Who We Are

George Schlossnagle

President and Chief Executive Officer

George brings a unique perspective — and deep passion — to the world of digital messaging that drives not only the continued success of Message Systems and its clients but also the future of our industry. As a top-notch technologist in his own right, George has a dynamic vision for how technology can be harnessed to advance digital messaging for the benefit of all stakeholders and enhance the customer's ultimate experience.

Complementing this vision and the company's technology heritage are his values regarding people — our own team, the clients we serve, and the interests of the broader community in which we live. This leadership inspires all that we do at Message Systems -- from the nature of the products we build and the service we afford clients to how we transact business and pursue our roadmap for transforming the future digital messaging.

Before co-founding Message Systems in 1997, George was lead systems administrator at iVillage. He also served as Director of Operations and principal architect of technical changes at Community Connect, Inc., where he helped increase traffic 100-fold and vaulted the company into the top five Nielsen ranked sites in member loyalty.

George is an internationally recognized expert in the PHP language, has published numerous technical articles and a critically acclaimed book on the topic, and has spoken often at industry events.

After earning an M.A. degree in mathematics from Johns Hopkins University and a Sc.M. degree in mathematics from Brown University, George served as a teacher in the Peace Corps for two years.

George is highly regarded within the industry and is frequently tapped by the media and analysts to share his informed and visionary views on how technology is shaping the future of digital messaging. See recent article.

Ralph Lentz

Chief Revenue Officer

Ralph Lentz is a results-driven leader with deep expertise in emerging digital communications and proven success in both sales and marketing. As Chief Revenue Officer, Ralph is the senior executive in charge of domestic sales, international sales and global marketing for Message Systems. In this critical role, he ensures that sales and marketing teams are aligned with shared objectives, for maximum mutual benefit and the company’s improved success.

Well respected throughout Silicon Valley, Ralph has a history of bringing out the best in people and teams, and galvanizing companies to reach new heights. Ralph comes to Message Systems from cloud enterprise social networking company BroadVision, where as general manager for the Americas he transitioned the company to a cloud model, created a go-to-market strategy for a new enterprise social media solution.

Before BroadVision, Ralph was chief operating officer at HumanConcepts, a privately held cloud company in the human capital management (HCM) space, overseeing worldwide sales, marketing, business development, services and support. As vice president of worldwide sales for Macrovision, he signed the largest deals in the company’s 20-year history, driving sales to over $100M. Ralph spent much of his early career at Computer Associates, where he started as a sales rep and rose to a VP.

Dave Lewis

Chief Marketing Officer

As Chief Marketing Officer, Dave brings an extraordinary aptitude for forward thinking, strategic planning, and exploration of new opportunities to Message Systems. In his capacity as CMO, Dave is responsible for executing an overarching strategy that ties together the company's inbound and outbound digital messaging businesses and accelerates growth through innovative, holistic product solutions. Dave is the steward of the underlying principles for the Message Systems brand.

His vision and penchant for identifying new, untapped areas of growth for digital messaging have earned Dave a top spot among the leaders in the email industry. He possesses an unrivaled ability to size market opportunities and to bring those initiatives to market for the benefit of our clients.

Dave has over 30 years of marketing, services and business leadership in both corporate and entrepreneurial environments, including serving as vice president of marketing for Bizanga, a provider of anti-spam infrastructure to ISPs and telcos in North America and Europe. Before Bizanga, he was responsible for market and product strategy at StrongMail Systems, and served as vice president of deliverability management and ISP relations for email service provider Digital Impact (now Acxiom/Digital), achieving the highest email delivery rates in the industry.

Dave is a recognized industry thought-leader and has frequently spoken and written on the challenges and opportunities of the digital messaging medium. For the past three consecutive years, BtoB Magazine has named him as one of the most influential people in email marketing, a recognition that stems from his overall industry leadership as well as his championing of consumer empowerment. Dave currently chairs the communications committee for the Online Trust Alliance. See recent article.

James Elder

Chief Financial Officer

As CFO James brings expertise in the area of financial modeling and analysis, process improvement and redesign, cash management and technology integration, adding up to an extremely valuable pay off for Message Systems and our clients.

James has developed a talent for proactively identifying and resolving problems, implementing solutions, and defining and implementing enhanced accounting and operations processes. His creativity and workflow acumen are maximizing efficiencies in our internal processes– leaving our sales representatives and sales engineers more time to focus on client needs. Prior to joining Message Systems, Elder filled financial and accounting roles at 180s, Aether, Black & Decker and Deloitte & Touche.

Sherry Schlossnagle

Chief Administrative Officer

Sherry provides administrative oversight for Message Systems and is responsible for keeping our infrastructure, premises, and processes operating flawlessly. Sherry's fundamental belief is that our internal processes should contribute to successful client interactions, not drive them.

An educator by profession before entering the technology sector, Sherry has a BA degree in Sociology from Vanderbilt University and teaching certification from George Peabody College for Teachers. In addition to her teaching experience, she has worked on various grants involving education projects, as well as managed a Masters degree program for the University of Southern California.

Barry Abel

Senior Vice President of Sales for the Americas

Barry brings 20 years of enterprise software sales, product management and marketing experience to Message Systems. As the leader of our sales teams, Barry has worked with some of the largest senders and receivers of email on the planet. He has been directly responsible for the adoption of Message Systems technology that enables billions of messages to be successfully delivered every day. Barry encourages his team to focus on one of the supporting timbers of our brand — listen to what the client is saying, assess how we can meet that expressed need, and offer a solution that brings results and unique value.

Barry's expertise has been requested for speaking engagements at numerous venues, such as Email Experience Council (eec), ClickZ, DMA, Email Insider, Inbox and ESPC deliverability boot camp. Previously, Barry was director of sales at Mindfabric, Inc., a supplier of enterprise-class natural language processing, knowledge management and business rule processing solutions. In this role, he was responsible for recruiting the company's first key reference customers, partnerships and venture capital initiatives. Prior to Mindfabric, Barry held executive sales, marketing and business development positions at high-tech companies including Critical Path, PeerLogic, International Computers Limited (ICL) and Cap Gemini America.

David Harvey

Senior Vice President of International Sales and Business Development

David's focus is on forging mutually beneficial partnerships with enabling system integrators, consultancies, resellers and distributors for all Message Systems solutions. David's dynamic style and solid background in messaging software, telecommunication and managed service companies worldwide brings an understanding of both enterprise and service provider environments as well as the global challenges inherent in our industry. His commitment to our partner-centric ethic and his solutions based approach to his initiatives resonates strongly with both our current and prospective partners.

Before joining Message Systems, David ran Alliances for Bizanga, a provider of anti-spam infrastructure to ISPs and telcos in North America and Europe. Prior to that, he managed indirect and carrier sales for Savvis, a leading provider of IT Infrastructure-as-a-Service, and managed hosting and fully managed network solutions. Previously, David was with Cable & Wireless in a variety of sales, business development and general management roles across multiple continents. Before Cable & Wireless, he was responsible for new vendor management at Azlan Europe for high tech companies expanding into the EU marketplace.

Wez Furlong

Chief Software Architect

Wez Furlong leads our team of exceptional engineers who design new features and refinements for all Message Systems products — from the core platform to need-specific technology solutions to enhance and improve the performance of our client's digital messaging programs. Prior to joining Message Systems, Wez supported the engineering efforts for our affiliate company OmniTI. Wez was principal of his own small software consultancy based in England, developing Internet and desktop applications for clients as far away as Japan and Australia.

A strong proponent of OpenSource, Wez has made major contributions to the PHP programming language core in the form of the streams and database abstraction layers, and is author of a number of extensions. Wez helps to maintain the php.net server infrastructure and takes an active role in fostering the PHP extension developer community.

Wez enjoys sharing knowledge, and this has manifested in the form of a number of articles for php|architect and PHP Magazine, Oracle Technology Network and IBM developerWorks. He can often be found speaking at PHP and OpenSource conferences worldwide.

Alec Peterson

Chief Technology Officer

As Chief Technology Officer, Alec is charged with leading the overall direction of technology development for the company. He has been with Message Systems for six years, most recently as the Vice President of the Technical Services group, where he was responsible for the delivery of all client-facing technical services.

Alec leverages more than 15 years of network engineering and design experience to advance the Message Systems technology vision. Under his guidance, the company develops integrated, high-performance messaging that enables businesses to effectively reach their customers through whatever channel is most appropriate – email, SMS/MMS text and more. Alec has responsibility over technical support, professional services and engineering, and he also plays a critical role in understanding the evolving needs of the Message Systems client base. Alec and his teams work together closely to deliver the technology solutions that best suit the demands of the cross-channel marketing space.

Prior to joining Message Systems, Alec was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Catbird Networks, and was the co-founder and Director of Network Engineering at UltraDNS Corporations. Alec began his career at Erols Internet/RCN Corporation where he was instrumental in the firm's expansion of its national network.

Joal Barbehenn

General Counsel

Joal is General Counsel at Message Systems, where he leads the company's legal team. Joal represents Message Systems in its worldwide operations through all aspects of intellectual property development and licensing, human relations, and business relationships of all kinds. He is committed to balancing the company's need for prudent business practices with our goals of delivering outstanding client service and superior value.

Joal brings a broad range of experience on various legal matters to the Message Systems team, including cross-border licensing and reseller arrangements, mergers and acquisitions, employment practices and corporate governance. He's played a key role in the company's global expansion, heading a legal team that includes several law firms in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Joal also oversees the company's recruiting and human resources operations, and he works closely with the company's finance department to solve finance, banking and revenue-recognition issues.

Prior to joining Message Systems, Joal worked in the Business Transactions Group of Venable LLP where he represented several software, technology and bioscience businesses, as well as entertainers and wealthy individuals. Before joining Venable LLP, Joal served as a judicial law clerk to Maryland Court of Special Appeals Judge, Lawrence F. Rodowsky.

Damian Danowski

Vice President of Engineering

Damian's focus at Message Systems is building products that delight customers. More than 20 years of management, software development and systems engineering experience have established his track record of delivering quality products.

Before joining Message Systems, Damian directed software development, quality assurance and integrations services at Exostar, a provider of secure collaboration solutions and business process integration to leading Aerospace and Defense companies. Prior to that, he acted as CTO for rDental.com, creating online products and services for the dental industry. Previously Damian held development positions with Ernst & Young, OTG Software, and Hewlett-Packard.