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.

Peter Ekman
Vice President of Human Resources
Peter Ekman brings over 20 years of Human Resources experience to Pandora. He has a progressive, broad based background in high tech, growing and entrepreneurial companies. At Pandora, he is responsible for designing and implementing HR strategies that attract, develop and motivate talent for this high performing workforce. Prior to joining Pandora, Peter was the Director of Human Resources for StubHub, Inc., an online marketplace for event tickets. He joined StubHub prior to its acquisition by eBay, and was responsible for all HR aspects pre-acquisition, and the subsequent integration with eBay. Peter was also the Vice President of Human Resources at Digital Island (acquired by Cable & Wireless), a managed hosting and network services organization to Global 500 companies, where he was responsible for creating a world-class global HR group to support the rapid growth of the business. His previous positions include Director of Corporate Human Resources at Network Equipment Technologies, in addition to several other positions at N.E.T.

Peter received a Bachelor of Science in Managerial Economics from the University of California at Davis.

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.

Jessica Steel
Senior Vice President of Business Development
Jessica has led Pandora's business development efforts since mid-2004, and is responsible for strategic partnerships for the company. Prior to joining Pandora, Jessica ran business development 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, and another one in the works.

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.

John Trimble
Chief Revenue Officer
John Trimble serves as the Chief Revenue Officer overseeing the revenue for Pandora including the premium, mobile and audio platforms. John is an industry veteran that most recently served as EVP of sales at Glam Media helping guide their revenue and product expansion development. Before Glam Media, John was SVP of Fox Interactive Media overseeing the sales and sales operations of key brands such as MySpace.com, IGN.com, American Idol.com and FOXSports.com. Prior to entering the Digital space, John was a Senior Director of Corporate Sales with the National Football League Properties, marketing to many of the largest global brands in the world.

John received his BA from St. Lawrence University. When he is not on the road looking for ad partners, he is evolving his station list to keep relevant with his four children. His current Pandora lineup features the Counting Crows, the Dropkick Murphy's, Kayne West, U2 and Jack Johnson.