Rick Watson

Chief Executive Officer

Rick Watson is an eCommerce marketplace veteran with more than 12 years of experience leading dynamic eCommerce organizations, holding executive positions in business, product management and engineering. Prior to joining Merchantry, Rick was the General Manager of Barnes & Noble’s Third-Party Marketplace, responsible for P&L, operations and strategic vision for the platform. Prior to Barnes & Noble, Rick led product management and engineering teams at ChannelAdvisor Corporation, a multichannel SaaS company that provides channel management solutions for Amazon, eBay and other marketplaces. Rick has been a featured speaker at major Internet conferences on eCommerce strategy and marketplaces in the U.S. and Europe and serves on both the Shop.org Content Committee and the Global E-commerce Summit Board of Advisors. Rick also maintains a blog at rickwatsonsblog.com and @rickwatson on Twitter.

Betsy Cohen

Chief Financial and Administrative Officer

Betsy brings to Merchantry 20 years of financial management experience. As the Chief Financial Officer of PlanetFeedback, which she co-founded in 1999, she led the financing of the company and merger with Intelliseek, which was sold to The Nielsen Company in 2006. Prior to that, Betsy served on the executive management team of Dialog Bank, a startup that grew into Troika Dialog, one of the leading financial institutions in Russia today. She was a private equity investor at Oak Tree Capital and has served as an advisor to several startups. She also worked as a fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. She serves on the board of Student Sponsor Partners and other education-related boards. Betsy received an MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB from Harvard University in Russian Language and Literature.

Julia Malinina

Chief Technology Officer

Julia is the driving force behind Merchantry’s technology platform and is currently responsible for all aspects of development efforts, from architecture and design to systems operations. Julia was a Research Assistant of Computer Science at A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems, a part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where she led research efforts in field of software efficiency and reliability, accumulation and processing of knowledge about optimizing and restructuring program transformations for parallel computers. Julia received a Masters degree in Mathematics from Novosibirsk State University and is currently on leave from a PhD program in Computer Science at the A.P. Ershov Institute of Information Systems. Julia frequently speaks at technology-related events and has authored a series of articles on computer science, published by Springer, Novosibirsk State University, Computer Center of the Russian Academy of Science, and A.P. Ershov Institute of Informatics Systems.

Robert Teichman

VP Product Development

Rob comes to Merchantry with more than 20 years of integration, eCommerce, marketplace and product management experience. Most recently Rob was Senior Director of Marketplaces and Data Integration for GSI Commerce (now an eBay company). In that role, Rob created GSI’s product offerings around marketplaces and managed all integrations between GSI, its retail clients, suppliers, warehouses, logistic providers, marketplaces and marketing organizations. Prior to GSI, Rob was an eCommerce and CRM strategist helping organizations like the American Red Cross, XM Satellite Radio, Sanofi Pasteur and Easter Seals realize their eCommerce and CRM objectives. Rob has an MBA from Lehigh University and undergraduate degrees in Chemical Engineering and Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Dawn Verbrigghe

VP Marketing

An entrepreneurial marketing professional, Dawn brings to Merchantry 14 years of B2B and technology marketing experience. Dawn’s entrepreneurial experience spans startup, spin-off and intrapreneurial roles at: Moi-Meme Attire, an eCommerce apparel business she founded; iWave, where she served as director of business development and operations and helped to facilitate the sale of the company; and in marketing communications for Mindspeed Technologies during its spin-off from Conexant. Dawn also has worked in strategic marketing for Samsung Electronics and in marketing communications for APL Limited. Additionally Dawn teaches design management courses at Parsons The New School for Design and is a frequent panelist and guest lecturer on the topics of entrepreneurship and design management. Dawn earned her BGS and BFA from the University of Michigan and her MBA from Columbia Business School.