The Walk Score Team
Josh Herst - Chief Executive Officer
Prior to joining Walk Score, Josh was the Founder and CEO of TripHub, which helped to redefine the group travel market with its planning and collaboration tools. Before TripHub, Josh was a Venture Partner with Madrona Venture Group and a strategic advisor and consultant to early stage technology companies. Previously Josh spent eight years in marketing positions at Microsoft where he lead product planning, demand generation and business development for Expedia and marketing for MSN.
Josh graduated magna cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis. He and his wife have two young sons who keep them very busy and happy, are active community volunteers, and have a Walk Score of 88.
Matt Lerner - Chief Technology Officer, Co-Founder
Matt Lerner is CTO of Walk Score. Matt bikes to work every day and recently broke his bicycle chain in half pulling his two boys in the bike trailer. From 2001-2007, Matt worked at Microsoft, most recently as Lead Program Manager for the Windows User Experience Team. Matt had responsibility for the Start Menu, taskbar, visuals, and other core components of the world's most widely used software.
Prior to Microsoft, Matt was co-founder and CTO of EQuill, a Web development software company he sold to Microsoft in 2001. Matt was awarded a Fulbright fellowship and has a Computer Science degree from Brown University, where he studied under Professor Andries van Dam.
Follow Matt Lerner on Twitter.
Aleisha Jacobson - Office Manager and Customer Support
Aleisha keeps the Walk Score office running smoothly, acting as office administrator, bookkeeper and customer service specialist. Prior to joining the Walk Score team, she worked as a nanny and preschool assistant in Seattle.
Aleisha has a degree in French from Western Washington University and lived and taught in France for two years. She is a gardening enthusiast and keeps a small flock of backyard chickens and one rabbit.
Jesse Kocher - Software Developer, Co-Founder
Jesse was formerly the Director of Web Strategy at the New Progressive Coalition (NPC), a company that advised political investors on managing their investments in progressive organizations. Jesse led the tech team through NPC's first two launch cycles, creating online tools for investors to build and manage their portfolio of political investments.
Jesse and Matt have been working together since they met at Brown University. In 1999 they founded the software startup EQuill, a Web development software company they sold to Microsoft in 2001. In 2004, they founded Driving Votes together, and Jesse created and ran the organization's website which helped thousands of volunteers meet and share rides on their trips to register Democratic voters in swing states. Jesse graduated from Brown in 1999 with degrees in Computer Science and the Visual Arts.
Kenshi Kawaguchi - Software Developer
Before joining Walk Score, Kenshi was a software engineer with AmazonFresh, an online grocery delivery subsidiary of Amazon.com. Kenshi wrote software that ran the back-end fulfillment network, including some of the route-planning algorithms used to intelligently route delivery trucks across the city.
Kenshi studied Mechatronics Engineering (that's a fancy word for robotics) at the University of Waterloo. When he's not at work he's usually exploring the city on bicycle, snowboarding, or generally enjoying the outdoors. Since moving to Seattle Kenshi has developed a serious coffee addiction, so you can probably find him pounding espresso at a local cafe as well.
Bo Borgerson - Software Developer
Bo feels like a superhero going to work every day, since he's pretty sure Walk Score is going to save the world.
Before joining Walk Score, Bo worked for six years as a software engineer at Experian CheetahMail, an email marketing company in New York City. Now he's traded his bike commute over the Brooklyn Bridge for a daily ride on the Burke-Gilman Trail.
When Bo isn't slinging code he's usually lost in a good book, feverishly studying Mandarin Chinese, or out marveling at nature's endless shades of green.
Mahalie Stackpole - Web Developer
Before joining Walk Score, Mahalie worked for five years as a web developer for Mithun, a leading urban planning and environmental design firm based in Seattle, where she helped create a modern web presence, built a carbon calculator for construction project planning and developed/supported custom internal applications.
When not evangelizing web standards and user experience, Mahalie is busy chasing after Mahalie Junior, communing with the native inhabitants of Cheasty Greenspace, and exploring Seattle via Link light rail.
David Alber - Software Developer
Prior to joining Walk Score, David worked for three years at Microsoft on math libraries and later on a cloud service team. Before Microsoft, David was an employee at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory developing software, primarily as a member of a computational biology project focused on energy applications.
David earned graduate degrees in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an undergraduate degree in Biology and Computer Science at the University of Iowa. His family, including an ever-changing toddler son, keeps him busy outside of work.
Board of Directors
Mike Mathieu - Chairman, Co-Founder
Mike Mathieu is an active founder, investor, or advisor to dozens of tech startups using tech for good. He is Executive Chairman of Front Seat, founding board member of New Media Ventures, long-time partner in Social Venture Partners, Chairman of All Property Management, and sits on the board of KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio, where he chairs the Strategic Planning Committee.
Previously, Mike was founder and CEO of All Star Directories, an INC 500-listed online marketing company, and spent a decade at Microsoft where he was General Manager of MSN.com. He holds a BA from Harvard and lives in Seattle with his wife and two daughters.
Geoff Entress - Director
Geoff Entress is a venture partner with Voyager Capital and a former venture partner with Madrona Venture Group, focusing broadly on information technology investments. Individually, Geoff has invested in more than 70 private technology companies during the last decade and many of those companies have had successful exits, notably Isilon Systems (NASDAQ: ISLN, acquired by EMC), World Wide Packets (acquired by Ciena), The Coffee Equipment Company (acquired by Starbucks), Swype (acquired by Nuance), Dashwire (acquired by HTC), Sandlot Games (acquired by Digital Chocolate) and Shelfari (acquired by Amazon).
Geoff is a current board member of nine companies, including Walk Score, Big Fish Games, Banyan Branch, Liquid Planner and Bonanza, and is a board observer for several others. A former securities lawyer and financial analyst, Geoff has held positions at Perkins Coie, Prudential Home Mortgage, Salomon Brothers and Duquesne Capital Management, and is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Notre Dame.
