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Leadership Bios
Leadership Bios
Listed below are biographies for Virgin Mobile USA's senior leadership team. For interview requests, please contact Jayne Wallace, jayne.wallace@virginmobileusa.com.
Chief Executive Officer
Dan Schulman, a New Jersey native, joined Virgin Mobile USA as founding CEO in September 2001, bringing a record of high performance in the consumer-marketing arena and almost two decades of experience in the telecommunications industry. Schulman has led the company from its concept stage and national launch in 2002 to become one of the nation’s top wireless carriers, with more than 5 million customers and $1.3 billion in annual sales.
Virgin Mobile USA is now a public company trading on the New York Stock Exchange [VM]. Among the many milestones during Schulman’s tenure is the designation of the company by J.D. Power & Associates as the highest ranked prepaid carrier in the U.S. in overall customer satisfaction for two consecutive years.
Prior to joining Virgin Mobile USA, Schulman served as the chief executive officer of priceline.com, where he established one of the most popular and recognized brands on the Internet, and was a primary architect in driving the company to profitability. Before that, Schulman served more than 18 years at AT&T, becoming the youngest member of the company’s most senior executive team, the AT&T Operations Group. When he left AT&T, Schulman was president of the $22 billion core consumer long distance business.
Named by Business Week as one of the top 20 people to watch in media, and recently named as one of the top 25 most powerful people in the global wireless industry, Schulman was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey. Growing up, Schulman played football, tennis and lacrosse at Princeton High. He then earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Middlebury College and a Masters in Business Administration, majoring in Finance, from New York University. Schulman currently serves on the Board of Governors of Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey.
Dan Schulman is a member of the Board of Directors of Symantec (SYMC-NASDAQ) and of Flextronics (FLEX-NASDAQ). He chairs the Compensation Committee of SYMC, serves on the board of Autism Speaks, and also serves on the advisory committee of Greycroft, a private equity company focused on early stage new media and technology companies.
Schulman was recently named a winner of the New Jersey Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award, saluting executives' efforts in business excellence and community improvement.
Currently, Dan Schulman lives with his wife and two children in Warren, New Jersey where Virgin Mobile USA is headquartered.
More info on Dan Schulman
Dan Schulman's Google Profile
Dan Schulman on LinkedIn
Dan Schulman on Wikipedia
Dan Schulman on Facebook
Jonathan Marchbank
Chief Operating Officer
Jonathan Marchbank joined Virgin Mobile USA in March 2006 as chief operating officer and is charged with running the day to day operations of the business, comprising retail sales, product management, customer care and IT. Marchbank initially joined the Virgin Group in 2002 and previously served as chief executive officer for Virgin Mobile in both Australia and Asia. In addition, he has held senior executive roles with Nokia, Philips Electronics and Telstra. After two years at Philips Electronics in Singapore, Marchbank joined Telstra Corporation, the market-leading carrier in Australia, as managing director of Telco’s A$2bn+ wireless division. Marchbank holds a diploma in business studies, majoring in marketing, from Newcastle Business School in the United Kingdom.
John D. Feehan
Chief Financial Officer
John Feehan joined Virgin Mobile in January of 2002 as vice president of finance and was promoted to chief financial officer in August 2006. He is responsible for the company's overall financial activities and planning. Prior to joining Virgin Mobile, he served as chief financial officer of SAGE BioPharma. Feehan previously worked for Faro Pharmaceuticals as vice president - financial and operational planning and as director of finance for Stadtlander Drug Distribution Co. Feehan began his career at Price Waterhouse in Philadelphia and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from St. Joseph’s University.
David Messenger
Chief Administrative & Corporate Development Officer
David Messenger joined Virgin Mobile USA in July of 2005 as chief people officer, responsible for attracting, retaining and engaging the best talent for the company. In 2008, Messenger's title was expanded to reflect the key role he plays in deal development including several Virgin Mobile milestones including its 2007 IPO, its 2008 acquisition of Helio, and the pending acquisition of VMU by Sprint in 2009.
Corporate development and administration is under his aegis now, in addition to management of all human resources capabilities including recruitment, compensation, organizational design, leadership development and workplace culture and benefits.
Prior to joining Virgin Mobile, Messenger served as senior vice president of human resources for Take-Two Interactive Inc. in New York City. Messenger also worked at Towers Perrin as principal and practice leader, responsible for the change management practice in the East and Central regions; and at PricewaterhouseCoopers as a principal consultant, leading the HR team in the Entertainment, Media and Communication practice. He was educated at University of Wales College Cardiff and Robinson College Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
Peter Lurie
General Counsel
Peter Lurie is general counsel of Virgin Mobile USA, and, as co-founder, he played a key role in the formation and launch of the company. He has played a critical role in guiding the company from the start-up phase through its national launch and subsequently rapid growth, completing several capital transactions and an initial public offering, managing the obligations of a public company, and helping to negotiate and structure a strategic acquisition. He has broad management and strategic responsibilities and focuses on negotiating relationships with key partners, including technology, major media—he structured some of the more innovative deals in the digital media—retail, financial and manufacturing companies. Previously, Lurie served as principal of a private equity group for a German bank, which completed the first public offering of a private equity fund of funds in Europe. Prior to that, he worked on mergers & acquisitions and private equity transactions at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. Mr. Lurie is a graduate of Dartmouth College and The University of Chicago Law School, where he was an editor of The University of Chicago Law Review.
Bob Stohrer
Chief Marketing Officer
Bob Stohrer joined Virgin Mobile in January, 2003 as vice president of brand and communications. Previously, he served as vice president and creative director at the National Football League (NFL), where he directed the League’s branding and marketing communications efforts. At Virgin Mobile, Stohrer has been behind Virgin Mobile’s most defining marketing campaigns – including Chrismahanukwanzakah, the Nothing to Hide naked campaign and No Seas Normal, the most awarded Hispanic campaign of 2005.
In his current role, Stohrer leads an integrated marketing team responsible for brand stewardship, demand creation and product marketing. As such, he is responsible for advertising and media campaigns, public relations, web and digital initiatives, events and partnership development including Virgin Mobile’s title sponsorship of the 2009 Circus Tour starring Britney Spears and Virgin Mobile’s pro social outreach, called the RE*Generation.
He attended the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.
Tim Evans
Vice President, Handset Planning & Operations
Tim Evans joined Virgin Mobile USA in October of 2001 with nearly 20 years of business experience – including 16 years at AT&T. At Virgin Mobile, Tim handles all aspects of VMU’s forward and reverse logistics. This includes oversight of forecasting, procurement, and management of the company’s third party logistics provider to ensure that handsets, Top-Up cards, and POS material are purchased, packaged, and delivered to retail partners and direct customers. Tim is also responsible for billing & collections of VMU’s equipment revenues.
Prior to joining the company, Tim was a founding member and chief operating officer of Ziptone LLC, a customer service startup with a client list that included AT&T consumer services, Avis, Excite and a variety of other eBusinesses. At AT&T he worked in various operational roles including customer service, billing and collections, and data center operations. He also served as a product manager for CustomNet (AT&T’s first bundled business service), led strategic pricing for AT&T consumer markets, and held several other strategic roles including business planning and results reporting. Tim has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Dayton, and an M.B.A. from NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Daniel Acton
Chief Information & Technology Officer
Dan Acton joined Virgin Mobile USA in July of 2008 and is responsible for leading the company’s evolution in information technology as it continues to expand its information operations through an outsourcing agreement with IBM and the integration of Helio’s technology operations. In this role, Acton assumes management responsibilities for the present Virgin Mobile USA IT and product development operations. Acton leads the postpaid Engineering, MIS and financial systems operations as well as incoming strategic technical partnership relationships. Furthermore, he serves as the technology liaison to the telecommunications industry.
Acton brings a broad management and technical background to his role at Virgin Mobile USA, and having served in a wide variety of executive management roles in engineering, strategy, M&A, and delivery capacities with General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Unisys, Corning and IBM, where he was most recently a partner in managing large, complex programs for Global Business Services. Earlier, he served in various C-level roles of early stage technology companies. Acton is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and the Johns Hopkins University, and engaged in a doctoral scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and Moore School of Engineering.