Ron LaPierre

Ron LaPierre, Executive Director

Ron is an accomplished senior executive with 25 years of experience in operations, business development, sales and marketing in e-commerce, digital media, SaaS and entertainment industries. He began his career with the Walt Disney Studio’s Home Entertainment Division. In addition to several sales and marketing roles with the company, Ron acted as the GM to build, design and launch an ESPN-branded line of products. As the internet’s commercial opportunities accelerated, Ron transitioned to digital with senior business development roles at GoTo.com (Overture Services) and PriceGrabber.com. During this time, Ron established partnerships with Microsoft, IAC, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast and many others and played key roles leading to Yahoo’s acquisition of Overture and Experian’s purchase of PriceGrabber. Ron has held President, COO and CEO roles with PriceGrabber and IAC’s CityGrid Media. During his time as President at PriceGrabber, he managed a team of more than 200 employees with offices in the US and UK and the company hit its peak of $110 million revenue. At CityGrid, Ron’s team delivered more than $25 million profit after the company had experienced over a decade of losses. Ron co-founded one startup and invested in and/or advised other early-stage companies, including Milo.com . He also took an active leadership role with Milo to help quickly scale the business, and played a key role in negotiating the company’s sale to eBay. Ron has a BA from UCLA in Political Science and earned an MBA in Marketing from the Drucker School, Claremont Graduate University.