About

The Estalea Team

• Management

  Per Pettersen

  As chief executive officer, Per Pettersen is responsible for the overall management and leadership of the company. Prior to founding Estalea, Pettersen served as senior vice president and chief technology officer of Commission Junction, an online pay-for-performance advertising provider and vice president technology at ValueClick (NASDAQ:VCLK). From 1996 to 1998 Pettersen founded and served as CEO for Active Internet Marketing, an e-commerce software solutions company that developed the proprietary software platform that Commission Junction utilizes. Pettersen has a wide range of expertise from e-business product strategy, ASP software development management, general operational management, finance, and online marketing. Pettersen served on the board of directors at Commission Junction and he is currently on the board of directors of inQ inc., Sherman Oaks. Pettersen earned his bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering and his master of science in computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

   

  Roger Kjensrud

  As co-founder and chief technology officer, Roger Kjensrud oversees and drives the technology vision of the company. Most recently, Kjensrud served as director of engineering at Commission Junction, an online pay-for-performance advertising provider. Prior to that Kjensrud served as engineering manager at ITT Industries (NYSE: ITT) in the Advanced Engineering & Sciences (AES) division. Kjensrud also has senior engineering experience from Stanford Telecommunications, Inc. working on various digital communications projects for NASA. In 1996 Kjensrud co-founded Active Internet Marketing, an e-commerce software solutions company, and headed the company’s IT functions. Kjensrud earned his bachelor of science and masters of science degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prior to that he also earned a bachelor of science degree in telecommunications from Gjøvik College of Engineering, Norway.

   

• Technology

  Knut Forkalsrud

  Since 2006 Knut has been magister factotum in Estalea's engineering. His prior background includes 5 years at Commission Junction, where he transformed the technology of a rabid dot com startup into a mature, scalable system. Before the internet got its grip on Knut, his career started out in broadcast systems with Tandberg Television in his native Norway. There he was involved in everything from PCB layout to real-time operating systems, user interfaces and manufacturing. Since then he's had a knack for marshaling the smallest of details into an overarching structure. Knut holds the degree of sivilingeniør from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

   

  Albert Lo

  Albert is a product designer at Estalea. He believes every product’s success starts with the user experience and has a passion for making things as simple and intuitive as possible. Albert is an ex-Yahoo! where he worked on the Yahoo! Finance and Yahoo! News properties, both traffic leaders in their respective categories. Prior to that, he was a senior creative consultant at Tallan, working with clients such as Disney and AOL. Albert received a Masters of Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, where he honed his skills in user interface design, rapid prototyping, usability research, and pulling all nighters.

   

  Patrick Redman

  Patrick has been a member of the software development community for over a decade and has led a diverse set of software projects to success. Before starting his career as a software engineer, Patrick earned a Masters degree in Mathematics from the University of California Santa Barbara and spent two years living in Grenoble, France working in the technology sector. Patrick returned to Santa Barbara for the perfect beach weather and abundant mountain trails well suited for both hiking and biking. It was there that Patrick joined AIM a leader in the human capital management space and led them to a successful sale to Waltham, MA based Authoria. Since then Patrick has helped many other public and private Santa Barbara companies in the online collaboration, social media, and voice over IP sectors.

   

  Chris Jeffus

  Chris has over ten years of technical experience as a consultant and in various roles with local startups. His experience includes everything from UI Engineering to graphic design and branding to SEO. With Estalea, Chris lives in the User Interface, focusing primarily on Javascript, Velocity and CSS development. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and playing basketball. Chris holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

   

• Technical Operations

  Jeff Behl

  Jeff started at UC Santa Barbara working for 4 years in various technical operations roles ranging from managing the technical operations at Instructional Computing to being a part of the Network Operations Center that oversaw the campus backbone network. Since then, he has been overseeing enterprise networks and infrastructure at SeeBeyond (now Sun/Oracle), Citrix Online (formerly Expertcity) and Fastclick/Valueclick. In these companies he designed and supported all aspects of enterprise infrastructure, from building out datacenters, planning for datacenter failovers, network and system security, global VPNs design, and storage systems. Beyond bit shepherding, Jeff is an outdoors enthusiast, spending his free time cycling, mountain biking, snowboarding, kitesurfing and surfing....among other things. "Work to live, not live to work, and to achieve this one needs to have a stable and secure infrastructure!"

   

  Antonio Varni

  Antonio was one of Estalea's first hires and wears too many hats to count. He has 12+ years experience as a senior systems/network/information security engineer. Past employers/clients include Commission Junction, C&D Aerospace Inc, and several regional Internet Service Providers. During his tenure at Netlojix, he worked on projects implementing and managing application deployments for the United Nations. He loves cats and refuses to run anything other than Linux on his desktop. Outside of work, he spends his time fishing for leopard sharks and teaching his kid PHP.

   

  David Rodriguez

  David was born and raised in the Central Valley of California. He has worked with many aspects of both Physical (alarms, lock-smithing, access control systems and video surveillance) and Network/Systems security systems. Prior to Estalea, he worked as a technical support representative managing software at over 200 Realtor Associations across the U.S. Additionally, David has 5+ years working with websites and applications with integrated payment systems as well as PCI-DSS compliance. David has an AS in Computer and Electronic Engineering and a BS in Information Systems Security from ITT Tech and his specialties include Penetration Testing, Systems Administration and General systems security. He believes that Linux will save the world. When not working, David is likely to be snowboarding, mountain biking, playing softball, spending time with family and /or caring for his Reptiles (Shortly after High School he worked at Tropical Discovery -- The Fish and Reptile house -- in the Denver Zoo as a keeper's assistant. workingclosely with many reptiles, fruit bats and small mammals. The howler monkeys are still his favorite.

   

• Administrative Resources

  Samantha Zacharias

  Samantha heads up Estalea’s Human Resources department. Prior to joining Estalea in 2008, Samantha spent two years running her own consulting business where she helped various start-up tech companies build their human resources infrastructure. Prior to that, Samantha headed up the Human Resources department for Commission Junction, a ValueClick company (NASDAQ: VCLK). In her 6+ years with CJ, Samantha built the HR department from the ground up and along the way, helped managed the company’s explosive growth, going from 15 to 150 employees - and 1 location to 5 - in a span of 2 years. She also was instrumental in the company’s acquisition by VCLK and subsequent merger with BeFree, Inc. and ultimately (and most importantly, in her opinion), in building a lasting company culture. Sam graduated from UCSB with a BS in Law & Society (and after nixing the idea of law school after a 3-month back-packing trip across Europe that made her question her plan to become an attorney). In the bit of spare time that she has, Sam enjoys writing, music, poetry, running and creating artful things (esp with her kiddos!).
  

   

  Andrea Tressler

  Andrea Tressler was born and raised in southern California and is a true Californian at heart! She attended University of California, Santa Barbara and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies, with a minor in History. She also received a certificate in Human Resources Management through the UCSB Extension Program. Before joining the Human Resources team at Estalea, Andrea’s prior experience has involved working in fast paced, high growth companies, including her tenure at Global Brand Marketing Inc. as Director of Human Resources. In her free time, Andrea enjoys traveling to tropical destinations as well as spending time with friends and family, including her dog, Lola.

   

  Marielle Smith

  Marielle Smith brings over 10 years of recruiting experience to Estalea and its operating companies. Having worked as an outside vendor as well as an internal recruiting resource for businesses such as Deutsch Inc., Newscorp and Comcast, she also helped build two recruiting businesses specializing in placing top digital talent. Before her recruiting career, Marielle worked as a digital marketing strategist, a researcher for documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, and as a German teacher and scholar at Harvard University. She loves skiing, scuba diving, auteur films of the 60s - 80s - and her house rabbits Mr. Big and Rhumba.

   

  Alyson Kaye

  Alyson graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a minor in Exercise and Health Science. She interned at Intel Corporation, where she became enamored with the fast pace of the tech industry. She is thrilled to be a member of the Human Resources team in the growing, innovative environment that Estelea offers in the heart of beautiful Santa Barbara. Outside the office, her favorite pastimes include traveling, cooking, baking, playing competitive games of softball, tennis, and bowling, and trying to be a wine connoisseur.

   

  Josh Kindervater

  Joshua Kindervater joined Estalea in 2010 as the Associate Controller where he manages the day to day accounting responsibilities. Prior to this position, Josh worked in accounting and FP&A for Green Hills Software and Citrix Systems in Santa Barbara, CA. He was educated at Fordham University in New York, where he earned a BS in Public Accounting including an accreditation in International Financial Management.