Leadership
Massood Zarrabian
Chief Executive Officer
Massood joined OutStart as President and CEO in March of 2001 with more than twenty-five years of technology and management experience. Under his leadership, OutStart has grown from a newly funded software company with one product and a handful of customers to a market leader with strong revenues and hundreds of customers. During his short tenure with OutStart he has overseen five successful mergers and acquisitions. Prior to OutStart, he was President of the eService Division of Broadbase Software, a leading provider of eCRM solutions. Before that, as President and CEO of Servicesoft, a leading provider of intelligent eService solutions, he directed the successful merger with Broadbase Software. Massood held executive positions with Lewtan Technologies Inc. and Cayenne Software, Inc.. He has also held a number of senior management positions at Computervision Corporation.
Massood graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering.
John Hudson
President
John joined the company as President when OutStart merged with Eedo Knowledgeware in July 2008, where John was President and CEO. In the new company, John is responsible for global sales, business development and strategy. At Eedo Knowledgeware, John led the company from the start-up phase in 1999 to one of the world’s most recognized and respected providers of e-learning and knowledge management technology. John’s depth of knowledge of e-learning content development/deployment and vast experience in delivering performance-based enterprise learning solutions has been instrumental in forging a strong vision. John has also held leadership roles with organizations providing large scale technology-based solutions to Global 2000 corporations with a specific focus on learning and knowledge management for the past eighteen years. His industry experience includes financial services, telecommunications, high technology, aviation, defense and manufacturing.
John Alonso
Founder and Chief Technology Officer
John is an innovator and entrepreneur, who co-founded OutStart and has been a key force in the development and implementation of its strategic vision, as well as serving as a chief architect of Evolution™ LCMS.. John was an early adopter and evangelist of a broad range of standards, including learning technologies, metadata, and technical documentation and is an active contributor to a number of these including ADL (SCORM), AICC and MedBig. John is a noted speaker and educator on learning and knowledge-sharing issues as well as standards. All told, John has over 25 years of software development and over 10 years of instructor experience. Prior to OutStart John ran course development for a large software company. Early in his career, John spent over 10 years in the Oil and Gas Sector, providing software solutions to large capital projects.
Michelle Bruce
Chief Learning Officer and Vice President, Services
Michelle has diverse experience in education, training, marketing, and management. As a co-founder of OutStart, Michelle has been instrumental in the design and implementation of Evolution LCMS. She also spearheaded the creation of OutStart's development methodology RED™ (Rapid Education Development). Prior to founding OutStart, Michelle's experiences include: Education Evangelist at Sybase, Educational Consultant for various universities implementing e-learning initiatives, Technology Coordinator in the K-12 setting, and teacher at both university and high school levels.
Michelle received her bachelor's degree in mathematics/education from Florida State University and her master's in Instructional Technology from the University of Georgia.
Christine Chiang
Vice President, Product Development
As Vice President, Product Development, Christine is responsible for the leadership of Research, Development and Quality Assurance for OutStart products. In this role, Christine builds, manages and motives her team to take best advantage of technologies, innovate and deliver highly competitive products. Christine brings more than 17 years of management experience to her position. Prior to joining OutStart, Christine was the Senior Director of Engineering at Idiom Technologies, where she led cross functional teams and delivered 28 WorldServer releases. Christine joined Idiom from Information Resource Inc, (IRI), where she played the senior product development manager role and was responsible for the InSite report product releases. Prior to IRI, Christine was a program director at San Liu Corporation in Taiwan.
Christine received her MBA from F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College and undergraduate degree of Business in Management from Central University in Taiwan.
Maria D’Alessandro
Director, Human Resources
Maria brings more than 25 years of human resources management experience to OutStart. Prior to joining OutStart, Maria led the Human Resources function for Universal Studios Orlando's Sales, Marketing, Finance and IS Divisions. In 1996 she joined America's Health Network. During her tenure as Vice President of Human Resources, the network grew from 25 to 300 employees in 7 cities across the country. Previous human resources experience includes many years in the retail industry in Western New York working for divisions of W R Grace and Federated Department stores.
Maria graduated from the University of Buffalo with a degree in Business Administration.
Rob Lubash
Chief Financial Officer
Rob joined OutStart in 2001 as Vice President, Corporate Controller and has played a key role with the company since its early days. Prior to OutStart, he served as Corporate Controller for Servicesoft until its acquisition by Broadbase Software. Rob also held several positions within Infinium Software, including Corporate Controller. Earlier in his career, he worked in the internal audit department for Armstrong World Industries of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Rob graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor's in Accounting and is a certified public accountant.
Randy McLean
Vice President, Research & Development
As Vice President, Research & Development, Randy is responsible for the leadership of Research, Development and Quality Assurance for the ForceTen product line. In this role, Randy builds, manages and motives his team to take best advantage of technologies, innovate and deliver highly competitive products. Prior to joining the company, Randy was Vice President of Solutions Delivery for Cactus Commerce, Vice President of Operations with BlueDrop Learning, and The E*Commerce Partner at Sierra Systems. Randy's focus through-out his career has been in the area of emerging technologies, the commercialization of new business opportunities, and the mentorship of teams that support these initiatives.
Steven Shaw
Chief Knowledge Officer for OutStart
As Chief Knowledge Officer for OutStart, Steven assists customers with the design and implementation of content and knowledge management strategies and helps evolve the internal knowledge sharing practices that are key to OutStart's success.
Prior to his position at OutStart, Steven was Chief Learning Office at Eedo Knowledgeware from 2002-2008. During this time, Steven was instrumental in forging the vision that helped propel Eedo to a leadership position in learning content management technology. While contributing significantly in product development, Steven also provided Eedo and Eedo customers with valuable insights on how to extract maximum performance improvement benefits and ROI in their knowledge transfer initiatives based on his extensive experience in elearning and performance technology spanning more than 20 years. Steven was project leader for some for the very first large scale elearning initiatives in the mid 90’s and has broad experience working at a strategic level with public sector organizations and with corporations across various fields including finance, transportation, insurance, natural resources, enforcement, aviation and
aerospace, medicine, law and engineering.
Steven has a Doctorate in Educational Technology, is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology at Concordia University, and teaches courses in the areas of elearning, organizational learning and knowledge management.
His recent research initiatives have addressed cultural dimensions of knowledge transfer, advanced techniques for information retrieval and categorization (topic maps) and pen-based learning technologies.
Jeffrey Whitney
Vice President, Marketing
Jeff joins OutStart from Beacon-Worldwide, where he served as a senior partner and chief marketing officer working with high tech product and services companies to increase their revenues through improved sales and marketing processes. Prior to Beacon-Worldwide, Jeff held vice president of marketing positions with a number of successful software companies, including Servicesoft, Bluestone, and Broadbase Software. At Servicesoft, as vice president of marketing and partners, Jeff helped to lead the company to market leadership and an acquisition by Broadbase Software for $651 million.
Jeff graduated from Westminster College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics.