Our Team

Alen : President/ Creative Director
Alen Yen is an artist and designer trapped in a business-driven world. From an early age, he wanted nothing more than to successfully render spaceships, robots and comic book characters. In 1993, after receiving degrees in Industrial Design and Metalsmithing from the University of Michigan School of Art, he started his first consultancy servicing architects and designers with graphic and computer-aided design. In 1995, after receiving a Master's in Education from RISD, he worked for several years as a concept designer and consultant for the gaming and new media industry, contributing to projects for Blizzard Entertainment, Sierra Online, and LEGO. During this time, Yen founded ToyboxDX.com, an online community celebrating antique japanese robots of the 70's and 80's that receives over a million visits a month. The robots are "power- objects that have reforged the link to memories of his cross-cultured childhood travels between Jersey and Taiwan." Really.

His primary interest continues to be data-driven user interfaces for education, gaming and publishing. He currently resides on the North Shore with his true love Cheryl, 2 kids, a stray cat, a fat pug, and several hundred robot friends.

Andrew : Designer/Integrator
Before joining iFactory, Andrew was a web developer at Eons.com in Boston and Director of Web Development at The Advantage in Amherst, New York. Andrew brings a great range of experience and skills and we are fortunate to have him on board.

Cheryl : Account Executive
Cheryl holds a BS degree in Economics, with a minor in Mathematics from Plymouth State University. Prior to joining Interactive Factory she was at Corey McPherson Nash and Big Blue Dot, where she gained several years of experience developing and managing entertainment and educational products for both print and broadcast. Cheryl has a wide range of knowledge about the elements multimedia and web site production. Her clients include MIT, Lego, Pearson Education, Addison-Wesley, Reuters NewMedia among others. During the course of a project, Cheryl is an advocate for both the client and Interactive Factory, ensuring that project objectives, quality of work and established scope remain consistent. Cheryl is also responsible for maintaining long term client relationships, as well as forging new ones.

Dan : Senior Software Engineer
While some people discover their destinies later in life, Dan's penchant for coding began with his DNA. Even before earning his BS and MS in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Dan has fine-tuned his skills throughout the industry at Sun Microsystems, dotcoms, and other freelance gigs. Addicted to improvement, Dan works on bettering how things are done at iFactory in both client and internal projects.

David : Producer
With nearly a decade interactive experience behind him, David has always made it his mission to stay on the leading edge of interactive technology. An expert in DHTML, JAVA and other languages, he works closely with the creative team to develop web sites and interactive solutions that function as perfectly as they look. From creating best-case architecture, to recreating a creative design on the web, to ensuring the stability of a web site on various platforms, he makes sure it all comes together flawlessly. David has worked on projects for a broad range of clients, including the National Turkey Federation, Ocean Spray, Pfizer and Boston Acoustics. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Brandeis University.

Gina : Designer
Prior to joining Interactive Factory, Gina was an Interactive Designer at Boston University. She has several years experience designing and developing web sites. But enough about work, in her spare time, Gina enjoys the New England Patriots, Japanese anime, and eating chocolate (though she didnt specify what kind of chocolate or if shes a chocolate snob). She studied design at the Massachusetts College of Art and has almost perfected her Inazuma Double Lightning Kick. So look out.

Glenn : Chief of Operations
Prior to becoming a principal with IFactory, Glenn was a co-owner and President of BeeLine Internet Resources, a profitable web development firm sold to SkyWorld, Inc. Prior to running BeeLine, Glenn was the Managing Director of GE Capital Consulting's Boston Office. He worked as a commercial loan officer prior to attending graduate school. Glenn has a Master's in Management Science from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a BS in Economics from the University of Lowell. Glenn serves on the Board of Directors of MetaVR, a virtual reality firm serving the defense sector. Glenn is the founder of the Richard Morgan Scholarship fund, a 503(c) corporation providing annual scholarships to students demonstrating community leadership, and Project Elf, a 503 (c) non-profit matching donors with hundreds of children in need during the holiday season. Glenn serves on The Boston Community Capital Loan Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors and Fundraising Co-Chair for The Saint Peters School in Cambridge. Glenn serves as Treasurer and Board member for Somerville Community Development Corporation, an organization providing affordable housing to the residents of Somerville through efforts such as the current three acre, six building, 80 unit St. Polycarps conversion project.

Greg : Interactive Media Designer
Greg has worn many professional hats over the years and now finds himself happily nested in the world of interactive design. He likes to create things for the computer that move, make noise, and respond in interesting ways to user input, as well as coming up with innovative ways of organizing and presenting information. He is fond of using the “wet blanket” approach to coding, and if that doesn’t work, he resorts to the elegant and beautifully organized variety. Outside of work, he is seriously involved in painting and playing classical cello. Greg has an MFA in Painting from The Massachusetts College of Art.

Jen : Designer
Jen (a.k.a. “that girl that does web design”) has been creating web sites and other interactive media since 1996. Before joining IFactory she was a designer for Show & Tell, where she worked with a variety of clients including Fleet, Citibank and Microsoft. Jen spends most of her spare time eating candy, drinking coffee and finding other ways to procrastinate and avoid writing her bio.

Jeremy : Designer
As a member of iFactory's design team, Jeremy is tasked with idea generation, interface design, and production for a variety of clients. Rooted in the heritage of graphic design and fluent with technology, his work is known for its creative excellence and attention to usability standards.

Before joining iFactory, Jeremy was the interactive designer at G2G, a small agency in the Boston area focused on work for higher education and cultural institutions. While at G2G, Jeremy designed award-winning projects for clients such as MIT, Boston College, the Baltimore Collegetown Network, Steinway & Sons, Dooney & Bourke, and Prentice Hall.

Jeremy received his BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He is actively involved with AIGA Boston, serving on the board and managing the chapter's web site, developing it as a destination for the design community of New England.

An avid reader and music fan, Jeremy enjoys spending free time away from the computer, outdoors preferably, and also seeking out little-known corners of art and culture.

Joe : Producer
Joe "Joey G" graduated Notre Dame as an English major with some basic HTML editing skills, and decided it would be easier to create web sites for a living and write fiction on the side than vice versa. After working as Webmaster for Thomson/Heinle he became a Technology Project Manager at Thomson Higher Education, where he project managed educational media for Developmental English, Composition, Literature, and Study Skills markets. He discovered how technology and print could combine to educate people on new concepts, and completed three continuing education courses at the Art Institute of New England to further his print and web design skills.

Joe tempers his passion for yoga, pilates, and crazy dancing to 80's music with a love of Pho, Italian, Chinese take-out, and just about any combination of bread, meat, and cheese.

Joy : Senior Software Engineer
Prior to joining iFactory, Joy literally worked across the globe with the computer media research company ATR (Applied Technology Research) in Kyoto, Japan. There she developed and evaluated a system which performed emotion recognition in speech using neural networks (we don't really know what this means, but it sounds cool). Joy enjoys building things from the ground up, or as she says, taking the complex and making it simple. Those of us at RDW not as computer savvy as Joy appreciate this.

Joy's educational background is as dynamic as she is. A graduate of MIT with a degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering a Music minor and a concentration in Japanese, Joy's musical talents include playing the trumpet, flute, and Japanese temple drums.

Lao : Account Executive
As an Account Executive at iFactory, Lao’s primary focus is to engage prospective customers and work with existing clients in order to match their needs with iFactory’s service offerings. Lao works closely with the iFactory team and her clients to define solutions and to insure that expectations are consistently met or exceeded for each and every engagement. Through her years with iFactory Lao has developed relationships with clients such as the Ad Club, Ford Foundation, Oxford University Press, Theatre Communications Group, Yale Law School and many more. Before taking on the role of Account Executive, Lao previously worked as a Producer at Interactive Factory with clients such as American Institutes for Research for the U.S. Department of Education, Harmonix Music Systems, Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention, Lotus, and Mulberry Childcare. Through the years Lao has been an active participant with area organizations such as the Cyber District, MIMC, and the Ad Club. Lao has been with Interactive Factory since 1997, and prior to this worked at Brandeis University’s Office of Academic Affairs and Study Abroad. Lao is currently attending Cambridge College and is working towards a Bachelor’s of Science in Management Studies.

Lisa : Producer/Project Manager
Lisa is a resourceful producer/project manager at iFactory, a compulsive organizer and note-taker. During her many years with Ticketmaster she worked on many internal application development projects including work on the ticketing applications that were used for the Olympic Games in Athens, Greece (in 2004, not 1896). She has worked as a project manager, database administrator, business analyst, and has created her fair share of charts of accounts. Not one to say "I should have (fill in the blank) when I had the chance," Lisa has backpacked through Europe, explored the Greek isles, skydived over the north shore of Hawaii and participated in a 200 mile running relay race. She also is a proud parent to her dog, an obedient servant to her cat, and an avid gardener.

Liza : Senior Software Engineer
Liza has been programming and writing for the web since 1995, in both start-up and corporate environments. At IFactory she specializes in XML-driven publishing projects and has been the lead engineer on applications for Oxford University Press, Rosen Publishing and Columbia University Press. She is a published author and editor for O'Reilly Media on subjects including cascading style sheets, Python web frameworks and interactive fiction. She has a BA and an MA in psychology from Boston University where she focused on developmental neuroscience, which has proven to be of no value whatsoever to her career. She is an enthusiastic fair-weather cyclist, greyhound adopter and spends too much money on photography equipment.

Marc : Senior Software Engineer
Marc has worked on projects ranging from back-end transaction processing for a hotel reservation site to on-line diversions for a consumer product launch. He has been doing work for the Web since 1994 and using XML since 1999. He has a BA in Latin from Carleton College and maintains the Web’s canonical site for contemporary Latin poetry. Marc is also interested in puzzles and linguistics.

Mike : Software Engineer

Mike has always had a love for computers and programming. From his first big programming project as a teenager (a space asteroids shooter game)- to his bachelors degree in Computer Science (from Worcester Polytechnic Institute)- to his first software engineering job at eBay, computer science has been a big part of Mike's world. Mike is happy to continue that trend at iFactory. While he loves being a full time software engineer, Mike also keeps himself busy with several other hobbies. When he's not "coding up a storm" you might possibly see him strumming some guitar, singing a capella with friends, or juggling in the corridors of the office. If you are especially lucky you might stumble upon his elusive web comic, Team Stormcast, which he and his brother publish twice a week.

Michael : Engineering Director
Mike is responsible for setting technical direction for the company and providing technical leadership on projects. He also oversees and provides programming support in a variety of programming languages, databases and other tools and systems including Java, Perl, ColdFusion, C++, JavaScript, ASP/VBScript, Apache, IIS, and SQL. Mike has an AB from Harvard University and an MS from the MIT Media Laboratory where he concentrated on computer vision and image processing. Before joining Interactive Factory, Mike was Principal Software Engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Cambridge Research Laboratory, where he was responsible for web site development and indexing a digital audio/video archive for search and retrieval.

Ruth: Information Architect
Ruth has an MFA from Mass Art where she majored in media arts. Her work as an installation artist was shown widely in NY and Boston and sought to combine architecture with technology and new media. She then went on to intern at Do While studio, a collaborative group that brought together programmers, designers and fine artists where she studied human factors and interface design.

Ruth started her commercial career as a graphic designer doing agency work that combined high impact collateral with user interface design. As a creative design lead she worked on a wide variety of large scale B to B and E-Commerce websites and applications.

Since then, she has worked with technology companies as an information architect, designing award winning web applications for software companies and publishers like Rational Software, IBM, H & R Block, and Thomson Publishing. In 2004 she redesigned the TaxCut software for H&R Block and more recently did the IA and UI design for Houghton Mifflin's award winning Great Source K-12 math products.

When Ruth is not on deadline, she reads, picks up tips from her kids on various gaming strategies and walks the dog.

Ryan : Software Engineer
So Ryan opted to fill out a questionnaire and request that JB fill in his own opinion where applicable. So I get his questionnaire and I thought I would instead give a play by play as I went through it. Ready? Here we go: Hmm... blah blah blah, lots of words and no pictures. "Ryan's a software engineer with no specific specialties or duties". Well, that may be true. We don't really like to be categorized in boxes here. Lets see... he was a programmer/analyst, for other companies... did other stuff... Worked other places... didn't do anything he felt was of particular note there. Hmm, in high school he "worked for a company that set up inflatable play equipment for kid's parties". Well! That is interesting. How does one get into that business exactly? Do you have to like kids or just the mayhem? Anyhoo, a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science (double major) in NY (wicked smaht) and it was cold there. Blah blah blah, he runs, hes solved the Rubik's cube and he liked transformers as a kid. Hey! That's great, cause way to many people considered Thundercats to be "good" or even "better" but I always thought that even Starscream's long range cannons and missiles would totally decimate almost any Thunderan. Rock on.

Scott : Systems Administrator
Having worked for both a Fortune 500 and an international IT startup company, Scott knows his systems. A graduate of St. Lawrence University with a degree in Math/CS and Physics, Scott is the resident IT administrator for RDW, balancing his time between the agency's three offices. An adamant golfer, Scott even worked at a golf shop while living in Anchorage, Alaska. How's that for teeing up in poor conditions!

In his spare time, Scott enjoys (in no particular order): taking people to Alaska, meat and bacon pizza, his status as office Neo Geo Cup champion, steak pizzaioli from Viga, The Notebook, genadmin time, raindrops on roses and/or whiskers on kittens, Rampart, the Portuguese Rooster, General Chau Chau's, the memory of those who died in a knitting accident, The Urban Sherpa and Big Bear Band, the lady who intones "Mind the Gap" on the Tube, and The Economist.

Tara : Executive Producer
In her 9+ years at IFactory Tara has led engineering and design teams in the execution of client projects from concept to completion, concentrating on customer satisfaction. She has worked on a variety of projects spanning complex web solutions to interactive CDs. Tara especially enjoys working with publishing and educational clients such as Oxford University Press, Rosen Publishing and Boston’s Museum of Science.

She has studied business at Boston University and visual and media arts at Emerson College.

In all her time at the factory she has not been able to come up with an interesting bio because she is busy working to satisfy clients and her internal teams ... or perhaps she is just a bit boring.

Tina : Studio Manager
Helping RDW always put their best foot forward, Tina is iFactory's public liaison. Always looking on the bright side of things and ever eager to help, she expands her wide range of skills when assisting all departments. An avid sports fan, Tina has a BS in Art education and in her spare time, plays guitar and piano.

Tom : Vice President / Engineering Director
As Engineering Director, Tom is responsible for technical leadership on our projects and of our engineering group. He also oversees and provides programming support in Java, SQL, Perl, C++, and multimedia authoring tools. Tom has a BA from Harvard University and an MA in Computer Science from Brown University where he concentrated on 3D graphics. He has worked in the industry for over 18 years on everything from decision support software, to Disney and Hasbro titles and a real-time strategy game, "Extreme Tactics". At IFactory Tom has worked on numerous websites including the American National Biography and Dictionary of National Biography for Oxford University Press, the interactive SkyChart for Sky & Telescope magazine as well as many other projects. When not working on his computer, Tom is an amateur potter.