Jonathan Soverns
Chief Operating Officer

Andrei Kersha
Secretary

Andrei attended Rensselaer and received his BS in Computer Science with minors in Management and Economics. He's spent 10 years in the I.T. market working for industry giants like IBM, General Electric, Iron Mountain as well as many small start-up companies. Andrei has started two companies, received two patents by the 4 th grade, and is always working on the next big opportunity. Currently Andrei is managing the Quality Assurance department at a successful I.T. firm in Massachusetts.

Continuing the family tradition of public service, Andrei joined AFS after arriving to the U.S. 15 years ago. Since then, he has volunteered in many different roles in local communities. Andrei specializes in Ukrainian, Russian translations and being a Slavic cultural ambassador in the United States . He has worked as a translator for FRUA (Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption), CCP (Children of Chernobyl Project) and other non-profit organizations.

Julie received her B.A. from Hawaii Loa College and her M.Div. from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She has 20 years of experience in non-profit agencies such as hospitals, domestic violence centers, hospitals and churches. Her work with these groups has ranged from counseling and advocacy to fundraising and public relations. For four years she lived in the Philippines and worked with programs for street children and squatter communities.

Craig founded GrandCentral in November 2005 to solve the problem of having too many different phone numbers and voicemail systems.  Getting off a plane and having to check three different voicemail boxes, each with different key prompts, made him realize that this was a growing problem that needed to be solved.  Craig had been Senior Director of VoIP at Yahoo! after selling his prior company, Dialpad Communications, to Yahoo! in June 2005. 

Craig was a founding investor in Dialpad in 1999 and was recruited by the Board to join the company as CEO in November 2001 to turn around the failing effort.  When he joined, Dialpad was losing $4 million per month and had burned through $80+ million in little over 18 months.  Craig successfully reorganized the company and changed the business model from a free service with advertising revenue to a pay service.  On less than $4 million of total investment in the new company, Dialpad was transformed into the most profitable VoIP company in the industry and was acquired by Yahoo! four years later.

Prior to Dialpad, Craig was a venture investor at Sterling Payot Capital, where he focused on consumer Internet service opportunities. Prior to Sterling, Craig was both General Counsel and Associate at TeleSoft Partners, an early stage telecom focused VC fund, where he was the 4th member of what is now a $500 million global fund.  Craig began his career as a corporate and securities attorney in the Silicon Valley at the firms of Gunderson Dettmer, and at Brobeck, Phleger and Harrison, where he represented companies ranging from early stage start-ups to tier one venture capitalist to Cisco Systems.

Craig received his B.A. from UC Berkeley, his M.B.A. from Georgetown University and his J.D. from Boalt Hall School of Law at UC Berkeley.