Marc Cenedella, Founder & CEO

Marc Cenedella is the Founder of TheLadders.com, the #1 source for $100k+ jobs in the world.

Marc started TheLadders.com in July of 2003 to solve a puzzling gap in the world of online recruitment and high-end employment. As the Senior Vice President of Finance and Operations at HotJobs.com, Marc saw that, while large job boards worked well for entry and mid-level candidates, high-level job searches were not being conducted efficiently online. Job seekers were frustrated, while recruiters often elected not to post their executive opportunities online at all.

Marc's solution to this dilemma was a reverse business model that catered to the high-end job seeker. After orchestrating the $436 million sale of HotJobs.com to Yahoo!, Marc started SalesLadder.com, the first in the family of industry-focused websites exclusive to the $100k+ job market. The site was immediately embraced and appreciated by job seekers and recruiters alike for its unique approach and laser focus.

Prior to founding TheLadders.com and his role as HotJobs.com, Marc was an Associate Vice President at The Riverside Company, a New York-based private equity firm. Earlier in his career, he founded, grew and then sold an international trading company focused on the export of US-made pet food to Japan. From that experience, he gained a great appreciation for Japan's emphasis on superior customer service - learning that he's now applied to TheLadders.com. TheLadders.com has become a model for great service, both online and off.

Marc holds an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was named a Baker Scholar. He earned his B.A. in political science at Yale.

Alexandre Douzet, Co-Founder and President

Alexandre Douzet is Co-Founder and President of TheLadders.com. In this role, Douzet is responsible for global business operations, product development, and helping to lead the company’s ongoing global expansion.

As executive vice president for the past two years, Douzet was responsible for driving the significant growth of the company’s core job search business unit and leading European expansion with the launch of TheLadders.co.uk. He also oversaw the launch of the executive resume service, the company’s first new product line beyond traditional job search. Prior to serving as executive vice president, Douzet served as vice president of marketing at TheLadders.com, overseeing and cultivating the company’s branding and customer acquisition efforts. Over the past 5 years, Douzet grew TheLadders.com subscription base from zero to over two million members.

Prior to TheLadders.com, Douzet was director of online marketing at HotJobs.com. Before joining HotJobs.com, Douzet worked at BMG Direct, the world’s largest music club, where he helped develop customer acquisition programs. Douzet also has experience in the catalog, fund raising and financial services industries. He was an instructor of Direct Marketing, Financial Planning and Analysis at New York University, and was a Marketing Analyst for Air France.

Douzet holds an MBA from INSEAD; a Master's in Direct Marketing from New York University, where he received the "Lester Wunderman" Award; and a Bachelor's in Business Administration from the University of Lyon III in France. He is fluent in French and English, and is conversational in Spanish.

Research Paper authored by Alex Douzet:
An Investigation of Pay Per Click Search Engine Advertising: Modeling the PPC Paradigm to Lower Cost per Action

Harpreet Grewal, Chief Financial Officer

Thilo Semmelbauer, Executive Vice President of North America, Consumer Business

Thilo Semmelbauer is Executive Vice President, North America, Consumer Business of TheLadders.com. In this role, he is responsible for managing the North America Consumer business and delivering best-in-class service to our job seekers in North America.

Prior to TheLadders.com, Semmelbauer held a number of leadership positions at Weight Watchers International, which grew from $400M to $1.5B in global revenue over his tenure. From 2000 to 2004 he was Co-founder and President of WeightWatchers.com, which he grew from start-up to become the leader in online weight loss. He then ran the North America service business from 2004 to 2006, and finally served as Global Chief Operating Officer from 2006 to 2008, overseeing the traditional and Internet businesses across all geographies. Prior to Weight Watchers, Semmelbauer spent 6 years as Principal and Consultant of The Boston Consulting Group, focused on Consumer, Technology and Internet engagements, including the launch of Sotheby’s online auction business in 1999. He also spent 4 years at Motorola, Inc, where he worked with a variety of internal start-ups in operations and engineering management.

Semmelbauer holds two Master of Science degrees, in Management and Engineering, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is also a graduate of Dartmouth College. He is fluent in German and English.

Alain Benzaken, Vice President of Technology

Alain Benzaken is Vice President of Technology for TheLadders.com. He has extensive experience in online consumer website technologies, most notably in leading large web development teams and building highly scalable systems. Prior to TheLadders.com, Benzaken was CTO at Ground Travel Technology Team, Inc. (GT3) where he led efforts to build a national ground transportation reservations system.

From 1998 to 2002, Benzaken was an executive at Priceline.com, serving as Vice President, Development of International Systems, where he launched e-commerce travel products in Europe and Asia. He was also the architect of Priceline.com's customer systems, and was at the company from its early years through its period of rapid growth.

Previously, Benzaken spent eleven years on the Web frontier at Prodigy Services Corporation, where he was a developer of the company's proprietary Web browser and editorial tools.

Benzaken has an M.S. in physics from Yale University and a B.A. in physics from Columbia College. He is fluent in French and English.

Eric Burd, Vice President of Product

Eric Burd is Vice President of Product for TheLadders.com. He brings extensive experience in the management of product marketing and development to the company. At TheLadders, he leads the product and creative teams in the development and execution of the long-term, customer-focused vision for the company’s various Websites.

Burd joined TheLadders from SchoolNet, the leading provider of data-driven education software. In his role as Vice President of Product Marketing, he worked closely with customers and internal teams to ensure SchoolNet’s products provided a compelling solution for current and future users.

Previously, Burd was a Senior Program Manager with SeedCo., where he led a $45MM social-purpose investment fund targeted at redeveloping business in Lower Manhattan after 9/11. Prior to that, Burd cut his teeth at Hewlett-Packard, where he oversaw a global team of marketing specialists and managed a product line with nearly $400MM in revenue. He began his career in Moscow, Russia working for Apple Computer’s Russia distributor.

Burd has an M.B.A. from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Colorado.

Diana Kyser, Vice President of Customer Operations and Human Resources

Diana Kyser is Vice President of Customer Operations and Human Resources. In her role, she uses her 25 years of experience in technical services, call center, and customer relationship management and HR to provide world class service to both internal and external customers of TheLadders.com.

Kyser joined TheLadders.com after a number of entrepreneurial ventures and corporate roles. She held several management positions at American Express, HotJobs.com, and JPMorgan Chase. In 1993, she co-founded C3i, Inc., a world-class service provider for customer management integration and on-going support solutions for many of the world's leading organizations. The company now has support centers on three continents.

Kyser is an adjunct professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University's Rothman Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies where she teaches a course entitled "Women as Entrepreneurs". She holds a BA from Birmingham-Southern College and an MBA from New York University. She lives in Summit, NJ with her three small children and enjoys sailing and running.