Kirkland, WA —July 11, 2012—INRIX®, Inc., a leading international provider of traffic information and driver services, announced the hiring of four industry leaders from the automotive and mobile industries to drive the company’s European business development and global marketing efforts. In addition, the company is naming former Blue Nile, Inc. Chief Executive Officer, Diane Irvine, to its Board of Directors.
“The growth of our leadership team accelerates efforts to meet the incredible demand for our traffic intelligence platform and driver services, particularly in Europe.” said Bryan Mistele, president and CEO of INRIX. “Our customers will immediately benefit from their exceptional market expertise as we work together to rid the daily commute of traffic for the world’s one billion drivers.”
New members of INRIX’s leadership team are:
• Board Member, Diane Irvine will be joining INRIX’s Board of Directors. INRIX will benefit from her 30 years of business leadership experience growing companies and building successful consumer businesses. Ms. Irvine was most recently Chief Executive Officer of leading online retailer of diamonds and fine jewelry Blue Nile, Inc. Under Ms. Irvine’s executive leadership, Blue Nile revolutionized the consumer experience for purchasing diamonds and jewelry, becoming the world leader and a highly regarded consumer brand. In her 12 years at Blue Nile, Ms. Irvine guided the business from its early days as a start-up to a publicly traded company with nearly $350 million in revenue.
• Vice President of European Business Development, Danny Woolard leads efforts to develop and manage INRIX’s European automotive, mobile, public sector, media, internet and fleet businesses. Mr. Woolard brings to INRIX more than 20 years of technical, operational and business development expertise in the traffic information and driver services market.
Most recently, Mr. Woolard was General Manager of Operations for Australian traffic and telematics service provider Intelematics where he led efforts to scale the company’s infrastructure and improve quality to meet market needs.
Previously, Mr. Woolard was Technical Director of Wireless Technologies at ITIS Holdings where he launched Europe’s first RDS-TMC based traffic service in collaboration with Toyota, BMW, Ford and Daimler. Mr. Woolard’s experience serving as Chairman of the TMC Forum and co-founder of Traveler Information Services Association (TISA) drove widespread adoption of breakthrough TMC and TPEG technologies — now considered industry standards for the delivery traffic information and telematics services in the car, on mobile phones and over the airwaves.
• Vice President and General Manager of Automotive, Andreas Hecht is responsible for INRIX’s business focused on helping automakers and their suppliers utilize INRIX traffic information and driver services to improve navigation for the world’s one billion drivers. Mr. Hecht joins the company with more than 20 years of experience in the automotive, mobile GPS and mapping markets.
Previously, Mr. Hecht held executive leadership positions at Rand McNally, NAVIGON and NAVTEQ. As President of NAVIGON North America, Mr. Hecht successfully launched the mobile navigation brand into the U.S. consumer electronics market and quickly grew the company to become a market share leader in North America. Mr. Hecht also spent over 10 years at NAVTEQ where he was GM of Professional Services working across the company’s technical, product and business development teams to serve the company’s Automotive OEM customers.
• Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Communications, Jonathan Maron is responsible for directing the company’s marketing strategy, branding, positioning, public relations, and corporate communications worldwide. He brings to INRIX more than 20 years of marketing, public relations and sales experience with a successful record of building brands and growing market share across the technology industry.
Most recently, Mr. Maron was Vice President of Marketing for HTC where he was responsible for marketing strategy, planning and execution. Named one of the top brands of 2011 by Ad Age, Interbrand and T3, he successfully led efforts to evolve HTC from an OEM to a mainstream consumer brand in just three years. INRIX also benefits from Mr. Maron’s experience in a variety of corporate and agency leadership roles driving successful brand development, marketing and public relations efforts for various Fortune 500 companies including AMD, Dolby, LG, Nokia and Sony Ericsson.
• Director of European Business Development for Mobile, Graham Bradley leads business development, sales and distribution of INRIX’s traffic services with Europe’s mobile operators, navigation providers, device manufacturers, platform providers and developers. Mr. Bradley joins INRIX from on-device portal provider, Teleca SurfKitchen, where he led the start-up’s successful European sales efforts with Orange, Telefonica and Telesonera. As a mobile internet pioneer with more than 10 years of experience, Mr. Bradley helped launch the industry’s first mobile internet service for BT Genie Internet in 1999 which later became O2.
In addition, the company is hiring a Director of Business Development for Automotive in Europe and has more than 20 other career opportunities in a variety of technical, management and business development roles available worldwide.
