Colab Coop - Web Solutions for Social Enterprise

Karen is a writer & editor. She moved to NYC after finishing her MA in American Studies from UT Austin. The she quickly landed a job in Conde Nast’s corporate offices. Worked with each of the company’s 30+ magazines, she learned a ton about online and print publishing. Karen joined the team who launched the company’s e-commerce site, condenaststore.com, vetting it’s custom content management system, researching, writing and editing content for hundreds of the prints on sale and for several months, acting as the interim manager for the project.

After time serving as a peace lobbyist on Capitol Hill, an advocate for the homeless, and an academic researcher in clinical psychology, Brian has overseen the SEO and usability overhauls of over two dozen major sites. He maintains a daily meditation practice, and is active in local peace and sustainability movements in Northeast Missouri. He loves to garden and cook vegetarian food, and has an incredibly well stocked spice cabinet.

Jasper was born in busy Chicago, but was raised in the wonderfully gorges Ithaca. Early on, his father introduced him to computers, and he grew up using BlitzBasic, Logo, Scratch, and Processing.

While receiving an education as a mechanical engineer at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Alex realized what he enjoyed most in the field was designing things, whether that included the drier process of mechanical design, or the more creative and open aspects of invention, form and aesthetics. Though he ultimately decided against a career in engineering, he has always found some way to implement that background in every type of work. Alex has worked in graphic design since 2006, including (but not limited to) laying out and creating websites, phone application graphics, advertisements, event flyers, textures and video game graphics. In his work he combines his strong technical background and attention to detail with his life-long interest in artistic expression, which as best as he can remember began with drawing more dragons than one could count.

Jessica is a born artist with a fine art sensibility that cannot be taught. Her family lineage is that of fine tailors, toy makers, jewelers and craftspeople.

Jessica studied at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. It was there that she began refining her raw talent for integrating spiritual themes with modern creative disciplines such as motion graphics, animation and illustration.  Jessica also found time to study under a master Balinese painter who shared with her lineage tradition on imbuing iconography with deeper meaning. 

Born in New Jersey and raised in a small town in Pennsylvania, Timothy spent most of his childhood drawing and mentally expanding in a bubble of creative energy. He grew up in an eccentric family of seven and is most grateful to his parents for instilling in him his minimalist point of view along with the ability to see through the inanity of the world.

Ralph was raised in a tiny town in upstate new york cradled between the majestic Catskill Mountains and the storied Hudson River.  The influences of both the quiet, conservative wisdom of his family and the counter cultural spirit of Woodstock, are uniquely expressed through his creativity, critical thinking, decency and compassion.

Ralph’s saviness for technology took shape at the Park School of Ithaca College where he played around on HTML 3.2, Photoshop 4.0 and Pro Tools (before it was called Pro Tools). Professionally, he has accumulated more than five years in management and marketing. First taking on managerial roles in restaurant and retail, then returning to his first love music where he headed up the digital team of the indie music and lifestyle brand bluhammock. The economic conditions of the late augts saw the company’s early demise.  Ralph went on to found the artist collective Stache Group, this time focusing on commercial media artists creating and facilitating photo, video, web and viral projects.

Finding his way from the snowy tundra of Plattsburgh NY, 5 years ago Jayme arrived in Colab’s home base of Ithaca.  Upon arriving in Ithaca Jayme noticed a lacking in a local underground music scene, and thus created Ithacaunderground, the first thing he did, was create a website.  Jayme has been working on websites for over a decade; “since before websites had backgrounds”, and has seen the Internet grow and change. His main impetus is to create, whether its creating a design or a full fledge web application, Jayme loves to ‘make stuff’.

Yaniv Cohen brings a unique combination of skills and experience to the team. Having received his Computer Science degree from Cornell University, Yaniv spent many years working in the I.T. industry, with positions ranging from tech support, to operations management to director of a multi-office corporation in California. The last few years Yaniv sharpened his programmer skills by working on software such as Quicken WillMaker and Quicken Legal Business Pro, as well as Nolo’s online legal forms. Yaniv has the ability to understand & translate a client’s needs into technical speak and oversee an efficient implementation of any project. In his spare time, Yaniv cultivates a passion for meditation and charitable activities, and regularly travels between the Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York regions.

The Lineage: Rylan’s great-grandfather was a beat poet Iditarod dog sled racer who delivered mail in the wilds of Alaska. 

Rylan’s father rode the Tech Boom on the money-side and was born again as a Green Tech entrepreneur. 

Rylan’s mother is a living saint who models generosity and compassion with every action. 

In the convergence of these streams, can be seen the river called Rylan.

Eli trained in the Product Design program (a blend of industrial design and mechanical engineering, which emphasizes “design thinking”) at Stanford University, graduating in 1998. While at Stanford, he also studied printmaking (with the Mexican-born artist Enrique Chagoya) and photography, subjects he found far more engaging than the advanced calculus courses he kept falling asleep in. From there, he worked in Bermuda at the Bermuda Biological Research Station, where he was certified as a research diver and assisted scientists with their work, learning more about the mating habits of coral than he cares to repeat.

Nikolai just turned 1! He likes short walks on the beach (about 24 steps max, usually to mommy or daddy), and putting random objects in his mouth. Nikolai has been mashing it up on his dads laptop since he first learned to wiggle towards it, and has since learned the magic of the glowing caps lock key, and that babys can be very productive simply smashing their hands into the keyboard and chewing on the enter key they just tore off. As you can see in Nikolais picture, he was at one point in time, very much, on a boat.

Born on an army base in Fayetteville, NC and raised in the worst school district in Bronx, NY, Maria spent most of her child cooped up in her apartment because according to her mother, “It’s dangerous out there, Mija. The streets are full of sickos.” After watching more TV than she could handle and reading every book in the house, it was no wonder that Maria could not contain her excitement when her mom purchased her a complete set of The Encyclopedia Britannica. Now there was no end to the reading material in the house.