John Levisay
Founder & CEO
John grew up in Spring Valley, IL (pop. 4,700) and has been surrounded by passionate enthusiast communities his whole life. Before Craftsy, John worked at eBay from 1999-2005 where he managed categories and communities. Over 20 years in business, he also spent time in executive roles at General Electric, glyde.com, and ServiceMagic. He majored in History & English at Colgate University, and received his MBA from the University of Michigan.
One of his career highlights was playing in the eBay band that won the Fortune Magazine’s Global Battle of The Bands, culminating in a gig at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and a tour of Australia. He lives in Denver with his wife, daughter, son, and adopted English Mastiff. His hobbies include cheering in vain for Chicago sports teams, reading, live music, and photography.
Josh Scott
Founder & COO
When Josh is being crafty, it usually involves customizing tennis shoes. He is not quite yet willing to admit to having a problem, but will concede that he has a line item in his monthly budget dedicated to the habit… and that on the rare occasion when he has to wear a suit, if wiser heads do not prevail, he will lace up a complementary pair of Sambas.
Perhaps Josh’s aversion to formal wear is what has compelled him to work on creating software which helps people fuel their passions… it turns out that it is ok to not dress like an adult when your job is to enable your customers to feel child-like enthusiasm.
Speaking of kids, Josh recently contributed to making one of those. His daughter Noe was born in October 2009 and is already an accomplished quilt recipient.
Josh met his Craftsy co-founders while he was the General Manager of New Category Expansion & Vice President of Product for ServiceMagic. Prior to joining ServiceMagic, Josh led the product and marketing teams for a number of venture funded start-ups and managed small business buying at eBay, helping it grow into a $4.7B line of business for the company. Prior to eBay, Josh was a consultant at Bain & Company. Josh received an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley and a BBA from the University of Michigan.
Mitch Lazar
EVP, Corporate Development
Mitch grew up in the restaurant business so he can be pretty crafty (and messy) in the kitchen, especially when it comes to making homemade pizza. He married a pastry chef who now runs a cake pop business so the kitchen is the heart of their home.
Mitch is from Miami, Florida and that is about as far as his Latino roots extend. He was once seen playing a journalist on Miami Vice before helping create and launch CNN.com from under Ted Turner’s stairwell in Atlanta.
Mitch helped grow CNN’s daily viewership from 750 million people to over a billion people around the globe by pioneering the idea to put CNN on cell phones back in 1997. He traveled worldwide to create CNN Mobile and partnered with hundreds of operators giving mobile phone users the ability to get CNN on the go. He later built the mobile business for Cartoon Network and helped grow AOL’s international mobile distribution.
Mitch left Turner in 2005 to head up Yahoo!’s European mobile operations and successfully led the company into the mobile search and advertising business. In 2010, he joined Cambridge, UK based Taptu, a mobile search and technology company he repositioned into a news and information enterprise that gave users the power to be a “News DJ.” He led the successful sale of the company in September 2012.
After 12 years of gloomy skies and wet weather in London, England, Mitch and his family are fortunate to now call Colorado their home. There was something about the 300 days of sunshine a year that attracted them to the great mile high city, not to mention the consistently dry skin and parched palate.
Mitch began his career as a journalist in Seoul, South Korea and was also a writer and producer for CNN Headline News. He earned his degree in journalism at the University of Missouri – Columbia with an emphasis in computer science. He later worked on his MBA at Georgia State University before moving to London.
Caroline Greenbaum
Executive Assistant/Office Manager
Originally from Atlanta, by way of New York City, Caroline is one of Denver’s newest transplants. She joins us after working for Avenues: The World School, another growing education start-up. As Avenues’ first employee, Caroline was instrumental in transforming the white-board concept of Global Education into it’s final product: a thriving international school in the heart of NYC.
Before New York, Caroline attended Miami University (the one in Ohio…not the one with palm trees), where she capitalized on her fascination for food and health with a B.S. in Food Science and Dietetics. She spends most of her free time cooking and setting off smoke detectors placed too close to kitchens. Caroline is also an avid runner and has completed three full marathons, including the New York City Marathon.
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