John Hayden
CEO/Co-Founder
Portland, OR

After graduating from the University of Oregon in 1996 with a degree in business and Japanese, John moved to Tokyo, Japan where he taught English at ICC and received his TESOL certificate. In 1997 he was hired by Hitachi, Ltd. and worked as an International Contract Manager. He returned to the U.S. in 1999 to co-write the Versation business plan. In 2000 he co-founded the company and successfully led it to profitability in 2003. Today Versation is a leader in student management software for higher education, as well as online ESL instruction.

Jewel Lin
Marketing Manager
Portland, OR

Jewel came to the U.S. from Taiwan after high school. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Graphic Design from the Art Institute of Portland. Before joining Versation, Jewel worked as a full-time graphic designer at the Zoom Studio and designed everything from marketing materials to web graphics to tradeshow art. Besides working for Versation where she handles marketing strategy and learns English slang everyday, she also recently completed the MBA program from University of Portland with a concentration in Marketing in May 2008.

Jason Simms
Media Director
Portland, OR

Jason oversees the writing and production of multimedia English lessons for English, baby! and is the main on-camera personality. He is also in charge of recruiting celebrity talent to appear in English, baby! lessons and gaining media exposure for the company, which sometimes involves use of his near-fluency in Spanish. By night, writes about music for publications such as The Oregonian and Spin, and recently completely his first screenplay. He performs regularly as a solo musician and with the Metal Shakespeare Company, which he formed while earning an English degree at Lewis & Clark College.

Zach Thompson
Technology Director
Los Angeles, CA

Since joining the team in 2002, Zach has engineered Versation's software to enable growth and scalability on English, baby! and education partner sites. He got his start as a QA Manager during San Francisco tech boom and after studying computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin, developed a CRM tool for a quickly growing ISP which was ultimately bought by Earthlink. He went on to found Mt. Hood Media which, following a merger and transformation into Interpose Consulting Group, developed large E-Commerce applications for companies like SBC Communications and the Safeway Corporation.

Alexis Nelson
ESL Content Developer
Portland, OR

As a lesson writer and official Grammar Nerd for englishbaby.com, Alexis spends a good deal of time thinking about the passive voice, non-count nouns and the third conditional progressive. Alexis has a BA in English Literature from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Portland State University, and a TEFL certificate. In addition to her work at English, baby! Alexis teaches English as a Second Language and Writing to teens and adults. She has also published essays and reviews in papers, magazines and journals.

Didi Davidovich
Designer
Portland, OR

Didi graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in fine arts. After getting her BA, she went on to graphic design school and also worked for various independent agencies along with some established design agencies. Didi lives and works in the Portland area and likes the color gray.