Ric Elias

Ric Elias
Born	(1967-05-21) May 21, 1967 San Juan, Puerto Rico
Alma mater	Boston College (B.S.) Harvard Business School (MBA)
Organization	Red Ventures
Title	CEO of Red Ventures
Website	www.redventures.com

Ric Elias (born May 21, 1967 in San Juan, Puerto Rico)^[1] is the co-founder and CEO of Red Ventures (private), a technology-driven marketing and sales services company headquartered in the Charlotte, North Carolina region.^[2] Elias was a survivor of Flight 1549, an event which drastically changed his life ^[3] and led to his widely viewed Ted Talk “3 things I learned while my plane crashed.” A recipient of Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, ^[4][5] Elias is cited as aspiring to create the “Google of the East Coast” within his company’s culture and facilities.^[6]

Early years

Elias was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Moving to the United States for college, Elias knew very little English and had to improvise: "I adjusted my schedule and took only classes that dealt with numbers my entire first year.” ^[7][8] He earned a B.S in accounting from Boston College in 1989 and his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1994.^[9][10]

Career

Elias began his career in General Electric’s financial management program. He then moved to marketing services company CUC International/Cendant, where he would meet Dan Feldstein, co-founder of Red Ventures.^[11][12] In 1999, Elias and Feldstein formed Red F, which served as a precursor to Red Ventures.^[13][14] Red F formed in the aftermath of the dot-com implosion of mid-2000, and was predominately an online discount and loyalty program that evolved into a marketing consulting firm. In 2005, Dan and Ric sold Red F to focus on developing Red Ventures, which focused on customer origination on behalf of service-related brands.^[15]

Red Ventures

Red Ventures specializes in customer origination for large brands in high-growth industries including telecommunications, insurance,^[16] energy, software and financial services.^[17][18] Red Ventures controls end to end customer origination by leveraging proprietary technologies, advanced web analytics, and an in-house sales force.^[19] Focusing on expanding their presence in the Carolinas, Red Ventures selected Fort Mill, South Carolina for its corporate campus.^[20] The main campus touts Silicon Valley style benefits, including a full sized basketball court, gym, putting green, bowling alley, beer garden, cafeteria, as well as yoga and spin classes.^[21] Red Ventures also has two offices in Charlotte, North Carolina and acquired marketing firm Imagitas in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2015. Employing more than 2,500 employees, Red Ventures has been voted a Best Place to Work by the Charlotte Business Journal,^[22][23][24] and has twice been ranked among the top 20 fastest-growing companies on the Inc, 500 list,^[25][26] growing more than 30% a year since 2008.^[27]

Personal life

Ric Elias was a passenger of Flight 1549 which crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009.^[28] Surviving the crash was a transformative moment in Elias’ life. Two years following the crash he spoke publicly for the first time at a Ted Conference with the talk “3 things I learned while my plane crashed,” which has generated more than six million views.^[29] In 2012 Ric Elias launched a non-profit that helps undocumented students attend college. Elias invested $2 million of his own money and raised $700,000 in private donations to fund the program.^[30] Golden Door has expanded, launching an offshoot called “Techworks” (now known as "Code2Hire" ^[31]) which provides high school graduates with career-readiness training and employment in the field of Web development.^[32]

References

External links

• Red Ventures
• Golden Door Scholars
• Ric Elias at TED
  
  • Ric Elias: 3 things I learned while my plane crashed (TED2011)