Avalara, Inc: Sales Tax Software Solutions

Scott McFarlane

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Scott McFarlane is founder and CEO of Avalara. Before founding Avalara, Scott spent six years with Check Point Software Technologies, Inc, where he was vice president of solutions and strategies. He also held a variety of other positions at Check Point, including vice president, sales & strategic products and vice president of worldwide sales operations. Check Point acquired Meta Info, Inc., in 1998 and Scott became the chief operating officer and program manager at Community Sector Systems.

Before joining Check Point/Meta Info, Scott was Vice President of Development for AIRCOA, the largest independent hotel company in the U.S.

Scott earned a degree in economics from Claremont McKenna College in southern California where he co-founded NAS Fitness with his roommate and introduced and distributed Lifecycle, the most popular computerized exercise bike in history.

Rory Rawlings

Founder and Chief Tax Automation Officer

Rory Rawlings is the Founder and Chief Tax Automation Officer of Avalara. Rory leads development efforts around accuracy, reliability, and efficiency of the company’s robust web-enabled sales tax compliance solution.

Prior to Avalara, Rory was a professional accountant, gaining extensive experience in financial planning, business planning, profit analysis, and tax research. Among his previous positions are Senior Manager of Packaged Solutions at BDO Seidman, Director of IT at PhotoDisc (now Getty Images, and Senior Software Developer and Director of Professional Services for The Boeing Company.

In addition to becoming a CPA, Rory is certified as a PowerBuilder Developer and Instructor in Object Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD). He has been an instrumental voice in the development and growth of the Streamlined Sales Tax initiative and was named to Accounting Today’s 100 Most Influential list in 2008.

Jared Vogt

Founder and Chief Technology Officer

Jared Vogt is Founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chairman of the Board of Avalara. A pioneer in the technology industry, Jared founded Trillium Lane, which took part in several technology start-ups in areas such as digital media production, audio software, and health care systems.

Jared co-founded Meta Info, Inc. a successful Seattle-based software development firm in 1994. Meta Info products provided core networking functionality for Internet systems and grew on the functionality of the increasingly popular Microsoft Windows NT technology as well as the World Wide Web.

Meta Info employed some of the brightest minds in the world for IP addressing, was profitable within one month of opening its doors, and was ultimately acquired by Check Point Software.

Andrea Anderson

Vice President, Customer Loyalty and Support

Before joining Avalara, Andrea served first as marketing manager and then as chief knowledge officer at a rapidly growing marketing automation company. Prior to this role, she spent seven years formulating marketing strategies for the Microsoft Business Solutions division of Microsoft.

Andrea is one of the inventors of a patent-pending, rules-based marketing engine, has authored many e-marketing best practice white papers and has been published in numerous marketing trade publications. She also developed knowledge capital and class curriculum on interactive marketing that are used today in MBA and undergraduate programs and instructed courses for the Notre Dame MBA program.

Andrea holds an MBA from North Dakota State University.

Ethan Bell

Vice President, Financial Planning & Analysis

Ethan brings a diverse 15 year business background to his role leading Avalara’s financial planning and analysis. He has served in senior roles in finance, marketing, and IT at multiple high-tech organizations. Most recently, Ethan served as the CIO at Cascade Billing, one of the Northwests largest independent medical billing services company, where he led the development and implementation of critical reporting and workflow management systems that delivered dramatic improvements in efficiency and customer experience.

He started his career as the co-founder of Metainfo, a successful software developer in Seattle in 1994. Metainfo products provided core networking functionality for Internet systems built on the Microsoft Windows NT platform. As the CFO and head of marketing for Metainfo, Ethan helped grow Metainfo into a leading global provider of networking technology, reach profitability extremely quickly, and ultimately sell to Check Point Software Technologies in 1998.

Ethan graduated from the University of Washington with a B.A. in business administration and finance with a certificate of international studies in business (Japan concentration). He studied Japanese and international business at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan.

Shaunna Duffy

Vice President, Human Resources

Shaunna brings over 15 years of Human Resources experience to Avalara. Her career of leadership roles with businesses like Washington Mutual, Starbucks and Solar Turbines, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, has been focused on developing high performing teams, creating a talent-development culture, and driving streamlined processes to improve organizational effectiveness. 

Prior to Avalara, Shaunna was First Vice President, Human Resources, with Washington Mutual, where she led the execution of people strategies across multiple corporate functions.  As the senior HR leader supporting the Technology organization, Shaunna built an HR team to manage the recruitment, training, and leadership development efforts as the division doubled in size from 1500 to 3000 employees.

Shaunna has a Master’s Degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences from University of California, Irvine.

Annette Eyraud

Vice President, Finance

Annette Eyraud brings over 15 years of finance experience in the banking and software industry to Avalara. Before joining the company she served as Chief Financial Officer of Estorian, Inc.,  a provider of software solutions for mainframe storage optimization and e-discovery archiving and compliance. Prior to that, Annette was Senior Director of Mergers and Acquisitions of HCL America, a leading offshore IT and software development company. She also ran the Finance organization at Capital Stream Inc., where, as VP of Finance, she helped lead the company to a successful sale to HCL America.

Annette’s leadership has helped stir growth at numerous companies; she brings her tactical and practical skills as well as her ability to drive improvement and growth to Avalara. During her career she has successfully led several companies through acquisitions and financially challenging economic times. Her successes include turning a cash negative company to cash positive within 8 months, leading due diligence teams, implementing corporate rollouts of new software, and ensuring Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. 

Annette has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business Finance from Willamette University/Portland State University.  Her responsibilities with Avalara include Accounting, Treasury, Sales Operations and the Legal department.

Kael Kelly

Vice President, Marketing – Demand Generation

Kael has nearly 20 years of experience in technology marketing in industries ranging from telecommunications to Internet to software-as-a-service at companies from the Fortune 500 to mid-market firms to start-ups. Kael was a founding employee of PAR3 Communications, one of the early SaaS pioneers, which became Varolii Corporation, a leader in SaaS customer interaction management solutions. He was part of the management team that grew Varolii from a start-up to $80 million in revenue. During his career in technology Kael has held positions in sales, product management, product marketing, market research, demand generation and executive roles.

He graduated cum laude from Western Washington University with a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Organization Psychology and earned an MBA from the University of Oregon.

Marshal Kushniruk

Executive Vice President, Global Business Development

Marshal's broad background informs the core of Avalaras customer experience strategy and worldwide partnerships initiative. Bringing more than 20 year's experience in sales and marketing of accounting, financial and ERP software solutions, Marshals responsibilities at Avalara include overseeing software development with a focus on usability, ensuring high-quality customer care systems and technical support in addition to effectively overseeing major strategic ERP accounts and independent software vendors. Before joining Avalara, Marshal was vice president of sales and marketing with Sulcs & Associates. He has held several other high-profile industry positions, including sales manager of Greater Canada at Great Plains Software, vice president of Abacus Accounting Systems, Inc. and president of Group 21 Consulting, Inc.

This diverse industry expertise includes creating and maintaining value-added channels with value-added resellers and developing over 50,000 clients.

Alesia Pinney

General Counsel

Alesia has served as an operational and legal executive for private and publicly traded companies, most recently as general counsel and secretary for Radiant Global Logistics Inc. Her extensive background includes leadership positions in legal, accounting, and operations.

Alesia has a wealth of experience managing public offerings and private financings, mergers, acquisitions and company-transforming strategic transactions for private and publicly traded companies. Previous positions include serving as general counsel of InfoSpace Inc. and drugstore.com. Before that she practiced law at Perkins Coie, LLP, where her practice focused on corporation finance including public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, and venture capital. She began her career as a certified public accountant at Deloitte Haskins and Sells.

Alesia earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting from Seattle University, her Master of Taxation from the University of Denver, College of Law, and her Juris Doctor from the Seattle University School of Law. She currently serves as a board advisor to Motiga, Inc., an early stage game company, and was named by the Puget Sound Business Journal as a finalist for Corporate Counsel of the Year.

Kevin Riegelsberger

President and Chief Operations Officer

Kevin brings 30 years of highly successful experience leading high-tech and financial software companies from early stages through substantial growth and profitability. Most recently, he held CEO positions at CapitalStream, a provider of automated front office solutions for commercial banking and financial organizations, and then at Estorian Inc., a provider of software solutions for mainframe storage optimization and e-discovery archiving and compliance.

Kevin is well known as founder of Platinum Software Corp. (now known as Epicor), one of the industry's leading financial and ERP software application providers. There he held various senior level executive positions in operations, sales, channel development and technology development, and ultimately was responsible for all international operations. Under his leadership, this segment grew into a major component of Epicor’s overall business.

At Avalara, Kevin’s responsibilities encompass financial and operations functions including Finance, Accounting & Treasury, Development, Technical Operations, Compliance, and Customer Care.

David E. Rostov

Chief Financial Officer

David is an accomplished business executive in the technology industry, having held c-level positions at leading online companies and key strategic roles at several fast growing companies. In addition to his proven financial leadership, David has extensive experience in all aspects of business including online technology, mergers and acquisitions, operations, and sales and marketing.

His past experience includes serving as managing partner and CEO of Lighthouse eDiscovery, where he led the company’s efforts to evolve its business, winning many Fortune 500 clients in the process. Prior to that David was CFO at Infospace, where he was part of a small management team that successfully restructured the company. He has also served as acting COO and CFO of Apex Learning, a leading online high school education company, and CFO at Drugstore.com. David’s corporate experience includes leadership roles at Nextel International and McCaw Cellular Communications (now AT&T). He began his career as a financial analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co.

David earned a degree in economics from Oberlin College and holds Master’s degrees in business and public policy from The University of Chicago.

Sudhir Singh

Managing Director, India

Sudhir Singh is managing director of Avalara’s operations in Pune, India, responsible for our in-house Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) integration product development.

Sudhir ensures Avalara provides exceptional value to customers through consistent, on-time delivery of high-quality products that exceed expectations. Under Sudhir's leadership, Avalara’s India operation maintains an energetic and challenging work environment that nurtures high productivity and an entrepreneurial spirit.

Prior to joining Avalara, Sudhir worked for eight years at Infosys Technologies Limited and Tata Consultancy Services where he managed multimillion-dollar projects as group and program manager. On a functional basis, Sudhir has been responsible for requirements gathering, estimation, design, development, quality assurance, systems implementation, process Improvement and project/program management.

Sudhir’s process-driven credentials include a Six Sigma Black Belt and Project Management Professional certification.  He is a Math and Physics graduate from Bundelkhand University in Jhansi, India, and has completed Masters of Computer Application from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India.

Pascal Van Dooren

Executive Vice President, Sales & Marketing

Pascal is a seasoned veteran in the software and technology industry. He brings a strong sales and marketing background to Avalara gained from years of leadership experience acquired at firms ranging from early-stage ventures to well-established industry leaders. His broad and deep management experience includes helping organizations accelerate growth and deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Before joining Avalara, Pascal was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Sage North America, where he managed the company’s portfolio of ERP solutions for the small to medium-size business market. Prior to Sage, Pascal was Vice President of Sales at Epicor Software Corp., initially covering the North American market before moving to International Operations where he oversaw global sales and marketing. Before that, Pascal managed sales and marketing at CapitalStream, which is now an HCL company.

Pascal earned a Bachelor in Computer Science from Florida State University and holds a Master’s degree from the University of Miami School of Business.

Bryan Wiggins

Vice President, Marketing

Bryan is a veteran marketing manager with more than 25 years experience as a marketing and public relations leader and business communications consultant. Past engagements include 10 years with Westinghouse Commercial Systems Division near Baltimore, MD, where he was responsible for public relations and communications efforts of a $3 billion defense technology organization. Freelance relationships included AlliedSignal Avionics in Redmond, WA, Honeywell Aerospace divisions in Phoenix, AZ, and Washington Mutual in Seattle. His most recent position was VP Marketing Services at Watson Furniture in Poulsbo, WA, where he built a dynamic marketing organization that spearheaded the fastest period of sales growth in the company's 50-year history.

Bryan has Bachelor of Arts degrees in History and Journalism from Syracuse University.