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.

Zach Thompson
Technology Director
Los Angeles, CA

Zach studied Photography and Media Studies in college and used his skills to land a job as QA Manager at a startup Multimedia company in the bustling San Francisco tech boom. After a stint attending computer engineering classes at the University of Wisconsin, he moved back to California to work for a quickly growing ISP in San Luis Obispo. He worked in a small team to develop a CRM tool to run the company's growing pool of 30,000 users. The company was eventually bought by Earthlink, due in part to the robust software tools that Zach helped develop. After a move to Portland, Oregon, Zach started the Web design/hosting company Mt. Hood Media, Inc. Mt. Hood Media merged with the Interprose Corporation to form a new partnership, the Interprose Consulting Group, Inc. Mt. Hood Media brought a wealth of computer programming knowledge to the partnership, and made it possible to develop large E-Commerce applications for companies like SBC Communications and the Safeway Corporation. Zach developed distributed database applications to allow access to databases with over 10 million records to call centers spread around the country. Zach joined the English, baby! team in 2002 with the mission of re-engineering the software base to enable growth and scalability in deploying client web sites.

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.

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
ESL Content Developer
Portland, OR

Shortly after he began writing the English lessons for englishbaby.com in April 2007, Jason began speaking only about pop culture and day to day life in 60-90 second intervals. If you find him riding his bike around Portland and talk to him, he will compulsively define vocabulary words for you and ask you quiz questions about what you just talked about. Thank goodness he took his degree in English literature from Lewis & Clark College in 2006, just before he lost his mind. Jason somehow manages to recover his wits long enough to contribute regularly to the Oregonian and various music publications. He also dons tights and leads a heavy metal Shakespeare company on a weekly basis, but that's another story.

Goro Harumi
Web Maintenance
Portland, OR

Goro was born and raised in the SF Bay Area. He graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Oregon in 2001. Prior to working at Versation he worked fulltime as a designer at a toy manufacturing company in NW Portland.

JASON DANIEL
MEDIA RELATIONS
Portland, OR

Jason or "Jas" (pronounced "jazz") studied at the New Mexico State University and now knows more about numerous education and technology reporters than they would probably be comfortable with. He joined the Versation team in January 2008 and enjoys RPGs and skiing in his free time.