About Liftopia
Liftopia operates the largest online marketplace and ticket sales platform serving the mountain activity industry. On Liftopia.com, skiers and riders can purchase lift tickets, equipment rentals, meal vouchers and more from more than 250 ski areas in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Liftopia is also the leading provider of dynamic ticket pricing and online ticket sales platforms for lift companies, water parks, and other attractions. Over the past 13 years, Liftopia developed the only online ticket sales platform (“Cloud Store”) with a revenue management model, data structure, and toolset explicitly focused on dynamic ticket pricing. Founded in 2005 and co-founded by CEO, Evan Reece, Liftopia’s goal is to help its partners maximize online sales.
Our Team
Evan Reece, CEO
Evan founded Liftopia with Ron Schneidermann in 2005. Evan has deep experience in building pricing, yield optimization and inventory management strategies for lift tickets, rentals, lessons, and other ski resort related products. Prior to starting Liftopia, he was at Hotwire.com where he managed revenue maximization and pricing strategy for mountain destination hotels. Fun facts: He spent 4 years working out of his closet to get Liftopia off the ground. He is fluent in German and grew up skiing at Ski Bradford, Attitash and Sunday River.
Matt Cohen, CFO
Matt joined Liftopia in the summer of 2011 and oversees the company’s Finance and Operations. He brings travel e-commerce experience from Hotwire, where he spent four years in financial reporting and planning. Matt also worked on Cisco System’s Channel Finance team and at SummerHill Homes in corporate/project finance & strategy. He earned his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and his BA from Colby College. Matt learned to ski at Nashoba Valley near his hometown of Wayland, Massachusetts.
Tony André, Account Director, Europe
Tony is a native French guy from the Brittany region. As he loves travelling, exploring new continents and connecting with different cultures, he embraced a career as a Biz Dev, which brought him to different tech companies in Europe. After managing the sales of a family-owned hotel group in Iceland, he fell in love with revenue management. He finally decided to settle in Switzerland – first representing HotelPartner, a Swiss company specialized in yield management for the hospitality industry. Liftopia adopted him as its new representative for the French-speaking markets in Europe!
Alex Dewar, Account Director
Alex is originally from the East Bay Area, but lived mostly abroad since graduating from UC Davis. He worked as an English foreign language teacher in Prague, Czech Republic, and in Seoul, South Korea, while also travelling extensively throughout Europe and Asia. He loves travelling and taking on new challenges, and anything outdoors, including mountain biking, hiking, swimming, and of course skiing and snowboarding.
Christina Dong, Principal Platform Engineer
Christina grew up in the central New Jersey suburbs and started coding in college after a person in IRC #punk told her programming was “fun” and she should take an intro CS class. Since then, she has worked everywhere from tiny startups to large companies like Insight and Adobe, and is excited to finally combine her passion for the outdoors with her technical experience. She enjoys backcountry skiing (occasionally freeheel), rock climbing, photography, and exploring the mountains with her dogs.
Sean Engie, Sr. Finance Manager
There are many things that enhance one’s life, such as high thread count sheets, jeans with the right fit, and the correct amount of lime in your Moscow mule. Sean will have a pointer for you on all of those topics. He spends his non-snow days tearing up the basketball court, dunking like Jordan and channeling Curry with his threes; and on his snow days, you’ll find him shredding on his snowboard.
Caroline Fallu, Partner Services Specialist
Caro was born and raised in Hull, Québec (across the river from Ottawa). She has been playing ice hockey since the age of six. She moved to Atlanta in 2012 to be with this cool guy she met at an adult hockey camp in Guelph, Ontario. In 2014, they moved to the Lake Tahoe area to enjoy the four seasons again. She enjoys skiing, travelling, hiking, kayaking, mountain biking, playing ice hockey at high altitude, and geeking out on board games. She is also obsessed with languages and taught French at Kennesaw State University for six years.
Norris Johnson, Customer Support Team Lead
Growing up on the East Coast (Ice Coast) wasn’t always easy; however, give it time and you end up as the best skier on the mountain. That passion for the outdoors drove Norris from a desk into a tiny house, adventuring all the way to Alaska on a wild journey. Norris, now back in the East, crushes it remotely in a secret location. When found you can see him skinning up mountains with his canine sidekick, slacklining on beaches, or exploring the side country with his mates.
Adam Lasky, Director of Sales, North America
Adam was born and raised in the greater Washington DC area and grew up playing competitive soccer and exploring the out of doors. After a year of college in New England he journeyed west to Arizona State University to finish school. From there life took him to Las Vegas, Seattle, back to Phoenix and then back to Seattle. Adam has spent most of his career working in the online travel world, and he’s excited to combine that experience with his love of mountains at Liftopia. Adam is passionate about the mountains, the beach, Ashtanga Yoga, rescuing pit bulls, and his family.
Beth Lovell, Senior Manager, Partner Services
Beth grew up in Minnesota, went to college in Washington, spent four years in the mountains of Colorado skiing a lot, and moved to San Francisco in October 2014, at which time she joined Liftopia. Having never lived anywhere without cold and snowy winters or near an ocean, living in the Bay Area has been a new and exciting experience, and Beth keeps busy in her free time exploring all that the area has to offer! Beth also loves road trips, dogs, chocolate, and water sports.
Edwin Ng, Manager, Customer Support
Edwin is a native San Franciscan. He grew up in North Beach and lived everywhere from Chinatown to the Excelsior district. He learned to snowboard while attending Sacramento State University. In his free time, Edwin enjoys playing poker, overanalyzing his fantasy football lineup, and hanging out with his family and friends. With his previous experience in customer support at SquareTrade, he hopes to create customer loyalty and satisfaction by redefining the way we assist our customers. Edwin is excited to be a part of the Liftopia family and looks forward to making a difference.
Drew Oliner, Director, Engineering
Drew was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, and made San Francisco his home about a year prior to joining Liftopia. He’s got years of system administration experience under his belt working with startups like FanTV and giants like Oracle. When he’s not working, you can usually find him at a go-kart track, hiking/biking up some mountain, or playing video games and hanging out with his wife and their four cats.
Kathryn Quinn, Senior Director, Partner Enablement & Analytics
Kathryn joined Liftopia in November 2013 as a Partner Strategy Manager but now runs Liftopia’s Partner Enablement & Analytics team. While she is originally from NYC, Kathryn moved to California to attend Pomona College, where she received a BA in Chemistry before moving to San Francisco. She spent the first part of her career as a consultant at Deloitte, after which she became an analyst at Partnership Capital Growth. Kathryn spends her free time cycling, outdoor adventuring, relaxing with her cat, and of course, skiing.
Christian Ross, Market Manager, Europe
Christian was born and grew up in the countryside of Sauerland, Germany, where he had his first experiences on skis quite early and established his passion for the outdoors. After studying sports management in Cologne, he worked for a communication agency in Munich, Amazon in Cape Town, and was self-employed providing and executing active/sport group holidays. His love for travelling and diving into different cultures has led him to Australia for a study abroad semester, two longer backpacking trips to Southeast Asia, and a US road trip.
Evan Runnalls, Sr. Quality Assurance Engineer
After being born and raised in rural Ontario, Canada, Evan found himself in Iowa City and remained there for several years prior to relocating to California’s Inland Empire. Evan has offered his QA expertise to numerous companies over the years and is excited to bring his experience to Liftopia. When he’s not working Evan enjoys traveling with his wife, gaming, strumming away at a guitar, and working with 3D Animation software.
Arley Schenker, Partner Analytics Associate
Arley is a proud native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. After getting her bachelor’s in cognitive science from Carnegie Mellon and her master’s in psychology from Bucknell, she decided to transition into data analytics through a UC Berkeley Extension bootcamp. She moved to San Francisco in July 2018 and enjoys listening to podcasts, rock climbing, yoga, and completing the New York Times crossword.
Connor Schmidt, Senior Product Manager
Connor was born and raised in the South Bay, where he’d make day trips with the fam to Sugar Bowl and other fine Tahoe resorts. He spent his college years in upstate New York where he didn’t ski, but played in a bar band. After school he ended up back in the Bay Area where he jumped into the tech industry – most recently managing the Trust and Safety team at Couchsurfing. At home, he gets deep into making music and projecting funky visuals.
Kari Tjader, Senior Account Executive
While Kari grew up and learned to ski in the Chicagoland suburbs, the passion and past experience that her to Liftopia was in the waterpark and attractions industry. From working all over the US standardizing a major indoor waterpark brand to traveling abroad training lifeguards, she has connected with waterpark folks all over the world and is excited to bring Liftopia’s experience to a different type of water activity! In her free time she loves traveling. Her #1 trip so far was to the Maldives.
Heather Witta, Accounting Supervisor
Heather was born and raised in a small suburb outside of Philadelphia. The highlight of every winter while growing up were trips with her dad to the Pocono Mountains to ski at Jack Frost, Blue Mountain, and Montage Mountain. Ironically, she moved to San Francisco in 2011 in order to avoid the long and frigid Northeast winters. (And also to avoid ever having to scrape ice off of her windshield again!) She now enjoys day trips to Tahoe when she wants some winter in her life. After spending two years as an auditor for a large accounting firm in Philadelphia and then backpacking all over the world, she is excited to take on new accounting challenges at Liftopia!
Board of Directors
Evan Reece, Co-Founder
Erik Blachford
Jim Connor
John Swanciger
Corley Hughes
Investors
Amicus Capital
First Round Capital
Industry Ventures
Lowercase Capital
ru-Net
Sand Hill Angels
Xandex Investments
SK Ventures
Thayer Ventures
Erik Blachford
Gregg Brockway
David Hehman
Dave Morin
Dave Pell
Spencer Rascoff
Sam Shank
Jeremy Stoppelman
Walter Winshall
Paul Kedrosky
Marc Benioff
Russ Holdstein