Nominees to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association Board of Directors
A total of five indviduals will be elected to a three year term on the FSTA Board. The nominations were announced on February 13, 2009 and voting will continue through February 28, 2009.
Only one ballot will be accepted per FSTA member company.
Download the official ballot here
Brett Baker, Fantasy Coverage (Incumbent)
I was elected to the FSTA board in 2008 and have served in that time as conference committee chairman. My primary responsibility has been the organization and planning of the recent conferences in Chicago (July 2008) and St. Pete Beach (January, 2009). Outside the FSTA, I founded and run Fantasy Coverage, Inc., a Midwest company that provides software development and consulting for the fantasy sports industry. My work involves daily interaction with many different types of companies, from smaller start-ups to global media companies. As a result I have a good appreciation and perspective on how the FSTA can serve companies of all sizes. I would very much like to continue to serve on the FSTA board and in contribute to the value the FSTA provides to its members.
Craig Davis, Fantasy Planet
Craig Davis has been participating in fantasy sports since 1989 (his first ever fantasy hoops team included Michael Jordan, Joe Dumars, Hakeem Olajuwon, and Charles Barkley). Fantasy football has always been his clear cut favorite, but baseball always intrigued him the most. Probably because he played it (real baseball) longer than any other sport... through college. Craig was the Senior Editor of fantasyfootball.com and fantasybaseball.com for the past five years. He's been writing fantasy articles for over 8 years and participated in numerous expert's leagues. Craig majored in Mass Communications while attending Oklahoma Christian University and graduated in 1996.
Bill Green, Fantasy Dispute (Incumbent)
Bill Green is founder of FantasyDisute.com, an on-line Fantasy Sports dispute resolution service. He is a current board member and FSTA Secretary, having attending FSTA conferences since 2004. As an attorney in California, he drafts and negotiates software licensing agreements.
John Hartman, Pay The Fan
Prior to joining CHSG Partners, LLC and developing www.paythefan.com in November 2006 Mr. Hartman had an extensive career in the financial industry. Mr. Hartman held the position of Vice-President of Institutional Sales for Lehman Brothers, Paine Webber, and Fidelity National in Atlanta. Mr. Hartman's client list include some of the top financial institutions in Europe and he was an integral part in developing US Equity strategies and currency conversions for those institutions. During his tenure Mr. Hartman was also an integral part of two initial public offerings listed on the NASDAQ marketplace. Mr. Hartman recently served as President of CMR Trading and has extensive market making, risk management and proprietary trading expertise. If elected to the Board of Directors of the FSTA I will continue the groundwork laid by previous boards and further develop strategies for current members of the FSTA as well as create new strategies for incoming members.
Scott Iverson, FLW Outdoors
Scott is the Vice President at Jacobs Management Company and was integral in the development of the Fantasy Fishing phenomenon.
Alan Karben, XML Team Solutions
I'm President of XML Team Solutions, a stats supplier with an emphasis on software, and am personally very active in the Open Source and Open Standards communities. There's a great deal that FSTA members can do to cooperate on a technical level that could make life easier for all, without affecting competitive advantage. For example, many FSTA members exchange rankings, player news, and rosters with one another. Technical standards can smooth that process. Also, many members toil to maintain lists of mappings of Player IDs in order to weave together content from disparate providers. A collectively maintained database of these mappings could enable member companies to focus better on innovation, and increase website integrity as well. These are just a few of the technical ideas I'd be eager to explore with fellow board members and the FSTA membership at large.
Michael Mandt, FantasySportsGirl
Michael Mandt graduated from Fordham University in the Bronx, NY and moved north to Bristol, CT where he began his television career as a Production Assistant at ESPN working on SportsCenter and other studio shows. In 2007 Mandt launched FantasySportsGirl.com, which won the 2008 FSTA Best Podcast award.
Danielle MacLean, CBS Sports
With over seven years working in the sports industry, Danielle MacLean currently manages CBSSports.com’s full suite of award-winning fantasy sports products and brackets. As the Director of Fantasy Sports, Danielle leads a group of talented fantasy sports innovators in the management of one of the industry’s top properties. Her main focus is to cultivate the maturing business, preserving core competencies while finding new ways to accomplish dramatic growth. Danielle desires to help the FSTA to grow, continue to effectively serve its membership, mature as an association, and properly position the fantasy sports industry to media, partners and advertisers.
Lawr Michaels, Creative Sports
Lawr Michaels has been mainstay of the fantasy industry since he began writing for John Benson in 1994. He was the first fantasy columnist for CBS Sportsline, and his work has appeared on MSNBC.com, CBS.com, MLB.com and a number of sites other and publications over the years. He currently drives CREATiVESPORTS.com--founded by him in 1996--and is on the board of the Tout Wars llc. Lawr won the Tout AL title as a rookie participant in 2001, and is a principle character in Sam Walker's book, soon to be a film, Fantasyland. He is known as the Zen Master of fantasy baseball because of his fluid and unusual style of play.
Greg Robitaille, FantasyFootballDraft
No Bio Provided
Regi Simon, World Of Entrepreneurship Inc.
No Bio Provided
Geoff Stein, Mock Draft Central
Geoffrey Stein currently serves as the Operations Manager for Mock Draft Central (MDC) where he's part of the two-man team that’s led MDC to four FSTA Awards over the past two years. As part of a small crew, Geoff deals with both members of the industry and the fantasy-playing public on a day-to-day basis and is well in-tune with the pulse of the Fantasy Sports world. At 25 years of age, Geoff will start his fifth year at MDC on Feb. 14, 2009. Geoff is a 2006 graduate of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich. where he graduated with a BS in Broadcasting. Geoff’s youthfulness and excitement for the industry make him an ideal candidate to serve as a member of the FSTA Board.
Scott Swanay, Swanay Sports Consulting
I’m the President & Chief Sherpa of Sherpaville Enterprises, which operates the websites FantasyBaseballSherpa.com and FantasyFootballSherpa.com. I’ve been an active participant in FSTA conferences and experts’ leagues since 2005 and have been a sponsor for several years now. Prior to getting into the fantasy sports industry I spent 17 years as an actuary in the insurance industry. I am particularly interested in getting more involved with the great demographic research the FSTA provides for its members. The challenging economy presents great growth opportunities for many FSTA companies, but I feel strongly that the FSTA should remain focused on fantasy sports rather than expanding to include other types of fantasy contests.
Jeff Thomas, World Fantasy Games (Incumbent)
Mr. Thomas founded Sportsbuff.com in 1993 with 10 years of technology consulting, marketing, project management and strategic planning experience. He is a recognized fantasy sports business expert and International speaker. His unique combination of technology and marketing experience drives him to focus on differentiation through technology innovation, product design, and distribution channel design. Mr. Thomas graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Business Information Systems degree and from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management with a Masters degree in Marketing and Finance. He is the outgoing president of the FSTA
Whitney Walters, The Huddle (Incumbent)
Whitney co-founded TheHuddle.com in 1997 and over the past twelve years has played a key role in developing and growing the site into one of the industry’s largest and most award winning fantasy football information services. Whitney was elected to the FSTA Board of Directors in 2006 and in his three year tenure he’s served on the Conference Committee and Web Committee. During his two years on the Conference Committee he was a key member of the team responsible for the creation and execution of the first three FSTA operated Business Conferences (Chicago and Las Vegas in 2007 and Denver in 2008). For the past year on the Web Committee he has been involved in overseeing the redesign of the FSTA.org web site. Whitney hopes to remain involved as a FSTA board member in order to continue the work advancing the fantasy sports industry and assisting in the growth of the FSTA organization.
Clint Webb, Sports Direct
I have been with Sports Direct Inc. (SDI) for over 5 years and currently hold a senior product manager position. SDI, a long time member of the FSTA, is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and employs more than 100 people. During my tenure at SDI I have been responsible for the management of Covers.com, Wagerline.com and ProSportsDaily.com, all top 100 sport sites according to Hitwise. As the fantasy sports industry continues to evolve, I feel the association will need to focus in a number of key areas to advance itself and its membership. The focus areas include developing a brand and identity for the association including criteria for members, finding and bringing value to its members such as the research by Dr. Kim Beason, and becoming a complete resource of information to assist existing members and new start-up companies looking to enter the industry. The FSTA should be very proactive in helping its membership connect with each other, and invest in communication vehicles which could make this process efficient.
David Wu, RotoHog
No Bio Provided