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Management Team
Bernard Louvat, President and Chief Executive Officer
Bernard is responsible for the strategic direction and management of the company. Upon his appointment as new CEO of TouchCommerce in early 2005, he developed a new vision of assisting large companies to put sales people on their websites to recreate great in-store experiences online and increase ecommerce revenue. In 2005 he reshaped the company to execute on that vision and built a team of senior executives with experience in selling and delivering BPO and SaaS analytics solutions to Fortune 1000 companies, designing online user experiences, managing contact centers, and developing cutting edge web technologies. Bernard brings new business formation, retail and consumer technology experience as founding CEO of two corporate retail ventures (The Disney Store France and Office Depot France), and of two US based venture backed e-commerce and software ventures (Bizbuyer.com and Evolution Robotics, AN IDEALAB! COMPANY). He was also a General Manager with CitySearch, an IAC company, a marketing executive with L'Oreal and a consultant with Bain & Company. Bernard holds an MBA with Distinctions from Harvard Business School and a BA in Business Administration from HEC, Paris , France. He lives in Southern California with his wife, two daughters and two sons.
Rick Hoefert, GM, EVP Operations and Client Services
Rick Hoefert, GM, EVP Operations and Client Services is an accomplished executive with 20+ years of experience in designing, developing and executing large scale marketing and product/service sales and BPO initiatives. His experience includes solutions designed and managed for Dun & Bradstreet, Sears, Wells Fargo, Sun Microsystems, Sprint/Nextel, AT&T, IBM to name a few. He also managed CRM operations for numerous Fortune 500 clients in the telecom, financial services, technology and retail industries. Rick’s experience focuses on customer lifecycle management initiatives executed through telesales/telecare, email and live chat customer contact channels. Most recently, Rick was Vice President, Global Operations for TeleTech Holdings Inc, a global business services company that provides a full range of front- to back-office outsourced solutions including customer management, BPO, and database marketing services that enhance clients' core customer-management processes. TeleTech generates in excess of $1 billion in annual sales. Rick was responsible for managing several Fortune 500 accounts with global operations across North America, South America, Asia and Europe. Prior to TeleTech, Rick was President and COO of Zacson Corporation, a business to business marketing services company that served the technology, telecom and financial services markets. During Hoefert's tenure with Zacson, revenue grew almost fourfold as they acquired majority interest in companies in Belgium and Mexico, and created joint ventures in Japan with Nippon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) and in Canada with Saskatchewan Telephone. Prior to Zacson Corporation, Rick was Regional Manager, Credit Marketing at Sears, where he developed numerous Sears credit and Sears service marketing initiatives.
Jim Van Baalen, CTO
Jim has spent the last 11 years as a technology leader for public and private Internet technology service providers to the enterprise and SMB markets. Prior to joining TouchCommerce, Jim spent 9 years as the CTO for WebSideStory (a Top 50 global ASP for 5 consecutive years) where he led the development of WebSideStorys industry-leading enterprise web analytics solution, HBX. During his time at WebSideStory Jim performed as the technology leader, managed the engineering and network operations teams and developed HBX from inception to an industry leading product which led to a successful Initial Public Offering. Prior to WebSideStory Jim was the director of engineering at ATMnet where he designed, built and ran a production IP network over ATM cell relay, delivering voice, video and data services to medium to large businesses and small ISPs. Prior to ATMnet, Jim spent 6 years as a senior scientist at Naval Oceans Systems Center (NOSC). At NOSC, prior to the existence of the public Internet, he participated in the design, build out and management of a wide area, IP based network that connected government research laboratories in the US and overseas. Jim received a Master of Applied Mathematics and a BA in Music Performance from the University of Wyoming.
Chris Plunkett, VP Sales, North America
Chris Plunkett is VP Sales, North America and is responsible for driving our North American sales effort. Chris brings over 20 years of experience as a senior, revenue-focused leader in SaaS-based technology and digital marketing services companies, including companies in the conversion optimization, email marketing and rich media industries. Prior to TouchCommerce, Chris led the Southeastern region for ATG’s Optimization Services (formerly eStara). In this role, Chris was responsible for developing Fortune 500 enterprise accounts in the financial services, retail, travel and publishing verticals. He was also responsible for establishing channel relationships in the interactive and traditional agency space. In previous career roles, Chris served as VP of Sales and Business Development at Avalon Digital (email software and digital marketing services firm). He was also a founding executive at Bigfoot Interactive (an email services provider), where he served in a variety of roles, including co-President, CFO and VP of Sales & Business Development. Chris’s early career path includes store operations roles at Toys “R” Us and Babies “R” Us, as well as roles in investment and merchant banking at Smith Barney. He has a BA from Yale University and an MBA from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University.
Connie Jimenez, Controller
Connie is responsible for Finance and Accounting at TouchCommerce. She is an experienced finance executive who worked in the retail, consumer products and financial service industries. Connie has established finance and accounting operations and implemented process improvement and cost control initiatives for national retailers including The Disney Store and Contempo Casuals. Most recently Connie worked as a Financial Consultant and managed the production of financial analysis of national brand name retailers and consumer product distributors which was utilized in collateral monitoring, and pre-funding due diligence. Prior to that, she worked 6 years at The Walt Disney Company, as Director Accounting and Senior Manager, Financial Reporting for The Disney Store North America (an $800 million specialty retail chain) and as Manager, Finance for the Corporate Travel Group of The Walt Disney Company. Prior to Disney, Connie worked as the Assistant Controller for Contempo Casuals, a specialty apparel retail chain with $250 million in revenue. Connie commenced her career as a commercial lender with The Bank of California. Connie holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California , Santa Barbara and an MBA from Pepperdine University.
