Yen Lee

Yen Lee, President, has 12 years of entrepreneurial experience in search and online travel. Yen co-founded CitySearch San Francisco, was EVP at WorldRes where his team captured 12% of 2001 online hotel bookings (source: PhoCusWright), and most recently was General Manager for Travel at Yahoo which he helped grow 40% YOY to $300M in annual revenue.

Yen previously worked at McKinsey and received his masters from MIT and undergraduate degree from UWO. Yen is a frequent speaker in industry conferences, including PhoCusWright, EyeForTravel and TIA events etc. and has provided analysis and interviews for New York Times, Travel Weekly, Bloomberg, MSNBC and others on search, social media, e-commerce, and travel.

Gene McKenna

Gene McKenna, VP of Product and Co-founder, has 15 years of experience in software design and product development in direct marketing and travel. Previously Gene ran product at Acxiom Digital (formerly Digital Impact) and was responsible for the platform that sent over 5 billion personalized emails daily; during his tenure the company reached profitability for the first time. Before that he co-founded Bluedot Software, a travel company sold to Peter Ueberroth’s Ambassador’s International. Gene is a MIT-trained engineer and has a Masters from Stanford.

Elliott Ng

Elliott Ng, VP of Marketing and Co-founder, has co-founded two successful ventures focused on consumer loyalty and engagement, Netcentives and Loyalty Matrix. At Netcentives he launched the largest online loyalty program backed by frequent flyer miles, developing online partnerships that represented over 70% of total internet portal traffic and capturing 12% market share in first 18 months. Most recently Elliott ran web marketing for Intuit QuickBooks where he accelerated sales to 50%+ YOY. Elliott started his career as the product manager for PowerPoint and Excel at Microsoft. Elliott is a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Business School.

Patricia Jenkins

Patricia Jenkins, Marketing Communications Manager, manages the UpTake blog network and the marketing communications program for UpTake. Patricia previously worked as Group Marketing Director at Nolo, the leading legal publisher in the U.S. She started her career in online travel at CitySearch by launching the San Francisco market with Yen Lee. After CitySearch, she worked as a marketing consultant in the online travel and real estate industries. Her clients included Wrecking Ball Advertising Agency, OneMediaPlace and Martin Building Company.

P Ling's Avatar

P Ling joined UpTake as a writer more than a year ago and was instrumental in launching our first corporate blog and supporting our search optimization team. In addition to writing for the Uptake blog, P Ling also is the author of the Triphow blog. Before starting work for Uptake in November 2007, he wrote for the internet division of a Manhattan based medical travel company. Alongside his job as a writer, he has also worked as a research and outreach consultant for a non-profit advocacy organization based in Sausalito, CA.