Shawn Riegsecker

Founder & President

Shawn leads Transis’ vision and strategic direction as the Founder and President. Before starting Transis, Shawn worked at Real Media helping advertising agencies place campaigns across thousands of local sites. Prior to Real Media, Shawn led sales and strategic initiatives for start-up Internet companies including Everstream, Cleveland.com and Ohio.com. Shawn is the recipient of the National Association of Newspapers 2008 Advertising Person of the Year Award for his contributions to the newspaper industry. Additionally, he was an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2008. Shawn graduated from Bowling Green State University with a BS in Business Administration.

Charlie Thomas

SVP, Sales

Charlie Thomas joined Centro in November 2011 to lead the company’s sales efforts.  Charlie oversees the strategic direction of the Centro sales force by implementing initiatives that align our company vision, strategy, relationships and operations. For over 17 years, Charlie has been on the front line of the internet advertising and marketing industry. After several years of selling magazine advertising for Time Inc., Charlie became the company’s first online ad sales person and was promoted to Advertising Sales Director and VP of Online Sales and Marketing. During his tenure at Time Inc., Charlie also contributed to the industry as a founding member of the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). Charlie then joined Broadcast.com as the VP of Advertising Sales, which was later purchased by Yahoo. Charlie remained Yahoo’s Central Region Sales VP until 2007 and was later promoted to the VP of Display Sales Strategy.  When Charlie left Yahoo, he founded Step Ahead Strategies (SAS), a sales and marketing consulting firm. Step Ahead Strategies worked with prestigious clients including Facebook, Martha Stewart Living, The Kellogg Company, Mediavest, Universal McCann, and Yahoo. Charlie received his B.S. degree in English Literature from Ohio Wesleyan.

Leo Brubaker

VP of Finance

Leo is Vice President of Finance and oversees the finance department while managing the company’s financial analysis, reporting, taxes, budgeting, and forecasting. Leo brings more than four years of public accounting experience with Ernst & Young, where he worked in the Advisory & Assurance Business Services group for clients including ABN AMRO, BP Amoco, Aon Corporation and Fimat USA (a subsidiary of Société Générale Group). After Ernst & Young, Leo served as Vice President and Controller at Oak Brook Bank, where he was heavily involved in Sarbanes Oxley processes, tax preparation, and development of a new broker dealer subsidiary. Leo, a Certified Public Accountant, has a BS in Finance and Economics from Miami University, Ohio; an MS in Accountancy from the University of Notre Dame; and has an Executive MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Christopher Skinner

VP, Strategic Intelligence

Christopher Skinner comes to Centro as Vice President of Strategic Intelligence. In this role, Christopher takes a holistic approach to melding technology, data management and business intelligence to develop media planning and attribution tools. By fusing third party information with Centro’s wealth of internal data, culled over 10 years, Centro can create more effective and efficient media plans. Christopher has extensive experience as managing partner at MakeBuzz, a sales and marketing strategy firm that facilitates business growth. He has worked with over 250 leading retailers and 14 of the top 100 most-trafficked websites, building strategies that focus on media and business optimization. Christopher has a Bachelor of Science in Abstract Mathematics from Louisiana State University.  He has 2 patents, one pending and has actively worked in 35 countries.  He helped build and scale 5 digital agencies since 1995.

Ben Pashman

VP, Business Development

Ben Pashman, Centro’s VP of Business Development, leads the company’s strategic partnerships with emerging media technology companies in the areas of video, social, mobile and digital out-of-home among others. Ben is also responsible for evaluating strategic investment opportunities for Centro. Ben has 15 years of digital media marketing experience, including 10 years focused on internet advertising sales and business development. Most recently as the first business executive at Gigya a leading social media SaaS technology company. Previous positions include senior sales and product management roles at Doubleclick, Conde Nast and Travelzoo.

Scott Golas

VP of Human Resources

Scott Golas leads the human resources and benefits function along with workforce development efforts. Before joining us, Scott led Booz Allen Hamilton’s Human Capital practice in the Midwest. Prior to Booz Allen, Scott served as Global HR Outsourcing Director for NelsonHall, and as a Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for Aon Human Resource Consulting and Outsourcing. Before Aon, Scott was Managing Director at Talent divine/MarchFirst, a Chicago B2B company, and was the HRM (Human Resources Management) consulting practice leader for PricewaterhouseCooper’s West Region. Scott is the co-author of two books, Outsourcing (2006) and Ultimate Performance (2007). He has a BS in Manufacturing Engineering Technology from Purdue University and an MS in Organizational Development from Loyola University in Chicago.

Katie Risch

VP of Media Relations

Katie manages strategic, ongoing relationships with the more than 10,000 digital media opportunities indexed in Transis. Katie is one of our longest-tenured professionals, having worked as a media planner for automotive accounts and movie studios with our parent company, Intégrent. Like many working with digital newspapers today, Katie started in print, as a sales account executive for the Cincinnati Enquirer. She holds a BA in English from Indiana University.

Emily Gallagher

VP of Account Services

She is the immediate supervisor for the Midwest Account Management team and is responsible for identifying, coordinating and insuring the implementation of account management best practices on a nationwide basis. Emily has been with the company for over four years and previously worked for several Fortune 500 companies (CDW, AT&T [formerly SBC], and Mass Mutual) in sales and marketing. She graduated from Purdue University with a BS in Selling and Sales Management.