Dr. Richard Fenker, Founder & Chief Executive Officer

As the visionary and architect behind TheRetailPlanet.com’s platform and strategy, “Rich” is our fearless leader and a true Renaissance man – entrepreneur, inventor, writer, artist, and Emeritus Professor of Psychology.

Rich has been actively involved with the retail industry for more than 30 years. In 1982, he founded Tangram Corporation, a forecasting company specializing in customer research and sales forecasting for retailers. In 2002, he founded Prediction Analytics (which was sold to Experian in 2005), and developed the first online real estate forecasting system (TAOS) with auto-prediction logic (CHARMS) that constructs optimal forecasting logic and equations in real time.

He is the author of more than 500 published articles, papers, books and technical briefs in astronomy, mathematical psychology, pattern recognition, cognitive psychology, education administration, learning, environmental design, consciousness, sport psychology, mathematics, retail development, GIS and forecasting. His books on learning (Stop Studying Start Learning), photography (Where Rainbows Wait for Rain), and location forecasting (The Site Book: A Guide to Commercial Real Estate Evaluation) are still available on Amazon.com today.

In 1976 Rich received a National Science Foundation Fellowship for Advanced Study in Architectural Psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. This year, he was honored by the New Mexico Business Weekly with a "Who's Who in Technology.”

Rich studied Mathematical Psychology (AI) from Purdue University, where he received his PhD. He also earned a Bachelor of Science in Astronomy from Case Institute of Technology.

Michael Zercher, President & Chief Operating Officer

Mike is responsible for doing what’s gotta be done and for helping the rest of the TheRetailPlanet.com crew do the same. Prior to joining TheRetailPlanet.com, Mike held various management and leadership positions at Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company and RJ Reynolds. Most recently, Mike was based in Zurich, Switzerland, as the Managing Director of Santa Fe Natural’s international business. There, he oversaw all aspects of the business and led its growth from two to 85 employees across six countries with global revenues of $50 million in Europe and Asia. Mike has studied law at the University of New Mexico and humanities at the College of Santa Fe.

Dr. Lynn Cherry, Co-founder & Chief Technical Officer

As CTO, Lynn’s primary role is directing TheRetailPlanet.com’s real-time data initiative: Identifying retail store openings and closings; developing the major retailer database; and textual mining social media, news, and other web resource. Prior to co-founding TheRetailPlanet.com, Lynn was Vice President of Research and Development at Prediction Analytics and Vice President of Business Intelligence at the University of Pittsburgh's Medical Archival unit.

Lynn received her Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Texas Christian University.

Ambika Srinivasan, Vice President, Product Development

Ambika is responsible for leading data mining, modeling, and delivering the intelligence embedded in BrandScore and ShopPoint.

Prior to joining TheRetailPlanet.com, Ambika spent three years as the Director of Market Planning in Experian where she was responsible for developing several retail sales forecast modeling and market optimization tools. Before that, she worked for The Prediction Analytics, Inc., which was the first company ever to create an online market planning and sales forecasting system, which was later adopted by the Experian Business Strategies division. She also managed the team responsible for modifying the online forecasting tool for the Market Planning division of Experian UK and France.

Ambika received her Masters in Computer Science and majored in Data Management and Mining from University of Texas, Arlington.

Andy Alsop, Vice President, Business Development & Marketing

Andy’s responsibilities include creating successful partnerships and marketing. Before joining TheRetailPlanet.com, Andy was President and CEO of Packet Analytics, a venture-backed Network Forensic Search Engine software company based on technology licensed exclusively from Los Alamos National Laboratory. One of Andy’s previous companies, Panorama Point Corporation grew to just under 20 people with offices in New Mexico and Arizona and established its position as New Mexico’s premier web communications company serving clients such as Lucent Technologies, The Santa Fe Opera, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Andy led the sale of Panorama Point to a leading search engine optimization and web development firm in January of 2005.

Andy graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Business Administration from the School of Business & Economics at West Virginia University.

Vadim Kovalenko, Director of Software Engineering

In his role as Director of Software Engineering Vadim leads all software and Google application development. He is a talented mathematician, software engineer, database expert and GIS developer. Vadim joined TheRetailPlanet.com in 2005 and has been responsible for the majority of the current user interface and back-end software development. Prior to joining TheRetailPlanet.com Vadim worked for 10 years in a local software development company - Omega Software. He was the acting team leader in media planning and reporting projects. Projects he managed and was directly involved with included those for large enterprises such as Mediacom, Nielsen and others.

Vadim graduated from Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics in 2003 with a focus on mathematics and software engineering.

Advisors and Board Members

Rick Sanders, Board Member, Investor and Business Advisor

Mr. Sanders is currently a General Partner of Phase One Ventures, a technology focused VC firm based in Santa Fe, NM. Previously, he was President and CEO of Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company (SFNTC). During his 7 year tenure with SFNTC, Mr. Sanders trebled the company's market share and operating earnings and increased the company's estimated market value from $360M to over $1.5B. Rick is also long time private equity investor.

John Chavez, Investor and Financial Advisor

John is President of the New Mexico Angels and former Secretary of Taxation and Revenue for the State of New Mexico.