Leadership Team

Joe Kennedy
Chief Executive Officer & President
Joe Kennedy joined the company in 2004 following a five-year stint at E-LOAN, where he was President and Chief Operating Officer. From 1995 to 1999, he was the Vice President of Sales, Service and Marketing for Saturn Corporation, which he grew to over $4 billion in revenue and established as the top brand for customer satisfaction in the auto industry. Joe joined the initial start-up team at Saturn, four months after its founding, as a marketing manager and held positions of increasing marketing responsibility over the course of his 11-year tenure there.

Joe holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University, where he dabbled in music theory and learned to compose his own Gregorian chants. He is Pandora's resident pop music junkie. Current favorites include Counting Crows, G.B. Leighton, Sarah McLachlan, Juanes and Kelly Clarkson. Joe has also been playing the piano for more than 30 years, most of which has been spent attempting to master Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."

Tim Westergren
Chief Strategy Officer & Founder
Tim Westergren founded Pandora in January 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. Tim is an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician and a record producer with 20 years of experience in the music industry. He has recorded with independent labels, managed artists, owned a commercial digital recording studio, scored feature films, produced albums, and performed extensively. His main instrument is the piano, but over the years he has played the bassoon, drums and clarinet and his musical background spans such genres as rock, blues, jazz and classical music.

Tim received his B.A. from Stanford University, where he studied computer acoustics and recording technology. A musician's musician, he is obsessed with helping talented emerging artists connect with the music fans most likely to appreciate their music. In addition to guiding Pandora's overall strategy and vision, Tim now spends most of his time as Pandora's chief evangelist - traveling the country to meet with listeners to collect feedback, research local music, and spread the word of the Music Genome Project.

Tom Conrad
Chief Technical Officer
Tom Conrad leads the Pandora product organization, which includes product management, user interface design, software development, and network operations. Over the years, Tom has led numerous engineering and product design teams across a wide range of applications - from operating systems and enterprise software to video games and consumer web sites. Before joining Pandora, Tom was the Vice President of Engineering at Kenamea, Inc. where he led the teams responsible for the design and development of an award-winning Internet-scale messaging system. Tom previously was the Technical Director for the successful video game series "You Don't Know Jack."

Past experience also includes engineering management positions at Berkeley Systems, Relevance Technologies, Documentum, Pets.com, and Kenamea. Tom began his career at Apple Computer developing user interface elements for the Mac OS. Tom holds three U.S. patents and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Tom holds both technology and music close to his heart. His personal music collection includes more than 1000 CDs - many from artists that others on the Pandora team have never heard of. He likes to say the only instrument he plays well is his stereo.

Nolan Gasser
Chief Musicologist
Dr. Nolan Gasser is the brain behind the Music Genome Project and its rigorous methodology for analyzing music. He is a critically acclaimed composer, pianist, conductor and arranger, as well as a published musicologist.

Nolan got his Ph.D. in Musicology in 2001 from Stanford University, where he is an Adjunct Professor in Medieval and Renaissance Music History. He also is the composer of numerous award-winning musical works, including classical, jazz and popular music. In fact, his music has been performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., Alice Tully Hall, La Salle Pleyel in Paris and even the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.

As a pianist, Nolan performs and records regularly with marquee performers as diverse as Steve Miller, John Handy, and Carol Channing. He recently enjoyed great commercial success with his holiday song, Christmas by the Bay. In addition, he is the Artistic Director of the Classical Archives (based in Palo Alto, CA), the largest classical music website on the Internet.

Etienne Handman
Chief Operating Officer
Etienne oversees all aspects of the Music Genome Project. This includes managing the musicians who acquire and analyze the music heard on Pandora, as well as Pandora's Listener Advocates - the team who responds to listener comments, suggestions and questions. Etienne spends most of his time working on ways to improve the quality of the Pandora listening experience.

From 2000 to 2004, Etienne served as CIO at E-LOAN where technology enabled an unrivaled level of customer service and efficiency. From 1999 to 2000, Etienne was Vice President of Technology for Oberthur Card Systems, where he managed the creation and deployment of American Express Blue. From 1990 to 1999, Etienne was Vice President of Operations with De La Rue where he led credit card service businesses in the U.S. and France. A highlight of his extensive technology career was helping to create the first widely deployed smart card in the U.S. Etienne completed Stanford University's Executive Program and holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Computer Science with concentration in Music from McGill University, Montreal.

Etienne also formerly worked as a club DJ, and music has always been central in his life. He grew up in a family of musicians, playing trumpet since the age of 8. He has performed with Jazz ensembles in Montreal, Washington DC and San Francisco.

Cheryl Lucanegro
Vice President of Advertising Sales
Cheryl Lucanegro oversees Pandora's growing national ad sales team as well as the ad operations group. She is a media industry veteran with a reputation for building and growing new media outlets. Cheryl was part of the founding team of The Industry Standard, and has since worked for several entrepreneurial media ventures, from Salon.com, where she served as Senior Vice President of Integrated Sales, to Edutopia, a magazine and website aimed at teachers funded by the George Lucas Foundation, where she most recently served as Founding Publisher. Earlier in her career, she worked for Ziff-Davis Publishing and Upside Media. Cheryl has a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Florida. She currently sings and plays piano with the "Kayotics", a group of girl friends who sing and co-write clever lyrics to favorite tunes together for parties and weddings.

Jessica Stoner Steel
Vice President of Business Development
Jessica has served as Pandora's Vice President for Business Development since mid-2004, and is responsible for strategic partnerships for the company. Prior to joining Pandora, Jessica led the business development efforts for the international division of Overture Services (a Yahoo! company). During her four-year tenure there, she helped to grow the business from one market to a 19-country, 600+ person international division that drove $500M in annual revenues. Before Overture, Jessica worked in international finance, with clients ranging from Softbank Japan to the Thai Ministry of Finance. Outside of work, she is a singer-songwriter, writing under the name "Jessica Stone," with a full-length CD entitled Seven Letters released in 2002.

Jessica holds a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's Degree from the London School of Economics. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a recipient of the Thouron Scholarship. She also attended the Los Angeles Music Academy for vocal performance.

Michael Zapruder
Music Curator
It is Michael's job to find great music to add to the Music Genome Project, whether it's a freshly pressed home studio recording, or a long lost vintage album from a well-known jazz great. Michael spends his days scouring the Internet, from indie labels and magazines to music-related blogs and newsgroups. His search for great music also takes him to music festivals and clubs coast-to-coast. Finally, he is the one who ensures that all of the music submitted to the Music Genome by Pandora fans gets a good listen.

When he isn't making sure Pandora has the best songs from both established and emerging artists, Michael is writing, recording and touring far and wide. The Village Voice calls him "a damned fine singer-songwriter (and guitarist and pianist) from San Fran[.] Zapruder's little song-nuggets evoke Ron Sexsmith, Tom Petty (without the obvious roots-rock influence), Rufus Wainwright, and newer Elvis Costello."

Paul Brown
Managing Director, Pandora Europe
Paul is a digital media business specialist and is a media lawyer by background (with a particular focus on music). Previously Director of Digital Business Affairs and Development in the Futures Division at Sony BMG UK, Paul has spent the last five years in the music industry working with senior management and third party media partners to grow Sony BMG's digital business with particular emphasis on the strategic development, negotiation and execution of major digital media marketing and content deals (across mobile, online and TV) at both the UK and European level as well as covering the complex digital aspects of artist deals. Prior to joining Sony Music, Paul was a Director at UBS Warburg working as a banker in the private equity and venture capital sector and prior to that was a venture capital lawyer at major city law firm, Lovells.

Paul graduated with an honors degree in Law (LLB) from the University of Nottingham and also has a Postgraduate LLM in International Copyright from Kings College, London. Based in London, Paul is leading Pandora's charge into Europe. A lover of electronica and indie music, Paul considers himself a cross between an aging indie kid and a bedroom superstar DJ wannabe.