Chris is a marketing executive with a wide variety of Internet and software industry experience. Prior to joining Topix.net, Chris co-founded Spoke Software, where he was the Vice President of Marketing. Before Spoke, Chris was Director of Marketing for products at AOL Music, Netscape Search and the Open Directory Project. In 1998, Chris co-founded NewHoo, which was acquired by Netscape and became the Open Directory Project, the Web directory behind AOL, Netscape, Google, and Lycos. From 1990 to 1998, Chris held a variety of sales and marketing positions at Sun Microsystems, including direction of all marketing for the network security product group, which provided Sun's customers with encryption, firewall, and authentication solutions. Chris has degrees in Computer Science and Economics from the University of California at San Diego, where he was a Warren Scholar and recipient of the Michael Addison Award for his thesis on the Information Economy.