Our team of
growth leaders
When you partner with MAVAN, you’re adding a team of specialists who’ve spent years scaling some of the world’s most successful companies.

MAVAN leadership team
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Matt Widdoes Chief Executive Officer
Widdoes has built and led teams at various start-ups across the valley as well as iconic brands including RedBull, Intuit, Zynga, and King. He has deep experience across Operations, Marketing and Business Development. He’s worked cross-functionally to drive growth at massive enterprises and has been responsible for roughly $1B in media spend and billions of dollars in revenue. He is also an active angel investor and start-up advisor with a rich network of top talent across Silicon Valley and beyond.
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Malachi Rose VP of Growth
Malachi is a mobile growth veteran having spent the last 10 years growing some of the preeminent mobile gaming and fintech companies in the world. He has deep knowledge in performance marketing and has worked across almost every digital channel. At Zynga, he lead growth across all products, was responsible for nine-figure annual advertising budgets, built the growth marketing team, and helped the company achieve a profitable turnaround during his 3.5 years there. At Digit, he built a growth organization and scaled ARR by 3x in the first year.
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Rich Skinner Head of Data
Rich has spent nearly 15 years developing groundbreaking data initiatives across several high-profile tech brands such as Zillow, Google, Pandora and Zynga. He has functional expertise in marketing, product, engineering, operations and representation. Most recently at Zillow, he helped drive YoY growth of agent DAU 40%+, engagement 20%+ while reducing operational costs through experimentation by over 25%. An avid advocate for representation, he also created several programs to aid Zillow in achieving a 10-14% improvement in its representation goals.
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Kyle Shields Creative Director
Kyle is an internationally-awarded art director and designer. Along with his partner Aaron Peever, he’s helped launch 360 campaigns for brands like Mastercard, Wendy’s, Suncor, Scotiabank, AncestryDNA and Kia Motors. With 10 years of experience in digital media, broadcast, design, branding, illustration, UI/UX, and creative problem solving he brings a diverse set of skills to deliver results for any client problem. During their time McCann he and Aaron helped launch The Wendy’s Canada Mobile app, increased sign-ups for Suncor’s loyalty program by over 100k users and more than doubled brand awareness for the CareMakers Foundation.
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Aaron Peever Creative Director
Aaron is the copywriter half of his internationally-awarded creative team. With his partner Kyle Shields, he’s created campaigns for Mastercard, Wendy’s, Suncor, Scotiabank, and Kia. Aaron’s wheelhouse is finding exciting and unexpected creative solutions to client’s problems. While at McCann, he and Kyle turned a simple public service announcement brief into a 24-hour long interactive documentary film, increasing donations for the CareMakers Foundation by 1649% in the first month after launch. Before taking the plunge into creative advertising, Aaron spent nearly a decade as a comedy writer working on web series and performing across Canada and the United States.
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Julie DeForest Head of Lifecycle
Julie is the Head of Lifecycle at Mavan and was previously a Senior Director of Email, Push & Affiliate Marketing at Overstock. For over 15 years, she’s managed Lifecycle annualized P/L’s that range from $200K to $1.3B and generated YOY growth of 35%+. From ecommerce, logistics, transportation and hospitality, she has launched & scaled lifecycle programs across multiple industries.
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Jay Sublett Chief of StaffExpert from:
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Ellyn Stanton Lead Project ManagerExpert from:
Add a little jet fuel to your business
When you work with MAVAN, you get access to the best minds in growth. We know how to build from scratch, move existing systems in a new direction, and stand out in crowded fields. We use experimentation to identify the gaps the rest of the market is missing.
MAVAN Advisory Group
MAVAN Advisory Group (MAG) is an exclusive network of world-class executives that advise MAVAN across their agency operations and internal venture studio projects.
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Lea Dudum Chief Financial Officer, Elevation AdvisoryExpert from:
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Jason Purdy Product Lead, SquareExpert from:
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Eric Kovalkoski Director of Growth, Digital PoshmarkExpert from:
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Ismail Maiyegun Chairman/CEO, Big Wolf GamesExpert from:
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Jason Parmar Head of gaming UK + Nordic Tik TokExpert from:
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Aurelie Guerrieri Chief Marketing Officer, Data DomeExpert from:
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Eric Seufert CEO Heracles LLCExpert from:
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Lawrence Valenti Co-Founder Particle CapitalExpert from:
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Brian Sapp Head of Growth Rec RoomExpert from:
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Daniel Barnes Chief Operating Officer, ForteExpert from:
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Steve Wu Product Lead, GustoExpert from:
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Brett Fischler CTO & Co-Founder Early Enterprise AI StartupExpert from:
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David Diaz Co-Founder, StealthExpert from:
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Hilary Self Founder Higher Self Marketing ServicesExpert from:
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Jeremy Leal Head of Sales and Marketing Uncle TerpExpert from:
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Doug Thielen Senior Director, Global Brand and Product Marketing DickiesExpert from:
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Matthew Snow Head of Product Design, SkillzExpert from:
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Atif Khan VP of Business ThirdwebExpert from:
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Brandon Fuller Co-Founder + Chief Creative Officer 1215creativeExpert from:
Our Values

Supportive
We do good for our clients as well as each other. We lend a hand, an ear, and support wherever it’s needed. We assume the best of each other. We don’t hold each other back, we build up. We’re one team.

Curious
We innovate, we adapt, and we’re always learning. We break things to make them better. Our curiosity is our greatest asset, and we’re always investing in it.

Aspiring
We are never satisfied. We’re ambitious. When we reach a goal, we set a bigger one. Again and again. No solution is too ambitious if it’s the best solution.

Mindful
We listen, we collaborate, we keep an open mind. We know that great ideas can come from anywhere and we’re always ready for them.

Authentic
We bring our real selves to the table. We believe honesty leads to inspired work. We work hard. We deliver. We keep it real.

Entrepreneurial
We’ve got that dog in us. We embrace the entrepreneurial spirit and we’re not afraid of failure. We are champions of growth. We see problems, and we solve them. When we sense opportunity, we dig it up.

Accountable
We stand by our work, and our word. If we say we’re going to do something, we do it. We can only celebrate our wins if we own our losses. We are not afraid of being wrong, because we learn from it.

Playful
We take our work seriously, but not ourselves. We love what we do, and we have fun doing it. We surround ourselves with supportive, collaborative, fun-loving people who all look forward to ‘walking in the door’ every morning. We love our downtime, but when we’re on, we’re on.