Paul Thelen is a board director and strategic advisor at MiNeeds. Paul Thelen is the Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Big Fish Games. Big Fish Games was founded in 2002, it grew rapidly since then and is now one of the largest game download companies. Big Fish Games now has 700 employees with corporate offices in Seattle, Vancouver, Canada, Oakland, California, Luxembourg and Cork, Ireland.

Prior to Big Fish Games, Paul worked at RealNetworks. While there, he successfully launched RealAudio (stereo streaming audio over the Internet) and RealVideo; and lead strategy for the Media Systems division as Group Product Manager. Paul also co-founded the games business at RealNetworks. He wrote the business plan for the RealArcade Service, the RealArcade Client, and the Game Pass Subscription service.

Paul has an MBA from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington.

Board Advisor and angel investor at MiNeeds. Usama Fayyad was Yahoo!'s chief data officer and executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions. Fayyad was responsible for Yahoo!'s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the Company's data analytics and data processing infrastructure.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Fayyad co-founded and led the DMX Group, a data mining and data strategy and technology company. Fayyad joined Yahoo!’s senior executive team as part of an acquisition of DMX Group by Yahoo! Inc. in 2004.

Fayyad also worked at Microsoft Corporation for five years leading the data mining and exploration group. Before that he was at NASA leading the exploration of scientific databases gathered from observatories.

Usama is currently the chairman of BlueKangaroo.com, Oasis500 and an active angel investor.

Shannon Craig came to MiNeeds in March of 2011.  Before joining MiNeeds, Shannon owned and ran a boutique wedding and event planning firm in Seattle where she planned, designed and executed events from parties of 5 to 500.  She has also done marketing, branding and consulting work for various wedding websites. Shannon has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology, with a Minor in Music.

She's a California native, and always will be at heart, but loves the Pacific Northwest. When not working, she can be found in the kitchen baking, reading a good novel, scouring flea markets for vintage stemware, or dancing in her living room with her daughter Olive!

Before coming to MiNeeds, Quala Firstrider worked at Classmates.com as a customer support manager for three years.  She brings a high level of professionalism and support to our MiNeeds customers.  She is a certified medical assistant, and a new mommy beautiful baby girl, Mia.  She was born in Seattle, but raised in Vancouver Canada.

She loves random, useless, facts about anything and everything.  When she's not working, she enjoys watching movies, spending time with family, and long road trips.

Courtney graduated from Bennington College after studying Playwriting and Performance.

She started a career in Customer Service at Next Jump, when it was growing out of its start-up phase, and within two months she took over the entire department. She is now Customer Relationship Manager at MiNeeds, and enjoys the challenge of wearing many different hats.

She's still performing and writing in NYC, having started her own theater collective after college. Her latest writing project is a futuristic graphic novel.

Karim Zouiyen is currently a Social Media Marketing director at MiNeeds.com. Karim is responsible for managing the company's online in Social Media and Search Engine Optimization.

Prior to joining MiMeeds.com, Karim was a Social Media and IT consultant for several nonprofit organizations. He developed and managed a host of websites and e-commerce platforms, including the online newspaper Morocco Newsline. He lived in Paris from 2004 to 2008, where he was the CEO and Founder of New Commerce Group, an e-business consulting company. New Commerce Group offers a variety of services and solutions for small businesses and entrepreneurs selling products online.

He graduated with an MBA in finance from Baruch College in 2001. Believing in the power of real-time information, he decided to pursue an additional Master’s in Computer Information Systems. He is perfectly fluent in French, Spanish Arabic and English.

Sybil's diverse work history allows her to think quickly on her feet and effectively problem solve. She has a paralegal degree, and worked in a high demanding law office before joining MiNeeds.  She also coached competitive gymnastics for 22 years, and has traveled all over the world with the sport, which gives her the positive, get-it-done, quality that her customers appreciate!  She has a BA in Russian Language and Political Science from Washington State University. 

She has two teenage sons, and also serves as the President of the National Association of Professional Women's local branch.  When not at work, she enjoys running, yoga, and being involved with her local church and YMCA.

Jaymie's years of customer service experience make her the perfect fit for the MiNeeds Seattle branch.  Her sweet nature and pleasant attitude are what her MiNeeds customers appreciate most.

She was born and raised in Bremerton, WA, and is fortunate that her commute to work is a scenic ferry ride to and from Seattle.

She is very active, loves to camp, hike, longboard, and play soccer with her little brother. She's an avid fan of comic books and anything related to them.  She loves all ethnic food, especially Vietnamese.

Selçuk Alyamaç has been the graphic and usability designer at MiNeeds Inc. for the last 3 years.

Selcuk has been focusing on Brand design for 15 years. His philosophy is "I can do it better". In 1997 he created his own design company. He worked in various areas of design and earned several design awards.

In his free time, Selcuk plays several musical instruments, and spends time with his newly born baby girl. Him and his wife love to ice-skate and dance salsa.

Lakatos Bela joined MiNeeds in 2009 and has been running its online marketing since then.

Prior to MiNeeds, Lakatos worked for a UK agency for three years running online marketing for several large brands in Europe. In recognition of his professional achievements, Lakatos has been elected by Google as one of their AdWords Top Contributors for 5 consecutive years since 2008. He was also awarded a Platinum Expert Author award in PPC (Pay-Per-Click) online marketing category by Ezine Articles. Lakatos holds a masters degree in economics.

On weekends, Lakatos likes spending his free time at one of the nearby lakes with his wife, swimming, playing cards with friends and taking long walks with his pet animal, an apricot miniature poodle.