializing in Strategic Change Leadership.
Mark stepped down as President & CEO at The New York Times Company in the summer of 2020 after an eight-year tenure in which the 170-year-old news brand was transformed into a digital powerhouse. Digital subscribers jumped to nearly 6 million, up from half a million when he joined, while digital revenues topped $450 million at the end of 2019.
Mark’s appointment at The New York Times Company followed an eight-year term as Director General of the BBC. He is widely credited with expanding the BBC’s digital reach and overseeing development of the BBC iPlayer. He joined the BBC from Channel 4 where he was Chief Executive from 2002 to 2004.
Before Channel 4 he held a series of senior posts at the BBC including Director of Television. His BBC career began as production trainee. He went on to edit several news programmes including The Nine O’clock News and Panorama before becoming Controller of BBC Two. He was educated at Stonyhurst College and Merton College Oxford.
Joseph Baratta is Global Head of Private Equity and a member of the firm's Management Committee. He also serves on many of the firm’s investment committees.
Mr. Baratta joined Blackstone in 1998 and in 2001 he moved to London to help establish Blackstone’s corporate private equity business in Europe. Since 2012, Mr. Baratta has served as the firm’s Global Head of Private Equity and is located in New York.
Mr. Baratta has served on the boards of many past Blackstone portfolio companies and currently serves as a member or observer on the boards of First Eagle Investment Management, Refinitiv, SESAC and Merlin Entertainments Group. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Georgetown University; is a trustee of the Tate Foundation; serves on the board of Year Up, an organization focused on youth employment; and serves on the Board of Trustees of Trinity School in New York City.
Before joining Blackstone, Mr. Baratta was with Tinicum Incorporated and McCown De Leeuw & Company. Mr. Baratta also worked at Morgan Stanley in its mergers and acquisitions department. Mr. Baratta graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University.
Sachin Bavishi is a Managing Director in Blackstone’s Private Equity Group. Mr. Bavishi currently focuses on new investment opportunities in Technology, Media & Telecom (TMT). Since joining Blackstone in 2013, Mr. Bavishi has been involved in the execution of the firm’s investments in Ancestry, Bumble, Catalent, Ipreo, Kronos, Performance Food Group, Pinnacle Foods, Refinitiv, SESAC, Tradeweb, Trilliant Food & Nutrition, UKG (Ultimate Software / Kronos), and Vungle. He currently serves as a Director of Bumble, Refinitiv, SESAC, UKG, and Vungle.
Prior to joining Blackstone, Mr. Bavishi was an Associate at Olympus Partners where he evaluated and executed private equity investments across several industries. Prior to that, he worked in investment banking at Piper Jaffray in the Healthcare Group.
Mr. Bavishi earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from The University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he graduated with Highest Distinction (Top 5%), and an MBA from The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.
Howard Hochhauser joined Ancestry® in 2009 as Chief Financial Officer and in February 2012 added the position of Chief Operating Officer. Howard also served as interim CEO of Ancestry from October 2017 to May 2018 while the Board conducted a comprehensive search for a permanent CEO. During his tenure, Howard has helped lead the Company’s initial 2009 public offering, its go-private transaction in 2012, seven acquisitions and all of its public equity and debt financings. He was part of the team that helped grow the company from approximately $200 million in revenue in 2008, to more than $1 billion in revenue in 2017, a compound annual growth rate of over 21%. Prior to joining Ancestry, Howard served as Chief Financial Officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and earlier in his career was a Vice President of Equity Research at Bear Stearns & Co. and a Staff Accountant at KPMG Peat Marwick. Howard has received numerous awards, including #1 Internet industry CFO of 2012 by Institutional Investor magazine and CFO of the year in 2012 by Utah Business Magazine. Howard was also recently named Best CEO of 2018 by the Utah Technology Council. He is a Certified Public Accountant and holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University and a B.S. from Boston University.
David N. Kestnbaum is a Senior Managing Director in the Private Equity Group. He currently focuses on investments in Business Services, Leisure & Entertainment, Media & Telecom, and Transportation & Logistics, amongst other sectors.
Since joining Blackstone in 2013, Mr. Kestnbaum has been involved in the execution of Blackstone’s current investments in Merlin Entertainments, SERVPRO, PSAV, Alight Solutions, SESAC, Tradesmen, and Outerstuff, as well as prior investments in AlliedBarton Security Services, AVINTIV, Cloverleaf Cold Storage, and DJO Global. Before joining Blackstone, Mr. Kestnbaum was a Vice President of Vestar Capital Partners, and was previously a member of JP Morgan’s Financial Sponsor Group.
Mr. Kestnbaum holds a BA in Political Science from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently a Director of SERVPRO, PSAV, Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), Alight Solutions, SESAC, Tradesmen, and Outerstuff. He is currently representing Blackstone as a 2019-20 Partnership for New York City Rockefeller Fellow, and was previously a member of the Associates Council of Prep for Prep, a New York-based non-profit organization.
Deb Liu joined Ancestry in March 2021 as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Prior to joining Ancestry, Deb was a senior executive at Facebook where she created and led Facebook's Marketplace, where millions of people buy and sell from one another. She also led the development of Facebook’s first mobile ad product for apps and its mobile ad network, in addition to building the company’s games business and its payments platform, including Facebook Pay.
Named by PaymentsSource as one of the most influential women in payments and one of Business Insider's most powerful female engineers, Deb has worked in the tech industry for over 18 years. Prior to Facebook, she spent several years in product roles at PayPal and eBay, including leading the integration between the two products.
Actively involved with promoting diversity and women in tech, she is the founder of Women in Product, a nonprofit to connect and support women in the product management field. Deb serves on the board of Intuit, and she’s a seed investor and advisor to several startups. She also holds several payments and commerce-related patents.
Deb received a BS in Civil Engineering from Duke University and an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. She lives in California with her husband and three children, and she enjoys chronicling their family adventures in her Mommy School comic.
Alex Moskowitz is a Senior Vice President in the Direct Investments Group in the Americas for GIC’s Private Equity and Infrastructure arm. Before joining GIC in 2008, Mr. Moskowitz was an associate at CIVC Partners, a middle-market private equity fund, and an analyst at William Blair & Company. He has board responsibilities for several GIC portfolio companies, including HUB International Limited, Kronos Incorporated, and Ancestry.com. Mr. Moskowitz received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.
Tim Sullivan has served on the Ancestry® Board of Directors since October 2017. Previously, Sullivan served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry, and as a director of the Predecessor from September 2005 to October 2017 and has been a member of the Operating Committee since January 2013. Prior to joining Ancestry, he was Chief Operating Officer and then President and CEO of Match.com from January 2001 to September 2004. From May 1999 to January 2001, Tim served as Vice President of E-commerce for Ticketmaster Online-Citysearch, Inc. From June 1991 to May 1999, he held multiple positions at The Walt Disney Company, including Vice President and Managing Director of Buena Vista Home Entertainment Asia Pacific from July 1997 to May 1999. From December 2005 to February 2008, Tim served as a director of Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. Tim holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Operating Committee believes that his qualifications to serve on the Operating Committee include extensive executive management experience, including experience as our own Chief Executive Officer as well as the former chief executive officer of a subscription-based Internet company.
Marjan plays a pivotal role in pioneering the AncestryHealth® offering. As a first-generation American, she learned the value of being open-minded at an early age from her parents. Today, she aspires to pass along the same sense of optimistic enthusiasm to her children.
What she enjoys most about Ancestry® is the potential to foster breakthroughs that bring people together in new ways, reminding us that we have more in common than we may think. Marjan particularly enjoys the collaborative spirit and diverse opinions that keep Ancestry grounded in a genuine concern for its customers.
As a genetic counselor, Marjan’s mission is to help create a platform to guide positive, behavioral change that’s both meaningful and lasting, and she’s thrilled to see the impact of her efforts validated within the medical community on a daily basis.
After all, Marjan values service to humanity as her ultimate legacy. She hopes to see kindness, empathy, and humility define her family for generations to come.
“Our humanity is what unites us.”Todd travels the world in search of records that open up new discoveries for Ancestry® customers. The most exciting part of his job is when those records start shaking leaves on his own family tree.
Todd inherited his love of travel from his parents and it’s a passion that has served him well throughout his career. That’s because it takes a deep respect and personal understanding of local cultures to unlock certain records. The impact of that work is something that Todd shares with his wife and 3 children. In fact, it’s become a family tradition to spend holidays and summers “on the road,” visiting places like England and Germany where Todd and his family have uncovered deep family roots.
Todd draws inspiration from his ancestors’ life stories and seeks to inspire his own children through his work. Leading a transcription team of thousands across the globe, Todd takes pride in the jobs that are created and the work that lifts entire generations when his team’s efforts to publish new records are successful.
“Everyone wants to understand their place in the bigger picture.”Eric is charged with protecting the personal data of millions of Ancestry® subscribers and thousands of employees. He understands that the ever-changing landscape of technology and innovation demands a steadfast commitment to protecting individuals’ data. He’s excited to be at a company that prioritizes privacy as a core element of the value it delivers to consumers.
The availability of DNA testing to consumers is what attracted Eric to work at Ancestry. What was once too expensive and difficult to obtain is now within nearly every consumer’s reach; allowing them to draw upon insights from their own DNA to reveal unique perspectives about their place in history and insights about their health. From his own experience researching his father’s early American settlers’ origins to learning about his immigrant mother’s German roots, Eric has seen AncestryDNA® and Family History tools dispel family myths and inspire his own children.
Eric has cultivated a passion for privacy from his earliest days as a young telecom lawyer when he first learned about data networks and how they effectively scale to bring benefits to millions. He believes education and communication are vital to successful privacy protection, just as understanding and establishing a personal connection with the past is vital to shaping a prosperous and productive future.
“What fascinates me is the multi-layered intersection between one’s life story and the history that has shaped humankind and brought us to where we are today.”Jennifer’s journey at Ancestry® began more than 20 years ago with a love of editing, writing, and publishing—and a strong desire to remain close to her Utah roots. Today, her passion for storytelling remains at an all-time high, thanks in part to the technological innovations she’s witnessed throughout her career. Stories that once took days to research now unfold in minutes. It’s Jennifer’s job to surface the power of Ancestry® for television programming, public relations campaigns, and media outlets.
On a personal note, Jennifer has had the pleasure of tracing her interests in publishing, reading, and music to not-so-distant relatives. And by learning more about the adversity some of her ancestors faced, Jennifer is able to draw strength and resolve to achieve her own goals. From battle-worn grandfathers to early colonial patriots, Jennifer’s family history embodies a bold sense of pride in forging ahead where others might give pause. This makes her the perfect choice to curate and distribute the most compelling Ancestry® narratives to empower personal discoveries and enrich lives.
For Jennifer, the most rewarding part of her work at Ancestry® is the emotional connections that develop when customers keep coming back to connect their own dots.
“I have a front row seat to witness how family history discoveries impact and enhance lives.”Cathy is a devoted genomic scientist who relishes turning seemingly impossible tasks into remarkable achievements—which is evident in her early work helping to launch AncestryDNA® and now overseeing the application of cutting-edge science to help people learn more about their health and origins. In her work, Cathy applies a holistic approach to each challenge. Instead of just solving one problem, she aims to start bigger and smarter by setting up research plans that will yield insights for weeks, months, and years to come. Cathy enjoys working with colleagues at Ancestry® who push each other towards innovations that reflect her commitment to make the world a better place.
From breakthroughs in the lab to boardroom decisions with business partners and conversations with customers, Cathy has made Ancestry® her home to cultivate curiosity and touch the lives of others—and it’s a mission that runs deep in the family. For example, Cathy’s great-grandmother married a military officer with whom she traveled the world, even giving birth to some children abroad and raising them wherever the military assigned their family. Cathy draws inspiration and courage from stories like these as they demonstrate the bold, risk-taking spirit of her family which has had a long-lasting impact on her and the work she does at Ancestry.
“The opportunity to connect with real people and help shed light on their lives is incredibly rewarding.”Azadeh leads a team of 25 plus Data Scientists and 20 plus Product and Data Quality Analysts that touches almost every facet of the company. It’s a group she’s grown from the ground up and nothing motivates her more than watching her team work together to deliver real-time results. In many ways, her mission at Ancestry® stems from a fond tradition of childhood summers spent laughing and playing with her cousins in Iran. Azadeh has translated that same sense of community into a collaborative approach that fosters growth and innovation.
Azadeh enjoys working at Ancestry® because it rewards her with an opportunity to see the impact of data up close, both in the lives of its customers and the legacy of the company. Education has been an important thread in Azadeh’s family for generations and she values the ability to blaze new trails with what she’s learned, and what she has to teach. She looks forward to using AI and analytics to craft compelling stories for customers to discover more about when relatives moved, how they lived, and where they worked.
Most recently, Azadeh has been hard at work surprising her husband with new details about his own heritage.
“Bringing people together is in my DNA, both professionally and personally.”Ancestry ® is the global leader in family history and consumer genomics and we’re growing every day.
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