Jay Van Buren, Founder and CEO, Early-Adopter.com LLC

Jay Van Buren has been Senior Web Designer for the Forbes Favorite award- winning Multex Investor website; Designer at thirdmind.com, where he worked on websites for major international brands such as Conde-Nast magazines; and Art Director at Sensei Health, coordinating programs for major multi-national companies. Jay also lectures nationally and internationally on web art and the future of the internet.

Valerie Eakes-Kann, Partner, Early-Adopter.com, LLC.

Valerie is an experienced project manager and process developer. Before joining early-adopter.com, she had eight years of project management experience at IBM and Siebel Systems (later acquired by Oracle). Most recently she helped grow and manage the software patch process used to deliver fixes to Siebel software customers such as ATT Wireless, PNC Bank, Abbott Labs, and XM Satellite.

Joe Unander, Partner, Chief Technology Officer.

Joe joined Early-Adopter in the Spring of 2010 and has quickly become the heart of the operation. His superior problem-solving skills, technical inventiveness, and dedication to the highest standards of quality make him an ideal developer for the age of open source CMS websites. Joe’s breadth of experience allows him to develop with a constant eye on the big picture, enabling the entire team to create solutions that really work for our clients.

Chris Gaughan, Partner, Senior Project Manager, Producer

Chris is an EA partner, senior project manager, and jack of all trades. His background in computer science and product development and allow him to work well with multidisciplinary teams of creative directors, marketing departments, accounting teams, entrepreneurs, and institutions of all scales to meet the needs of even the most opinionated clients. From the day to day with EA he works with client analytics, manages our South American code-shop, implementing projects with our New York team, and planning happy hours. His interests include international market entry for American brands, learning languages, robotics, virtual reality, and small dogs with cute barks.

Sarah Perry-Stout, Senior UX Designer, Project Manager

Sarah has seven years of IA/UX experience on non-profit, arts, education and corporate digital projects. She focuses on how user needs and client content can be harmonized to produce organized, innovative, intuitive websites and apps. Sarah also acts as a strategist, digital project manager, designer and coder. This varied experience helps her connect with the graphic design and development phases to ensure a coherent look and feel.

Sarah Devine, Project Manager, Producer

Sarah Devine is a project & product manager who works with both with organizations and independent developers, artists, and business owners to drive home projects and company initiatives on time and on budget. Sarah specializes in interdisciplinary team communication, standing up repeatable systems, and adapting in fast paced work environments. Sarah got her start in technology on the ground floor of PHHHOTO, a gif-based iOS app that grew to 10+ million users and has newly joined the Early-Adopter project management team in early 2017.

Collaborators

Cliff Medney, Strategist

Cliff is a New York City senior marketing strategist and creative executive having worked for premiere agencies including BBDO creating campaigns for VISA and Pepsi and renown NYC digital agency, Flightpath developing the award winning and industry changing Merck’s HomeAgain micro-chip brand resulting in over 2 million dogs safely returning home. Cliff did stints on the client side including Nabisco overseeing branding on Grey Poupon, A1 Steak Sauce, Milk Bone and others.

Cliff is also a successful entrepreneur having developed and licensed his own intellectual properties to many global and diverse organizations from YUM Brand’s KFC (10.5 million kid’s toys!) to Johns Hopkins creating a character based web world to help kids/parents better understand a range of medical conditions.

He served for almost a decade on the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the country’s leading NPO dealing with child abduction and prevention. He elevated its marketing and messaging beyond the “Milk Carton” to create much greater actionable awareness/information to help parents, including an innovative partnership with Major League Baseball working hand in hand with foundation founder, John Walsh.