Masabi Management Team
Brian Zanghi, Chief Executive Officer
Brian is Masabi’s Chief Executive Officer and President. He is focused on accelerating the company’s growth globally, and scaling the team to serve the evolving mobile ticketing market. He is a software industry veteran who brings 20 years of experience in building software-as-a-service businesses to address the global market.
Prior to joining Masabi, Brian was CEO of Awareness, Inc, a provider of social marketing software. Before that he also served as CEO of Kadient and held ‘C’-level positions at a variety of software companies such as SPSS, NetGenesis and eRoom.
Ben Whitaker, Head of Innovation
A Co-Founder of Masabi, Ben is the company’s product evangelist, focussing primarily on business development at the company. He is a familiar face on both the mobile and train industry circuits, regularly invited to interviews and speaking slots at major industry events worldwide.
A classic visionary, Ben helped define the UK rail mobile ticketing standard and move the weight of industry opinion behind it. He is also a security expert with a strong engineering background, designing Masabi’s award-winning encryptMe product. Prior to founding Masabi, Ben worked at IBM, Xerox and Raytheon (Encrypted Radar Systems) on projects ranging from computer interface usability to military cryptography. Ben has an MEng degree in Engineering and Management (MET) from Cambridge University.
Tom Godber, Chief Technology Officer
Tom is a Co-Founder of Masabi and a mobile programming expert with a passion for design and usability. Keenly aware of changing mobile trends in what is one the fastest moving consumer markets today, he defines the technical strategic goals and implementation plans that allow Masabi to best meet the needs of end users.
Tom has spent almost ten years at Masabi building mobile applications, servers and frameworks, troubleshooting, and architected a gaming platform now processing millions of dollars per month. Prior to founding Masabi, Tom worked with Accenture and Trilogy Software in addition to founding MoMo Estonia. Tom has a master’s degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University.
Matt Jones, Chief Financial Officer
Matt is Masabi’s CFO supporting the company’s financial, commercial and strategic development as it grows and expands into new markets. He joined in February 2012 from PricewaterhouseCoopers in London where he spent 11 years advising private equity and corporate clients making acquisitions, divestments and operational improvements.
During this time Matt has worked on projects for clients across the globe including in Europe, the Middle East and US across a variety of sectors in particular Technology, Media and Telecoms. Matt qualified as Chartered Accountant in 2003 and holds a BA in Economics from the University of Exeter.
Sara Poulton, Vice President of Services
As Head of Services for Masabi, Sara is responsible for service delivery, account management and support services, insuring that our customers receive seamless implementation and ongoing support for their mobile ticketing platform initiatives.
Sara has successfully developed professional services and consulting teams, and has also served as a VP of Marketing and Director of Product in a variety of enterprise B2B companies, and also successfully launched mobile applications for sales enablement.
Most recently – VP of Global Professional Services at Avention (formerly OneSource), data solutions for sales and marketing, including mobile application delivery for sales enablement and relationship managers; project management, application development, presales engineering. She also has an MBA from Simmons College, USA and BSc Economic History – University of London.
Ed Howson, Co-Founder
Ed is a Co-Founder of Masabi and has over fifteen years’ experience in the mobile sector. Since founding the company he has worked across marketing, PR and business development where he helped to define the company’s brand identity and raise its profile within the mobile and transport sectors.
From Masabi’s origins offering free mobile games with in-app purchases a decade before they became mainstream, to casino games and mobile payments, he has kept Masabi at the cutting edge of technology and helped to grow the company to where it is today, one of the fastest growing, innovative, mobile ticketing companies in the world.
Alongside Masabi, Ed also founded specialist PR agency Temono with a client base that has included: IPWireless (Acquired by General Dynamics), Ubiquisys (Acquired by Cisco), RAD Data Communications, the Femto Forum and Ericsson IPX. He previously worked at AxiCom, a leading pan-European PR and Marketing consultancy where he managed accounts including Flarion (Acquired by Qualcomm), Trigenix (Acquired by Qualcomm), Airespace (Acquired by Cisco), RealNetworks, Symbian, Sierra Wireless, Esmertec, Beatnik and IBM.
Giacomo Biggiero, Head of Business Development, UK & Asia
As Head of Business Development UK&Asia Giacomo is responsible for Masabi’s growth strategy in the UK and Asian market.
Part of the original founding team Giacomo has over 9 years experience in bringing smart ticketing to transport operators and market suppliers to realise the consumer convenience and operational benefits smart ticking can deliver too this complex market.
Involved in the Project Management of the Masabi UK Rail product from inception, Giacomo has overseen the evolution of the product from proof-of-concept through to multiple roll-outs to nearly half of the UK rail industry, continuously expanding the national mTicketing offering as it matures from small-scale trials to large multi-operator routes. Giacomo has an M.Sc, BEng in Mechanical Engineering from University College London.
Josh Nicklin, Head of Business Development, EMEA
Josh Nicklin, Masabi’s Head of Business Development for EMEA has led some of the foremost mobile ticketing deployments worldwide. His background is in mobile, working in the industry for more than a decade with Trinity Mirror PLC, AKQA and Netplay TV PLC.
Prior to Masabi, Josh founded Touch Mobile as part of a management buyout of a gaming service from within Netplay TV, subsequently successfully selling this company and then went on to form another organisation within the mobile marketing space. In his previous role as Head of Marketing at Masabi he managed the customer collaboration around promotional activity that lead the successful first deployment of mobile ticketing in the US, bringing JustRide to Boston’s Commuter Rail network.
Since then as Head of Business Development for EMEA he has gone on to lead deployments in the UK with Thames Clippers and one of the first city-wide multi-modal deployments of mobile ticketing worldwide, in Athens.
Jonathan Donovan, Chief Product Officer
Jonathan is Masabi’s Chief Product Officer, responsible for defining and driving the product strategy. Prior to joining Masabi in 2014, Jonathan was an independent consultant. He was engaged by companies such as MasterCard, Western Union Business Solutions and Travelex Global Business Payments to deliver strategic payments and F/X solutions on a global basis.
Before this, Jonathan was an Enterprise Architect at Lloyds Banking Group and VocaLink, the company responsible for the United Kingdom’s payment clearing infrastructure and ATM network.
John Scrooby, Head of People Operations
John is Masabi’s Head of People Operations. He is an experienced technical manager who now uses his knowledge of IT and his passion for people to manage Masabi’s talent acquisition and retention strategies. In previous technical roles, he pioneered work delivering highly redundant and scalable PCI DSS compliant applications from the Cloud.
Previously John was Head of IT at Forward Internet Group, a startup incubator where he managed and supported other highly available, high transaction web applications.
