Board

Israel Ganot

Israel’s bio is available in our Management Team section.

Austin Ligon

Austin Ligon was appointed chairman of Gazelle’s board in 2011. Bringing 30 years of retail experience to the team, Mr Ligon takes an active role in the development of Gazelle business strategy and retail partnerships. Most recently Mr. Ligon was the co-founder, president and CEO of CarMax, the nation’s largest retailer of used cars, from its inception in 1991 until his retirement in 2006. He has also served as Senior Vice President of Strategy for Circuit City and Marriott Corporation. Earlier in his career, Mr. Ligon served as a senior consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Prior to taking the role of chairman, Mr. Ligon served as a Director at Gazelle since 2007.

Ashton Peery

Ashton is an experienced manager, investor and high-tech consultant. He is a former General Partner of Lucent Venture Partners, served as the Chief Strategy Officer and head of Business Development at Lucent Technologies and was the Managing Director of GeoPartners Research, Inc., a thought-leading technology strategy consultancy. Early in his career, Ashton was a public television Producer, Director and Writer. He serves on the Boards of several early stage startups and a New Ventures incubator.

Mike Tyrrell

Mike joined Venrock in 1999 after 16 years as an entrepreneur at venture backed technology companies. Prior to Venrock, he spent nine years with Spyglass, a Venrock-backed portfolio company, joining as their sixth employee. Spyglass licensed the first Internet browser Mosaic to many of the world’s leading software, online services, and device companies, including Microsoft. As the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Mike helped take the company public in 1995. Before Spyglass, he was with two other start-ups, Multiflow Computer and Celerity Computing, both UNIX systems pioneers. Mike began his career at Prime Computer.

Henry Vogel

Henry Vogel has nearly 20 years of media and marketing experience and a track record of success leading and helping fast growth, consumer Internet companies. He is currently President and CEO of Apptera, Inc. (www.apptera.com), a leading voice and visual mobile advertising network. Prior to joining Apptera, Mr. Vogel was Chief Revenue Officer at Quigo, an online ad network and Search Engine Marketing firm. Mr. Vogel also held a number of executive positions at eBay including Vice President of Internet Marketing and Business Development as well as leading the company’s Corporate Strategic Planning & Analysis group. He’s also been a successful entrepreneur and consultant. In the mid to late nineties, Mr. Vogel was the founder and CEO of eClips, a provider of data-mining and direct marketing services to retailers and consumer packaged goods manufacturers. Mr. Vogel started his career and spent nearly fourteen years as a Partner and Senior Consultant at The Boston Consulting Group focused on the Consumer and Retail sector where he gained experience in consumer marketing, branding, retail, sales, operations and corporate development.

Alexander “Hap” Ellis III

Hap’s interest in energy took root during his first job out of college, when he went to work for US Senator Edward Brooke (R-MA) as a Legislative Assistant. In the ensuing four years, Middle East events changed forever both the politics and the economics of the global energy sector. Once in the private sector he formed a boutique insurance brokerage group to work with independent power companies. He was recruited away from the energy space by Knoll International to help re-invigorate this now well known furniture name. After the sale of Knoll to Westinghouse, he was recruited to Kenetech Corporation, the leading wind development and turbine manufacturer at the time, to help globally position this venture-backed company in anticipation of an IPO. After Kenetech and prior to joining RockPort, Hap and a partner developed, permitted and sold two 500+MW gas-fired power plants in the US, among other entrepreneurial ventures. Hap is a graduate of Colorado College with a BA in Political Science and earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

Andrew Williamson

Andrew is a Director at Physic Ventures, a San Francisco based Venture Capital firm investing in consumer-directed Health and Sustainable Living. Andrew’s investment practice is focused on companies that are developing technologies, products and services to enable consumers to adopt more sustainable lifestyles. Among the portfolio investments managed by Physic Ventures, Andrew is a member of the boards of Chromatin, EnergyHub, Gazelle, Halosource, Impinj and Novomer. Prior to joining Physic Ventures in 2007, Andrew spent 10 years leading materials science research and development projects at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Andrew has published over 50 peer reviewed academic articles and 2 patents. He holds a BA and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Cambridge and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

David Asarnow

David Asarnow is a Principal at Craton Equity Partners. His extensive start-up and transaction experience improves Craton’s capacity for making investments and managing portfolio companies. Mr. Asarnow co-founded and served as Executive Vice President of Corporate Development for Control Room and Live Earth. At Control Room, Mr. Asarnow led an organization that grew from inception to a leading digital media company with blue chip customers such as Microsoft, AOL, Qualcomm and Nokia with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London. At Live Earth, he oversaw the Global media architecture that resulted in one of the largest events in history, creating a tipping point in generating consumer awareness around climate change. Mr. Asarnow has worked closely with organizations such as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's Alliance For Climate Protection and Global Water Challenge to help shape Live Earth's overall business, messaging and policy strategy. Mr. Asarnow is active in the angel investment community, having structured numerous investments into early stage companies in the clean tech, media and high tech sectors. Mr. Asarnow has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA as well as a BA cum laude from Tulane University.