Joe Gagnon brings over 27 years of business strategy and technology systems implementation experience in the retail and hospitality industry, along with his perseverance and discipline as a serious athlete, to his role as CEO of Exit41.

Prior to joining Exit41, Joe was Vice President, Global Leader of IBM’s Retail Industry business where he led overall strategy, direction and business operations. He joined IBM in 2001 when the company acquired strategy consulting firm Mainspring, where Joe served as Chief Operating Officer. Before Mainspring, Joe was a consulting partner at Ernst & Young LLP where he spent ten years working with retail clients to implement new and emerging technologies to drive business growth. Earlier in his career Joe led the store systems group at Mercantile Stores, an apparel retailer, where under his leadership Mercantile developed and rolled out numerous enterprise systems including Point of Sale and Merchandising.

Joe also provides his expertise in growth strategies to emerging companies as an advisory board member of Concentric Securities, Thomson Bike Tours, and PriceWhispers. A speaker and panelist at numerous industry conference and events, Joe has also been featured in several broadcast media outlets including The History Channel’s Modern Marvels episode on restaurant technology innovation, CNBC’s On the Money, and FOX News Live. Joe has been widely quoted in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Inc. Magazine, and Nation’s Restaurant News.

A firm believer in the parallel challenges of leading a company and pushing physical fitness limitations, Joe is also an accomplished athlete and triathlon coach. He has competed in Ironman Triathlon competitions and placed first in the CEO Challenge’s cycling competition in November 2008.

Joe has a B.A. in Economics from Fordham University.

Top

Rick Lamy is responsible for the relationship development and sales of Exit41’s products and services to clients. He brings over 28 years of experience leading sales operations in the Vice President role from startup and leading technology to business process outsourcing in the hospitality industry.

Prior to joining Exit41, Rick served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Savista Corporation. While at Savista, he developed and directed sales and marketing operations for their subsidiary, Franchisee Services Company (FSC). Rick helped establish FSC as the leader in outsourced accounting and payroll services by increasing sales 66% in a 2-year period. Rick gained his experience with startup technology companies in 2000 as Vice President Sales for RetailDNA (a Walker Digital Company). He developed the sales organization to launch their business in the Quick Service restaurant market.

As Vice President of Major Accounts for MICROS Systems, Rick was instrumental in developing MICROS as the worldwide leading point of sale (POS) company in the restaurant and hotel industry. Rick was directly responsible for MICROS entering the casino marketplace where they became the POS leader in that vertical market within a 2-year period. Rick also has an in-depth background in all aspects of sales and product development based on his experience at NCR where he started his career. Rick held positions as District Sales Manager, Hospitality Product Manager and Sales Account Manager while at NCR.

Rick is a graduate of Providence College with a B.S. in Business Management and Marketing.

Top

As Vice President of Engineering, Claudia is responsible for all software development, quality assurance and implementation functions at Exit41 and oversees the current and future strategic direction for our product.

Claudia has been with Exit41 for over eleven years and has played a key role in the development of the Exit41 ordering platform and user interfaces. She first joined Exit41 as Database Architect and worked her way up to Manager and to Director before being promoted to Vice President in June 2010.

Claudia came to Exit41 from Epsilon Data Management where she was responsible for architecting and delivering high performance and scalable enterprise marketing Decision Support Systems (DSS) for retail, catalog, utilities and financial services companies. Prior to Epsilon, Claudia held the role of Systems Engineer with IBM, European Center for Scientific and Engineering Computing (ECSC) in Rome, Italy.

Claudia holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Computer Science from Boston University

Top

As Chief Financial Officer, Dermot leads Exit41 in all financial operations and is instrumental in managing the growth of the company.

Dermot brings more than 23 years of accounting and finance experience working with a range of businesses from start-up entities to publicly traded companies. He joins Exit41 from xkoto, a venture-backed, international software database virtualization software company. He served as CFO from 2008 until 2010 upon the company’s successful acquisition by Teradata Corporation.

Prior to xkoto, he was CFO of Convoq, a venture-backed software startup that developed enterprise software application products to enhance real time communication and collaboration where he was instrumental in securing $23 million in venture capital from top-tier firms. Prior to joining Convoq and until 2001, he was CFO of Insightful Corporation, a publicly traded international software company. Insightful developed, marketed, and supported advanced analytical software and services.

Prior to Insightful, Dermot held senior financial positions in both the healthcare and high tech industries, including Chief Financial Officer of InLight, Inc, a venture- backed interactive multimedia software company, and Certified Public Accountant with the firm now known as PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Dermot graduated cum laude from Suffolk University with a BSBA in Accounting.

Top