Our management team brings together professionals with extensive backgrounds in K-12 education, higher education, business, and technology.

• Stephen M. Smith, Chief Executive Officer
• Shaun Fanning, Executive Vice President
• Linda Trude, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
• Don Tollman, Vice President, District Initiatives
• Greg M. Smith, Director of Technical Operations

Stephen M. Smith, Chief Executive Officer

Stephen M. Smith is chief executive officer and co-founder of Naviance and serves as a member of the Hobsons U.S. executive board. Prior to Naviance, he led e-learning client engagements for major corporate clients including OgilvyOne Worldwide, IBM, Pfizer, Nestlé, and others.

Previously, Mr. Smith was vice president of digital product development at Peterson's, then a division of The Thomson Corporation, where he played a key role in transforming a traditional print publishing business into the premier on-line services company in the field of education information and admissions. Mr. Smith led a major business development initiative within The Thomson Corporation to develop CollegeQuest.com and to expand petersons.com, which were collectively ranked as one of the top 100 websites by Yahoo! Internet Life. Prior to joining Peterson's, Mr. Smith worked with the Thomson Technology Services Group as a founding member of its Internet consulting practice.

Mr. Smith also serves as a practitioner faculty member at The Johns Hopkins University where he teaches graduate level coursework in marketing and technology. Mr. Smith earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, cum laude, and an MBA from Cornell University.

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Shaun Fanning, Executive Vice President

Shaun Fanning is executive vice president and co-founder of Naviance. Prior to Naviance, he led learning-related consulting engagements for K12.com and schoolSTAFF.

Previously, Mr. Fanning was director of business development at Peterson's, then a division of The Thomson Corporation, where he led the development of strategic and promotional partnerships to support Peterson's transformation into a category leading on-line information services company. He served as director of Peterson's consumer marketing division and oversaw a major marketing and public relations campaign supporting the launch of CollegeQuest.com, a service of petersons.com which has become the leading on-line destination for students and parents going through the college admissions process.

Prior to joining Peterson's, Mr. Fanning worked as an analyst with AT&T preparing business cases for a variety of local phone market entry strategies including mergers, acquisitions, resale and new technology deployment. Mr. Fanning earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Cornell University.

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Linda Trude, Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing

Linda Trude is vice president of sales and marketing at Naviance. In that role, she develops and implements sales and marketing strategy and provides leadership and coordination of all company sales and marketing activities.

Previously, Ms. Trude was vice president of institutional sales for Rosetta Stone, Inc., where she headed up the sales and marketing teams that served the company’s education, corporate, government, military, and non-profit clients world-wide. While at Rosetta Stone, she solidified a first-class sales organization, restructuring to better support customers with in-house and field representatives; establishing a marketing team dedicated to institutional markets; formalizing sales processes and support systems; streamlining partnerships; and growing strategic accounts.

Prior to joining Rosetta Stone, Ms. Trude was vice president of Sales and Marketing for ApplyYourself, Inc. (now Hobsons U.S.), where she successfully combined technology solutions with recruiting and business processes to develop a strong value proposition and a repeatable sales model. Ms. Trude is a graduate of Towson University in Towson, Maryland from which she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. She also holds a Master of Business Administration in marketing from Loyola College in Baltimore, Maryland.

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Don Tollman, Vice President, District Initiatives

Don Tollman is vice president of enterprise sales for Naviance. Based in Colorado, his focus is on listening to and understanding current and prospective client needs and demonstrating how Naviance can fulfill those needs.

Prior to joining Naviance, Mr. Tollman served as both an assistant and associate director of Admissions at Colorado State University. During his time at Colorado State, among many other duties he served as non-resident recruitment coordinator, university tuition classification officer, opened and developed a Denver area admissions information office, authored the "Taking the Mystery Out of College Admissions" college planning sessions, created and developed the "Vital Connections" transfer program as well as the "TransCentral" transfer program, "TransAction" transfer workshop, and "TranScript" transfer newsletter. He has visited and interacted with students and high school counselors across the country from Hawaii to New York for over 20 years. His most recent duties at Colorado State included coordination and content development for the "Campus Connections" website, serving as the voice behind "Ask Mr. Spruce" a student oriented information and advice site, and managing recruitment and outreach activities in the Denver-metro suburbs and Southern California. He is a much sought after presenter throughout Colorado and parts of California addressing the college admission process.

Mr. Tollman is a past-president of the Colorado Council on High School/College Relations (CCHS/CR), and has served as chair/co-chair of the Admissions Practices Committee for the past 14 years. He has also been a member of the Professional Development Committee teaching new high school counselors about the relationship between high schools and colleges. Throughout the years he has presented on various topics at NACAC, WACAC, RMACAC, RMACRAO, and Phi Theta Kappa national conferences. Outside the education sector, Mr. Tollman has been a private business owner and consultant.

Mr. Tollman earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from the University of Colorado and holds several certificates from the Professional Development Institute at Colorado State University.

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Greg M. Smith, Director of Technical Operations

Greg M. Smith is director of technical operations for Naviance. In that role, he oversees all hardware, software, and global network operations for Naviance products.

Prior to Naviance, Mr. Smith led the e-business group at the D.C. Water and Sewer Authority, where he was responsible for managing the daily operations for the organization's enterprise systems, its public website, and its application development group. Mr Smith was also a member of the senior IT management team, co-author of the IT Strategic Plan, and contributing author to the Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Plan for the Authority.

Previously, Mr. Smith managed academic computing for the University of Indianapolis where he was responsible for reducing the operating costs by more then 30% while decreasing time to resolution by 20%. He was also the co-author of the university's strategic technology plan.

Mr. Smith holds a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Indiana University, Bloomington.

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