Board of Directors

The Pica9 Board of Directors includes business and technology thought leaders from a variety of domains.

Kevin Groome
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Since founding Pica9 in 1999, Kevin has led Pica9's strategic planning, technology development, and enterprise sales efforts. He brings more than two decades of experience in the advertising industry to the company and has been involved in online marketing since 1987, when he helped launch one of the first software advertising campaigns on the then-infant AOL.

In his previous role as Chief Creative Officer of WNG Advertising, Mr. Groome was instrumental in growing the firm from a regional shop into one of the top 20 high-technology advertising agencies in the United States (Marketing Computers Magazine, 2000) . His work has garnered numerous awards including Addies (American Advertising Awards), Effies (Direct Marketing Association Awards), and a broad range of industry-specific accolades.

Mr. Groome began his career as the president and founder of Groome Associates, a marketing communications firm specializing in service to high technology companies, where he amassed a blue-chip client list that included brands like IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Software Publishing, among others. His work in field sales support for Apple Computer twice received the Golden Apple Award—the company’s highest award for marketing effectiveness.

Mr. Groome is a magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University.

Dr. John K. Buckner Sr.
Director
Dr. Buckner has enjoyed careers as a scientist, a business executive and a mentor to start up companies. He has operated, restructured and financed a variety of technology-based businesses. His executive experiences include positions with Control Data Corporation (Vice Chairman); EG & G, Inc. (Sr. VP, CFO); Prime Computer (CEO, CFO); and Waters Associates (COO, CFO).

He is best known for building the infrastructure of rapidly growing companies and for orchestrating major financial transactions. The latter includes the IPO of Commercial Credit Corporation (CCC). At the time, this was the second largest IPO in history and constituted the first step in transformation of CCC into Citigroup.

Dr. Buckner served, or is serving, as a director of numerous firms including Waters Associates, Charles River Data Systems, Codon Corporation, Commercial Credit Corporation, VTC, Control Data Corporation, Country Lake Foods, Pensco, Bohdan Automation, IMIS, ABR, UmeVoice, Pica9, and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.

He received his BA from Williams College, an MS in nuclear engineering at MIT, and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. Dr. Buckner was a member of the 68th Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. His bio appears in Who’s Who in America.

Dr. Jeffrey V. Nickerson
Director
Dr. Nickerson is an Associate Professor at Stevens Institute of Technology in the Wesley J. Howe School of Technology Management. He directs the Center for Decision Technologies, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. He also teaches a graduate course, Integrating Information Systems Technologies, focused on large-scale information system design. Professor Nickerson has published over 50 scholarly articles.

Prior to Stevens, Dr. Nickerson was a software developer and project manager. As a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he performed consulting related to software design for many companies. Prior to that he worked at Bear Stearns and Salomon Inc, and was responsible for the design and development of mortgage allocation and program trading systems. He also worked as a member of the programming staff at AT&T, where he developed image processing algorithms, and at Time Inc, where he participated in the Teletext project. He has B.A. from U.C. Berkeley, an M.F.A in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University.

John Buckner, Jr.
Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Buckner brings to Pica9 more than 20 years of management experience in the information technology industry. Mr. Buckner joined Pica9 in April of 2007 as Chief Operating Officer after leading a $3 million angel investment round that engendered a reconstituted Board and a new management team.

Prior to joining Pica9, Mr. Buckner founded and managed a successful consulting services practice dedicated to improving end-to-end technology solutions for banks, trust companies, and broker/dealers. Without capital investment, he grew that business in a highly competitive environment from a single consultant with one customer and nominal revenues to more than 250 consultants, fifty customers, and more than $30 million in revenues in less than ten years.

In 1999 Mr. Buckner sold his consulting services business to a publicly-traded IT services company, Mastech (now Igate), from which he resigned in 2002 to pursue his interest in viticulture. During the three years Mr Buckner was part of Mastech, he successfully combined his consulting business with a web-application development business already owned by Mastech, reducing operating costs for the web application business and delivering profits for the combined entity.

Prior to founding his consulting services business, Mr. Buckner worked as a project manager for a financial services software company that later become part of Sungard Data Systems.

A graduate of Princeton University, Mr. Buckner brings leadership and practical technology applications expertise to Pica9's dynamic and rapidly growing business.

Dean Buresh, Director
Mr. Buresh, a native of Fairfax, Iowa, is one of the founding partners of Slipstream Communications, a privately held communications company with several operating entities, including Gyro HSR and CRI, Inc. Prior to Slipstream Communications, he was C.E.O. of Marketing Drive Worldwide, Zipatoni and StudioXpress at Interpublic Group from 2003 to 2007 with revenues of $130 million.

Prior to Interpublic, he was C.E.O. of Bozell Kamstra and Sixty Foot Spider with revenues of $65 million at True North from 1997 until 2003 when acquired by Interpublic. He also was C.E.O. of Kamstra Communications from 1987 until 1997 and started his career in advertising in 1972 in Chicago after serving in the U.S. Army. Mr. Buresh received a B.A. (1968) and M.A. (1970) in Communications from the University of Iowa and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) in Finance from Loyola University of Chicago (1979).