Leadership
Blake Garrett
Founder and CEO
Blake created Aceable in 2012 following a 6 year career in management consulting at EY. The company’s original focus was gamifying books and training manuals to make them more consumable and engaging. In 2013, Blake focused Aceable on consumers' growing desire for mobile-based learning, targeting its first product at mobile-centric millenials looking for a more convenient and entertaining drivers education experience. Aceable's first product, TX Parent Taught Drivers Ed, launched in May 2014. Blake holds a BS in Management with a concentration in Accounting from Boston College.
Eric Seifert
CRO
Seifert most recently served as the COO and CMO of A Place for Mom, a Warburg Pincus portfolio company. Under Eric’s leadership, APFM grew by 400% over 5 years and delivered a 6x return for investors, eventually leading to a successful sale to General Atlantic and Silver Lake Partners in 2017. Prior to AFPM, Eric served as VP of Marketing and Strategy at Expedia where he oversaw 50% of Expedia’s traffic acquisition across 26 countries worldwide. Throughout his career, Seifert has valued, negotiated, and integrated dozens of acquisitions and partnerships on both the buy and sell sides.
Erin Defossé
CSO
Defossé oversees M&A, government affairs, and long-term strategic partnerships. Before joining Aceable, he was SVP of Product Management at Bazaarvoice and also founded the Magellan International School in Austin. He started his career as an engineer for NASA. Defossé holds an MBA and a BS in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and an MS in Aeronautics & Astronautics from Stanford University.
Open CFO
Current CFO (Randy Jonkers) is looking to retire after 25 years of experience leading Austin technology companies. He has raised over $100M in financing from VC, PE and debt sources, conducted due diligence on over $100M of acquisition targets, integrated multiple acquisitions,
and led $400M in exits.
Derrick Mar
VP of Engineering
Mar brings 35 years of technology leadership experience in high-growth environments. Derrick has led multiple companies to successful exits in his career. Most recently, Mar served as the CIO at Travelport, where he drove innovation and broadened the products’ footprint to include cloud and mobile to position the products for the future.
Emily Lawrence
VP of Content
Lawrence joins Aceable after an incredibly successful run at the online education company, Craftsy.
As SVP of Content and Production at Craftsy, Emily and her team grew an award-winning online education business from its infancy to serve over 12M members, partner with 600+ instructors and create 1300+ classes across 16 verticals. The company was acquired by NBCUniversal in 2017.