BrightTALK board members

Charlie Blackburn
Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder, BrightTALK

Charlie Blackburn is chairman of the board and co-founder of BrightTALK. Since helping launch the business in 2002, he has been instrumental in the global adoption of BrightTALK’s unique approach to engagement marketing through the use of BrightTALK’s webinar and video platform. He is responsible for the operations that he manages from the BrightTALK U.K. headquarters in London, England. Prior to co-founding BrightTALK, he was vice president of European operations for Scient, a web technology development company. Before joining Scient, he developed San Francisco-based Pyramid Imaging’s Investment Banking practice. He began his career with Accenture. Blackburn earned a first class honors degree in Mechanical Engineering at Manchester University (U.K.).

Chuck Dietrich
Chief Executive Officer, SlideRocket

Chuck Dietrich is the CEO of SlideRocket, a company that is powering the presentation revolution. In April 2011, Dietrich facilitated the company’s high profile acquisition by VMware, the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure. Prior to SlideRocket, Chuck served as general manager and vice president at salesforce.com. In his nine years at salesforce.com, Chuck built and ran many channel and partner programs and spearheaded the company’s mobile strategy. Dietrich holds an MBA degree from the University of Utah and a BA degree from the University of Colorado.

Graham Elliott
Managing Director, Aqueduct Underwriting Limited

Graham Elliott is currently the managing director at Aqueduct Underwriting Ltd., a specialist managing general agency that provides niche insurance products via insurance intermediaries. Prior to that he was CEO of Oxygen Insurance Brokers Ltd. He began his financial services career in institutional equity sales and was global director of US institutional equity sales for Prudential Equity Group in New York. He is also an experienced angel investor. Elliott has a degree in English Literature from Christ Church, University of Oxford (U.K.)

Paul Heald
Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, BrightTALK

Paul Heald co-founded BrightTALK in 2002 to help organizations engage their customers through live, online events. As CEO, Heald has led BrightTALK to its current position as a leading provider of online events, with a rapidly growing community of business and industry professionals. Paul is based at BrightTALK’s U.S. headquarters in San Francisco, CA. Before founding BrightTALK, Heald was the European managing director of Scient. Prior to Scient he ran Arthur D. Little’s e-business consulting group. Heald is an MBA graduate of Cranfield School of Management (U.K.)

Richard Heald
Non-Executive Director, BrightTALK

Richard Heald joined BrightTALK in 2002 and was the executive vice president of sales where he was responsible for growing the company’s global client base and ensuring that every client engagement was successful. Heald headed the BrightTALK sales and account management teams, which are based in San Francisco, New York and London. Prior to BrightTALK, he was an associate director at Schroder Investment Management. He previously held similar roles at HSBC Bank and Aviva Insurance. Heald has a bachelor’s degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Leeds University (U.K.).

Russ Pyle
Partner, North Bridge Growth Equity

Russ Pyle joined North Bridge Growth Equity in 2007 where his areas of focus include technology-enabled services, communications and software companies. Prior to North Bridge, he invested in technology and communications companies at M/C Venture Partners. Russ enjoys partnering with passionate entrepreneurs who are proud of their success but who see the opportunity to create category-defining businesses. Before M/C, he worked at private equity firm, TA Associates in the technology group and at Alex, Brown & Sons as an investment banking analyst. Pyle has an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and an AB degree from Princeton University.