Openbay adds to exec team

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (May 29, 2015)  — Openbay Inc., a nationwide online marketplace for auto repair, has added three to its executive management team.

Rob Infantino, founder and CEO of the Cambridge-based online and mobile marketplace where consumers can find, book and pay for local auto repair and maintenance services, said since the company's inception, “we have made tremendous strides — refining our product, scaling the business, attracting top-tier investors and strategic partners and launching OpenbayConnect.

“Our innovation and momentum has enabled us to attract strong executives with proven track records to complement our current team and its work to bring the automotive repair services industry online.”

The following are new Openbay team members:

• Ashley Halverson becomes Openbay's vice president of marketing, leading multi-channel customer acquisition and retention efforts. Prior to joining the company, she spent the past three years with Goji, an auto-insurance comparison website, most recently as its vice president of marketing, managing channel expansion efforts including strategic partnerships rebranding campaigns. Prior to working for that company, Ms. Halverson held previous marketing and analytics roles at Freedom Disability, a national social security disability advocacy group, and Mayo Clinic Health Systems. She has a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

• Kevin Osborne joins Openbay as vice president of customer development, leading the firm's member services team in developing and supporting its service provider network and vehicle owners. Prior to Openbay, he spent five years working at AOL, most recently as a regional sales manager overseeing two consecutive years of growth in both endemic display and the ad network sales business. Prior to that, Mr. Osborne worked at Citysearch as a senior account executive and OC101 Enterprise as its director of sales. He has a bachelor's degree in marketing from Bentley University and a master's degree in business administration from Babson College.

• David Vallance becomes vice president of product, overseeing Openbay's Web and mobile platforms. He previously was the director of deployment engineering at Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon), leading the first implementations of integrated mobile robotic systems for Amazon ecommerce fulfillment centers, and developing the Technical Account Management and Configuration and Integration teams. Prior to that, Mr. Vallance spent 10 years at Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle) in a progression of roles, ultimately overseeing ecommerce program-, product- and engineering-management, operations, data and Web architecture. He has a bachelor's degree in marketing from University of Massachusetts Amherst and a high-tech master's degree in business administration from Northeastern University.

Privately held Openbay's investors include Google Ventures, a16z seed, Boston Seed Capital, Stage 1 Ventures and several individual investors, according to the firm.