Escapia Management Team
Escapia’s leadership team brings decades of experience and success in software, innovation, and business to address 21st century challenges in the vacation rental industry. Bringing tremendous value to professional vacation rental managers through innovative software, world-class support, and technical excellence are top priorities of Escapia’s management team.
Bill Furlong, President and CEO
Bill leads the company in discovering and launching new ways for our clients to take advantage of the biggest growth opportunity for professional vacation rental managers: online bookings.
Prior to joining Escapia, Bill was Chief Operating Officer at Mpire responsible for Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, and Customer Service. Prior to Mpire, Bill was the VP of Sales and Marketing at Cranium, responsible for driving the company's revenue goals and domestic brand development. Bill expanded retail distribution to all major toy retailers in the U.S. and helped Cranium become the first company to win the toy industry’s Game of the Year award for three consecutive years. Before Cranium, Bill was the President and CEO of Mountain Travel Sobek, one of the nation's leading travel outfitters. He has also held several Group and Product Management positions with Microsoft working on Expedia, CarPoint, HomeAdvisor, and Sidewalk. Prior to Microsoft, Bill held positions at Time Warner and Morgan Stanley, and holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA from Dartmouth College.
John J. Suzuki - Vice President of Sales
As Vice President of Sales, John Suzuki is responsible for sales and marketing of the Escapia platform. John works to maintain Escapia’s reputation across the vacation rental industry of honesty, courtesy, and professionalism.
John has been in high technology for over 25 years. His experience includes serving in enterprise and international sales and managerial positions with IBM, Sun, StarTouch International, and Dimension Systems. He holds an MBA and BS degrees in Business Computer Methods, Financial Management, and Financial Investments from California State University, Long Beach.
Evan Gull - Director of Products
Evan Gull, Escapia's Director of Products, is a true pioneer in vacation rental software, and has nearly three decades of experience writing vacation rental management software. Evan’s disciplined and traditional approach to building vacation rental software, combined Escapia’s team of talented Internet software developers brings the best of all worlds to Escapia’s customers.
Evan started writing vacation rental software 1981 when IBM introduced its first Personal Computer. Evan co-founded First Resort Software (FRS) in 1985 and served as Vice President of Software Development until 1999, after it went public on the NYSE as the technology arm of Resortquest, Inc. Evan was the creator and chief developer of FRS’ flagship software product Avmain. Prior to FRS, Evan worked for NASA during the Apollo lunar landing program, and was a Manager of Software Application Development for Arabian American Oil in Saudi Arabia. Evan holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.
Melissa Yang – Vice President of Engineering and CTO
As Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer, Melissa leads Escapia’s research and development of new business applications for vacation rental managers. In developing Escapia’s breakthrough web-based software and services, Melissa manages "old school" discipline to building mission-critical applications with the "new frontier" of the Internet. With over a decade of experience developing Internet software and services, Melissa has successfully launched the most advanced and integrated online marketing and distribution system for vacation rentals, EscapiaNET, and has led the development of the most powerful set of vacation rental business applications and online marketing systems available today, EscapiaONE.
Prior to joining Escapia, Melissa led critical development initiatives at Expedia including Expedia's Classic Vacations, and servied as Director of Development for Expedia's Supply Services Group responsible for the core back-end systems supporting Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and private-label businesses. Melissa holds a MS in Computer Science from the University of Washington and a Bachelors degree from Tsinghua University in China.
Mike Crill – Chief Financial Officer
As the CFO of Escapia, Mike manages Escapia’s business and financial plans as well as the financial systems required to support Escapia’s overall business strategy. Under Mike’s financial and strategic leadership, Escapia has continued its record-breaking growth and accelerated development of new functionality in EscapiaVRS and EscapiaNET.
Prior to joining Escapia, Mike held positions as Division Controller and Plant Manager with AlliedSignal where he was recognized as a Master Black Belt for his work in quantitative methods. He also held positions as Operations Analyst with Data General, Cost Accounting Consultant, and US Army officer supporting 82nd Airborne Division, where he was a winner of the US Army's George C Marshall award. Mike holds an MBA from Duke University and a BS from Syracuse University, magna cum laude, with majors in Finance, Personnel and Industrial Relations, and Managerial Law.
Parag Vaish – Vice President, Consumer Marketing
As the Vice President of Consumer Marketing for ClearStay (Escapia’s consumer web site), Parag is responsible for launching and enhancing the marketing and business development initiatives for the fast growing ClearStay.com site. Parag’s experience in taking new products to market focusing on high impact marketing strategies and fiscal responsibility has helped ClearStay.com become the leading online marketing and booking site for professionally managed vacation rentals.
Prior to joining Escapia, Parag successfully launched the marketing efforts for Disney Auctions presented by eBay, the ESPNStore.com, and various B2B marketing efforts for Microsoft (Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions). He holds an MBA and a MS in Information Systems from Boston University and a BS in Finance from California State University, Northridge.