Jerry Slavonia, Campus Explorer's founder and CEO, had a perfect view of his future when he enrolled in the broadcasting communications program at Gonzaga University. That was, until his second great Washington state winter went on...and on...and...the California native finally thought to himself: There must be a better way. Jerry happily ended up with a top-notch TV & radio degree from San Francisco State University and a lesson he'll pass on to his three kids: There's a lot more to a diploma than what the course catalog promises. Jerry's college searches certainly had much to do with his vision for Campus Explorer. The new media executive's résumé includes stints at FoxSports.com, where he produced the first generation of broadband video content, and MediaX Corporation, where he developed online marketing campaigns for recording artists including Paul McCartney and Faith Hill. Most recently, Jerry headed up business development and Internet marketing at Rent.com, which eBay ended up acquiring in 2005 for $433m. A VP, he was responsible for making Rent.com the most visited Internet Listing Site. Jerry, a multi-instrumentalist, also at one time owned and operated an independent record label. But the best band he ever had the pleasure to work with was not technically comprised of musicians. No, it was a crew of Rent.com colleagues, including Campus Explorer's co-founder, Brian Hartnack, who in recent years had gone separate ways. When the pair decided to commit themselves to higher education in 2007, they put the band back together. "It was a natural decision," says Jerry. "The individuals who comprise our core team know how to balance good times with hard work. We have built up a trust over the years which helps create an atmosphere where we're each able to focus on our core discipline to move the company forward."
Brian Hartnack, co-founder of Campus Explorer, and its vice president of product management, spent his high-school summers fly-fishing. So when it came time for his college search, Brian scouted for aquatic acreage and reeled in his first choice: Cornell University, in upstate New York. After graduation, Hartnack netted product management positions at a number of emerging Internet companies, including eToys and Rent.com. Most recently Brian was a VP at Gifts.com. While mentoring local high-schoolers in a summer business training program, Brian saw firsthand some of the glaring inequities inherent to the college process. The students he met were getting very little help from their high school when it came to navigating their college options. He was surprised to discover that nobody had tried to streamline things the way that he and Slavonia envisioned they could do with a site like Campus Explorer. Thinking back to his own atypical criteria for college, Brian knew he and Slavonia were onto something. As Brian puts it: "We're creating a service that some other kid like me who's got an unusual interest, can use to find the school of his or her dreams."
Stephen Caldwell, senior vice president, technology, was prepping for college from day-one of high school. By senior spring he had an array of choices at his fingertips, and decided to opt for a change of scenery in choosing the East Coast. Steve got first-rate bachelors' yes, that's plural in history and English at the University of Pennsylvania. How he ended up as a computer programmer back home in California after graduation is another story altogether, mostly owing to serendipity. Steve proceeded to climb the ranks at several Internet startups. He most recently headed the tech department at Rent.com, an eBay company, where he excelled at developing vertical businesses as well as the as-yet-unknown sport of "extreme croquet." When the opportunity to reunite with his old Rent.com pals came along, Steve didn't hesitate to join the Campus Explorer crew. "I want our site to get to know you so well," says Steve, "that you find yourself in college like I did, never wanting to leave."
Eric Hammond, vice president, technology, is the only member of the Campus Explorer team to have received recruitment mailings from some 400 colleges when he was a rising upperclassman in high school. After much deliberation, Eric wound up attending the University of Cincinnati for computer science on a full scholarship. Programming since age twelve--he wrote the code for his high school's student-information database--Eric is today considered one of the tallest startup technologists west of the Mississippi. He was instrumental in building the cyber-structures of numerous Internet businesses, including Citysearch.com, Stamps.com and Rent.com. Eric also co-founded ThisNext.com before joining Campus Explorer. "I love the fact that we've created a site that is so user-friendly," Eric says. "We have so many more ideas we'd like to build into the site; you're going to see it grow."
Bree Nguyen, senior director of Internet marketing, would scout out art history programs if she was to do it all over again (and she might). For years, Bree, a pioneer and a prodigy in Web marketing for the recording industry, jockeyed film and business studies at West Los Angeles College with a series of hot jobs in LA. At age sixteen, she was tapped to create and manage pop star Mariah Carey's Internet marketing platform. Bree went on to work in branding and cyber-marketing for Jerry Slavonia at MediaX Corporation and Rent.com, before Warner Bros. Records hired her away to head up community marketing and develop new media strategies. An awesome set of professors notwithstanding, Bree ended up finishing school a few credits short of framing a diploma. In the end, there simply weren't enough minutes in her days. Bree leapt at the chance to join Campus Explorer, where she gets to spread the message that education of all kinds is empowering. "My community college experience was nothing but positive, and that's a perspective we'd like to pass along," she says. "We're giving everybody the resources to find their niche."
Ray, senior software engineer, didn't care about college before or after he matriculated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Computers, on the other hand.... Ray is pretty sure he clocked more hours on tech jobs than in the lecture halls. He split from school a semester early in favor of a job in his native Chicago, then high-tailed it to Silicon Valley, where he spent six years developing software for Yahoo! and Feedster. Ray recently sold all his stuff and went for a long bike ride overseas. The trip got cut short when everything but the clothes on his back was stolen, but it wasn't long afterward that Ray found Campus Explorer. He was toying with going back to school, and liked the idea that he could learn about schools along with his audience. "We're moving so fast," he says. "I love our site's potential."
