Jessica Ewing
CEO & FounderAn unapologetic lover of literature, Jessica Ewing is Founder and CEO of Literati. Jessica began her career as a product manager at Google, where she worked directly for both Marissa Mayer and Sundar Pichai for five years developing consumer products. She was featured in Fast Company as one of “Google's 12 Most Innovative Minds” in 2007, and she is the co-owner of five different patents in consumer technology design. Ewing left Google in 2009 to pursue a lifelong dream of writing.
Charlie De Tar
Chief Systems ArchitectCharlie DeTar is the Chief Systems Architect at Literati, and head of the engineering department. He joined Literati as its first employee in 2016. From early academic beginnings studying philosophy at U.C. Berkeley, he went on to earn a Master of Arts in Electro-acoustic Music from Dartmouth, and a PhD in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT's Media Lab. Charlie has now been doing web development with complex and data-intensive systems for over 20 years. Outside of Literati, Charlie moonlights as a wilderness surival instructor at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School, and is an avid ultrarunner. He's the proud father of a growing Literati reader.
Angela Pierce
Chief Financial OfficerAngela leads the company’s accounting and finance functions, guiding strategic financial planning and building partnerships that expand Literati’s marketplace ecosystem. Her expertise as a financial steward ensures Literati’s continued growth and success. Angela is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and holds both a Bachelor's in Finance and a Master's in Business from The University of Texas at Austin. She was also recognized as the Best CFO in the Private Company category by the San Antonio Business Journal. Before joining Literati, Angela served as President & CFO of Anaconda, a venture-backed AI/ML company. There, she played a pivotal role in restructuring and recapitalizing the business, reducing operating expenses by 20%, and spearheading go-to-market strategies that drove a 250% compound annual growth rate in enterprise customers. She also raised $180 million in equity and $75 million in debt, while successfully sourcing and closing two M&A transactions to accelerate Anaconda’s product roadmap. Angela’s financial leadership extends to her tenure as CFO for AirStrip Technologies, a Sequoia-backed company, where she oversaw finance, HR, legal, and accounting. She led more than $125 million in capital raises, including preferred equity, venture debt, and a final exit to Nant Health. At Trillion Partners, Angela navigated the company through the 2009 economic downturn and raised $70 million in debt and private equity. In earlier roles, she held key corporate finance positions, including leading M&A, treasury, and investor relations for a $1 billion public company, where she raised $250 million in capital and facilitated a successful exit.
Daragh Sibley
Chief Algorithms OfficerDaragh is the leader of Literati’s Analytics and Algorithms team. This team works to optimize all the company’s high value decisions. For instance, they build algorithms that pick which books get sent to each client, how each book is priced, and what/when/how much inventory is purchased to balance client and financial outcomes. Moreover, the Analytics and Algorithms team creates and enables a culture of data driven strategic decision making throughout the company (see this talk where Daragh describes his approach). Prior to Literati, Daragh spent 8 years leading multiple algorithms teams at Stitch Fix, which operates a model very similar to Literati’s Clubs. Daragh joined Stitch Fix when it was smaller than Literati and helped grow it to a profitable public company generating over $1.5B of revenue a year. Daragh earned a PhD in Applied Experimental Psychology, by developing large scale neural network simulations of language acquisition and then testing these models’ predictions in neuro-imaging studies. These studies yielded dozens of peer reviewed articles and conference papers.