Steve led several breakthrough innovations in the consumer/leisure marketplace over the past two decades:
In the early 1990's, Steve was an original product team member that helped launch Microsoft's entry into the personal relational database market with Microsoft Access. As an original product manager for Microsoft Access 1.0, Access 95, Access 2.0 and FoxPro, Steve led the developer relations and international rollout and broader marketing efforts.
Steve led the team that conceived and created the web-based Internet Gaming Zone, now the MSN Gaming Zone . The MSN Gaming Zone, launched in 1995, is the largest and most frequently used games site on the Internet and now has tens of millions of players around the world. He participated in Bill Gates' famous "Internet Strategy Day" analyst briefing as a demonstrator. Many of the original design concepts of the Zone planted seeds for what would become Xbox Live.
In 1997, Steve left Microsoft and founded VacationSpot.com. Steve was President & CEO, and VacationSpot.com grew rapidly into the leading online reservation network for vacation homes, villas and condominiums around the world. VacationSpot.com acquired five separate companies and hosted more than 25,000 properties on the site, and then itself was acquired by Expedia.com in March, 2000.
As vice president of vacation packages at Expedia, Steve led the team that created Expedia's dynamic vacation packaging on the Web (see the "Vacations" tab of Expedia), including the first-ever merchant platform for sales and payment processing for destination services such as sightseeing tours, scuba diving, horseback riding and more. Vacation packages represent over $2 billion of annual gross bookings for Expedia and remain its most significant and fastest growing product line; Steve has a patent pending on the unique merchant platform for destination services that Expedia uses today.
Steve is chairman of Escapia, Inc., the leading application service provider in the vacation rental market and is on the board of Adventure Central Inc. He taught a course on innovation and strategy for the University of Washington MBA program in 2003. He holds a BS in business and computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, a MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MBA from Harvard University, where he graduated a Baker Scholar.