Benjamin Lowenstein
Founder
Benjamin leads the product and vision of Colingo. His focus is on education, engineering, design, and operations.
Prior to starting Colingo, he co-founded a boutique software development firm, taught himself Spanish traveling through Chile and Argentina, studied neurobiology with a focus on the evolution of language (writing articles like this paper), and taught Spanish to elementary school students.
He enjoys biking, welding, and speaking Portuñol. He is a regular volunteer in a bilingual classroom for the San Francisco Public Schools, and a 2007 graduate of Oberlin College. For more: http://linkd.in/gpy3DJ
Lee Jacobs
Founder
Lee leads the business side of Colingo. His focus is marketing, sales, and strategy.
Prior to co-founding Colingo, Lee worked as Senior Product Manager focusing on social media at Comcast Interactive Media. While in school, he co-founded a college classified website which was widely used on campus.
Lee feeds off the hustle of urban life. He has explored cities in 30 countries around the world. Barcelona and Hong Kong currently top his list. Capitalizing on this love of cities, he recently formed a real estate investment partnership in Philadelphia. He also loves to eat in great towns and once devised a scheme to help with that.
He lives in the mission in SF, but has a multi-speed bike.
Lee graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania. For more: http://linkd.in/eIOQ5N
Robert Damphousse
Director of Engineering
Robert leads software development at Colingo. His focus is on research, design and implementation of software and systems architecture.
Robert is passionate about information, the built environment, and the interplay between the two. He draws on an education in new media from San Francisco State University and has since created public art installations which challenge our conceptions of the digital information that surrounds us.
Robert was raised in Colorado but has since lived and worked in Banff, Montréal, and New York. He experienced the challenges (and rewards) of learning a new language while exploring China in 2005, and living in the bilingual city of Montréal in 2010.
When not coding for Colingo you will find Robert on a walk to somewhere of interest.
Jesse Sirotkin
Operations
Jesse is responsible for general operations and tutor management at Colingo. He is a recent law school graduate and is working part time at Colingo.
Jesse was raised outside of the booming metropolis of Burlington, Vermont. After college Jesse moved to Los Angeles and worked on sailboats. He has lived in San Francisco for the past three years, likes to ski, ride bikes and has recently taken up boxing so “Watch out!”
Matheus Parreiras
Community Manager
Matheus is responsible for building Colingo’s presence in Brazil. He focuses on usability testing, competitive analysis and business development.
Matheus is a Brazilian who lived for four years in New York, and now lives in Brazil with his family, where he studies Computer Science at the University of Brasilia. He is the current Director of Marketing at the Computing’s Junior Enterprise – CJR. He likes to read about marketing, design and human-computer interaction, loves playing video games, especially the old ones, and going out with his friends. Matheus is the typical geek.