The Team

Unata's technology & services are provided by a passionate & dedicated team with end-to-end expertise, comprising retail systems integrations, software development, user experience design, machine learning, predictive analytics, and retail loyalty marketing.

Marc Faucher - Chief Operating Officer

Marc brings to the team close to 20 years of operational, consulting and venture investing experience.   Most recently Marc was an investment Partner with the BlackBerry Partners Fund, a venture fund with mandate to back innovative tech companies shaping the global mobile ecosystem.  He brings extensive experience in founding and guiding companies through all stages of their business life cycle from seed to later stage with proven success at realizing financial success.  Throughout his investment experience (which spans both the BlackBerry Partners Fund and Summerhill Venture Partners) Marc was directly involved with such companies as Aepona (mobile cloud infrastructure), Neuralitic (mobile data analytics), Transpera (video ad network acquired by Tremor Media), Netshelter (influencer ad network), Anomalous Networks (mobile expense solution acquired by Tangoe), Jumptap (mobile targeting network), Trust Digital (mobile enterprise security acquired by McAfee) and Radian6 (social media analysis acquired by Salesforce.com).

His other professional experiences include corporate development with Bell Mobility, strategy consulting with The McKenna Group, and product management at Ericsson.  Marc is also currently an advisor with both the Extreme Startups and JOLT accelerator programs located in Toronto. Marc has a BASc in Engineering from the University of Waterloo and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business.  He’s excited to be part of the Unata team to help navigate the company’s growth trajectory.  

Diego Maniloff -  Head of Personalization Sciences

Diego is a computer scientist from Argentina specialized in the art of barbecuing. He received his BS/MEng degrees in Telecommunications Engineering from Universidad Blas Pascal in Córdoba, and upon becoming a Fulbright scholar he joined the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. After completion of his MS, Diego became a research fellow at MIT, focusing on applied AI and data analysis. The fascinating challenge behind recommender technologies is what keeps him happily busy at Unata.

Jack Read - HTML5 App Development

Jack is a web developer, originally from England. His 7+ years as a freelance web developer, has given him unique experience with projects of all sizes and working with teams and clients all over the world. Jack's primary focus is mobile web, using cutting edge technologies to build mobile apps, that run on all mobile devices, in a mobile web browser. 

Justin Howlett - iOS App Development

Justin is an iOS developer who has developed award winning iOS apps, including  the Global TV 2.0 app update, which generated over 750,000 downloads and reached number 8 in top free iPad apps in Canada. He also developed the DocStudio iPad app for TVO, which was featured as the Canadian iPad app of the week from Oct 20-27 2011.

Zach Howard - Software Developer

Zach Howard graduated from McMaster University with a B.Eng Software. While at school he worked on several interesting projects including a fully-autonomous scale model car with a focus on safety features, and a prototype health information system to show how SMS cell phone technology can help to reduce maternal health related deaths in Africa. Outside of school, he worked on a startup where he built a framework for designing, testing and implementing automated trading systems.

He is currently engineering Unata's backend platform, writing Python code, and contemplating how to grow Unata's software architecture to meet the challenges ahead. His other hobbies include making music and other arts.

David Grguric - Visual Design

David is a designer hailing from Toronto's OCAD who has been doing website & app design, as well as web development for the past 7 years. A staunch supporter of Apple's approach to simple & clean design drives Dave to produce great customer experiences, Dave produces the visual design for all websites and apps that Unata builds. 

Madeline Marovino - Marketing & Community Manager

Having obtained a degree in sociology from Queen's University, Madeline continues to be fascinated by new and emerging social trends and technologies. With training in promotional marketing and sponsorship, Madeline was quickly hired out of school as the Director of PR & Marketing for a Toronto-based fashion distributor. Looking for a new challenge, she joined Unata equipped with brand marketing and media relations experience. Today, Madeline is the lively voice behind FreshPoints and as such, is responsible for community management,  member acquisition, and brand partnerships.  A Toronto native who is rarely seen without her iPhone, Madeline can be spotted all around town exploring the nooks and crannies of Toronto on her bike.

Carla Alexander - iOS Developer

A little over a year ago Carla was a writer in the communications industry. However, her affinity for life-long learning and taking on new challenges spurred her to go from writing prose to writing code. She built her first app, TVO On Demand for Google TV, fresh out of Sheridan College's Interactive Multimedia program. Now Carla is tackling Objective-C and iOS app development with Unata's Front-End team. Outside of the office Carla is an avid hockey player and video gamer.

Christian Fricke - Software Developer

Christian recently finished his degree, B.Sc. in Computer Science and Media, at the Bauhaus-Unversität Weimar, Germany. His research projects ranged from capacity constrained query formulation to featured article identification in Wikipedia. He has been employed at the university as TA for various classes and system administrator for the high-performance servers and cluster. Open source software, information processing, logic puzzles and art house keep him up at night. During the day he prefers to slackline or play the kalimba in the park.