Christian Vanek
Co-Founder & CTO

An original co-founder of Widgix Software, Christian Vanek is a serial entrepreneur with a strong system and application design background. He’s spent the last 13 years creating technology to help marketers and researchers. One of those relentless tinkerers Christian is always building something better. His past successes have included Co-Reg Complete and SurveyGizmo, among other numerous private label applications.

In the past, he spent most of his time developing marketing and content tools for organizations such as SBC, AT&T, MarketingSherpa, DCI, Jellicle Investors, Boston University and the Glimpse Foundation. Now he works non-stop on SurveyGizmo’s back-end technology and system design.

Scott McDaniel
Co-Founder & CEO

Scott previously was Internet Director of MarketingSherpa. Prior to that he worked as Marketing Director of MessageMedia (an Email Service Provider aquired up by DoubleClick) and also headed the web design and development firm Decisive Communications. For Widgix, Scott concentrates on making applications more useful and easier to use. He does this using his expertise in usability and design gained from his years as an Internet marketing and development specialist with a background in graphic design.

Scott built his very first web page in early 1997, but all evidence of this has been destroyed to protect the innocent. He holds a Masters degree in Volcanic Geo-Chemistry (and honestly, we are not really sure what that means, just that he is a smarty). We are hoping that some day at Widgix, he might be able to apply that expertise to something so that he can finally prove the value of his formal education.

Derek Scruggs
VP of Sales and Business Development

Derek is a Partner & the VP of Sales and Business Development at SurveyGizmo. Prior to joining SurveyGizmo, he was founder of the late, lamented Enthusiast Group, a network of user-generated content sites focusing on adventure sports. He has founded or co-founded numerous companies and worked in the Internet & software industries for 15 years.

A graduate of Northwestern University, Derek now lives in beautiful Boulder, Colorado.

Derek is so fabulously successful, witty, charming and just plain good-looking that he’s allowed to write his own bio.

Chad Shinsato
Client Services Developer

As a client services developer at SurveyGizmo, Chad designs customized solutions for clients and is always awaiting the next analytical challenge. Chad is a developer that will pick over a problem with a fine-toothed comb. He’s a problem solver at heart and is always looking for the next mountain to climb (if only to ski back down it). He loves to play with data and one day (he claims), he’ll be able to predict the future—he’s currently building a master computer to do just that. If Chad won the lottery he would travel through Asia, build a massive house, and then spend all his time developing a practical lightsaber.

Toi McDaniel
Finance and Account Manager

At SurveyGizmo, Toi is our Finance and Accounting manager. She keeps our books balanced and our numbers crunched. Toi comes to us from Thailand where she was a highly skilled chef and cooking instructor. Toi still enjoys cooking (and holding SurveyGizmo cooking lessons!) and can even be seen in a Food Network Challenge. Someday, if she had the time, she would like to be a professional vacationer.

Joe West
Software Developer

Joe is one of our stellar developers (or as he puts it the quiet guy in the background that breaks stuff). Joe works at SurveyGizmo’s Cambridge, Mass office, and came to us with over 4 years of developer experience. When Joe isn’t consumed in projects for SurveyGizmo, he is hard at work mastering his martial arts skills (watch out Chuck Norris!), playing soccer, or shooting pool. When Joe retires he’d like to tour the world on a motorcycle.

Mario Lurig
Sales Engineer

Mario’s official title is Sales Engineer at SurveyGizmo, but you’ll find him sticking his hands into as many cookie jars as he can. From Technical Support to tutorials and documentation, he is always looking for new ways to help customers help themselves. Mario hails from Reunion, France off the coast of Madagascar in the middle of the Indian Ocean… no, really… then Kenya, United Arab Emirates, and finally Florida. If he won a million dollars he would probably lie about spending it frivolously on travel and fun, then tuck it away and live off the interest.

Brittany Heidtke
Marketing Manager

Brittany is a marketing manager for SurveyGizmo. She is a Jill-of-all-trades spreading the word about SurveyGizmo, hand-writing cards, concentrating on our SEO, running Adwords campaigns, monitoring analytics, and blogging. She hails from Chicago, has three dogs, Gracie, Molly, and Sophie, and plans to take full advantage of beautiful Colorado this summer and go camping as much as possible.

Jase Smith
Web Designer

Jase is the web designer for SurveyGizmo and he needs to write a real bio to put here.

Jonathan Turk
Account Manager

Jonathan is an Account Manager Ninja and a sales guru from the cable and satellite industry. He comes from an extensive background of customer-facing service and support. When Jonathan isn’t using his Katana to slice through customer problems, he can be found developing children’s video games, composing music, or watching reruns of Frasier.

Marybeth Alexander
Account Manager

Marybeth is an Account Manager at SurveyGizmo, though she prefers the term “Customer Hero”. Previously, Marybeth taught middle school about 90 miles from Cuba in the Florida Keys. While she misses the long hours spent grading papers, she is happy to be at SurveyGizmo fulfilling her dream of being a real tech geek.