Our Mission

Helping brands take back the Internet since 2010

Kevel offers the infrastructure APIs needed to quickly build custom ad platforms for sponsored listings, internal promotions, native ads, and more. We are committed to helping publishers drive new revenue and take back the Internet from ad tech giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook.  

Our Story

The legacy of Adzerk

Kevel began as Adzerk in 2010 when software engineer James Avery wanted better tech for managing his network’s ads. While initially being JavaScript-based, Kevel quickly focused on server-side API ads as the future of the Internet. Soon, Kevel offered not just an API ad server, but infrastructure tools for companies to build their own ad products. Now, Kevel's product is a suite of APIs aimed at helping you drive revenue and take back the Internet from the ad tech giants.
Kevel Offline All Hands
Our Values

We put our values in action

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Make the internet a better place
We help innovative brands build user-friendly, privacy-focused ad platforms.
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We delight our customers
We want to bring joy and excitement through moments of delight to our customers.
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We are all adults
We reject micromanagement and trust our employees.
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Always be crushing
We focus on delivering value and crushing it.
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Embrace diversity
We fight to empower underrepresented groups.
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Deliver innovation
We maintain a culture of engineering and creative problem solving.
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Be open
We are dedicated to open source and sharing our knowledge.

Locations

Durham, USA
Durham
San Francisco, USA
San Francisco
London, England
London
Porto, Portugal
Porto

Meet the leadership team

James Avery
James Avery
Chief Executive Officer
James Avery is the founder of Kevel and serves as its CEO. He was the co-founder of TekPub, which helped developers learn from high-quality screencasts. He has been writing code and starting companies for the past 20 years, while also writing books for O'Reilly, Wrox, and Microsoft Press. Additionally, he serves as an advisor to startups including Blockthrough, Lazarus, and more through TechStars MetLife Accelerator.
Puja Rios
Puja Rios
Chief Operations Officer
Puja is Kevel’s Chief Operating Officer. She brings over 25 years of experience in the software industry, showcasing a proven track record in scaling revenue, building high-performance teams, and ensuring customer success. She is also a keynote speaker, media contributor, and a WSJ best-selling author of the personal and professional development book, “Get It Together.” Puja has also established herself as a founding member of the Miami chapter of CHIEF, a private network empowering and connecting women leaders across industries.
Chessy West
Chessy West
Chief Financial Officer
Chessy West is Kevel's CFO. Prior to Kevel, Chessy was a founding member of United Income, a fintech investment management startup that sold to Capital One. Before that, she was at HelloWallet, a SaaS fintech startup that sold to Morningstar. Chessy holds a Bachelor's in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an MBA From Georgetown University. Outside the office, you can find Chessy spending time with her husband and three kids.
Tim Ewald
Tim Ewald
Chief Technology Officer
Tim Ewald is Kevel’s CTO, and has spent the last 30 years building distributed software systems to solve problems in a wide range of domains, including image analysis, content management, video processing, databases, and ad tech. He brings his experience as an engineer, architect, and engineering manager to Kevel, where he is responsible for the entire cloud platform. Tim is an author and conference speaker, who holds a Bachelor's in Computer Science from Hampshire College. Outside of the office, he builds furniture using hand tools.
Sandy Grason
Sandy Grason
SVP, Product & Engineering
Sandy Grason has spent her career building lean, agile, high-performing teams. Prior to joining Kevel, Sandy was the Senior Director of Software Development at Charter Communications where she was responsible for the strategic direction and management of the backend video software development. Sandy is a former CEO, business strategist, consultant, published author, serial entrepreneur & mentor, lover of chocolate, movies, skiing & shoes (not necessarily in that order).
Derek Houdyshell
Derek Houdyshell
SVP, Global Sales
Derek Houdyshell is Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Kevel.  He is responsible for building and leading the global sales team strategy and execution. Derek has been driving adoption of ad tech monetization solutions for over 20 years. With over a decade of experience at two of the largest programmatic supply side platforms. He brought the first header bidding solution to large media owners at Index Exchange and introduced RTB solutions to publishers while at PubMatic. Before that Derek grew Glam Media into a top 10 global media company in terms of reach as measured by Comscore. He is passionate about making digital advertising a fair value exchange between consumers, platforms, and brands with better outcomes for all.
Dylan Hulser photo
Dylan Hulser
VP of Customer Success
Dylan Hulser is Kevel’s Vice President of Customer Success. Over the last 8 years, he has held various roles at Kevel, starting in sales, then forming the Solutions Architecture team. Now within Customer Success, he leads the global Support, Solutions, and Customer Success Management teams. With a degree in Integrated Marketing Communications from Ithaca College, Dylan's journey in the advertising industry began with digital media buying for renowned Procter & Gamble brands at their agency, MediaVest (now Spark). Later, Dylan joined Reddit as their 3rd revenue hire working in advertising strategy, ad ops, and other monetization roles.
Neil Cameron
Neil Cameron
VP of Marketing
Seasoned leader with experience working in product, commercial, operational & marketing functions. Neil has scaled operations teams globally, defined & redefined product vision and roadmaps to meet market needs. Neil enjoys working as part of a close leadership team and balancing product roadmaps, with revenue growth, the required people, and team growth. Neil works from defining long range vision, through planning to launch and establishing the new business norms and continuous improvement.
Leslie Pierce Connor
Leslie Pierce-Connor
Associate General Counsel
Leslie Pierce-Connor has spent her career bootstrapping legal functions at startups, helping to build out the first-ever legal department at multiple growth-stage companies. She brings intensely practical experience in both legal operations and legal practice to the organization, with an emphasis on developing scalable, repeatable processes. Leslie also provides legal consulting services to charitable organizations. When not working, Leslie is an outdoor enthusiast, a calligrapher, a foodie, and a mom to both a two year old son and a six year old labrador retriever.
Mike Kohn
Mike Kohn
Chief People Officer
Mike Kohn leads the People and HR function at Kevel. Mike’s foundational experience as an HR Business Partner and as a human capital consultant at Deloitte launched him into his roles as a People executive and leadership coach at various scaling organizations. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Mike is passionate about building healthy, inclusive cultures where people can bring their whole selves to thrive. Beyond work, he spends time at spin classes, running, playing board games, hiking, and watching musical theater.
Paulo Cunha
Paulo Cunha
GM of Kevel Audience
Paulo has been building products for the digital marketing and advertising industry for over 18 years. After completing his BSc in Computing from London Met, he started his career developing products at companies such as Acxiom and Wunderloop – Europe’s first behavioral targeting technology. Paulo later founded ShiftForward, where he launched products such as the Private CDP and the Ad Forecaster and served as CEO, completing its exit to Velocidi in 2018 and later to Kevel in 2022. Paulo also helps tech startups as a board advisor and as a mentor in the Founders Founders community which he helped create in Porto, Portugal.
Matt Nichols
Matt Nichols
Board Advisor
Matt has been an investor in and operator of early stage technology companies for more than 20 years. At Commerce Ventures, he leads the firm's retail-tech investing and has led investments in FleetOps, Grabango, Kevel, Mulberry, Pensa Systems, Rally, Simon Data, Syte and Trove. Commerce Ventures invested in Kevel in 2020 and Matt has worked closely with them since.
Philipp Lewis
Philip Lewis
Board Member
Philip joined Fulcrum in 2007 as the first Analyst. It was a special time to join as they were a startup themselves, and the experience growing with and alongside the firm has taught him a great deal. He have built a culture at Fulcrum that goes beyond business and has truly become a family. With the firm’s operational experience, he meets his teams with solutions, understanding what it truly takes to scale.
Tim Huntley
Tim Huntley
Board Member
Tim Huntley graduated in 1989 from North Carolina State University with a BS in Computer Science, and is the former CEO of Ganymede Software, a venture-backed start-up he founded in 1995 with three friends from IBM.  Ganymede developed two award winning products, Chariot and Pegasus, for testing and measuring the performance of applications running over enterprise computer networks and was acquired in 2000 by Mission Critical/NetIQ, Following the acquisition by NetIQ, Tim was involved in a wide range of M&A, due diligence, and investment activities. These included the integration of WebTrends, the purchases of Marshal Software and SQL Probe from Subquery Innovations, and investments in @Stake and Lumigent Technologies.At present, Tim is the CEO of Centervention, a provider of social emotional learning interventions for students in grades K-8 and has been a member of the board of directors at Kevel since 2015.
Neil Callahan
Neil Callahan
Board Advisor
Neil Callahan is a Founder and Managing Partner at Pilot Growth Equity and based in New York City. Neil has over 25 years of technology investing and operating experience and is a successful bootstrapped software entrepreneur. He has advised many of the world’s leading technology companies on strategy, product management, sales & marketing, infrastructure and operations. Prior to Pilot Growth, Neil was the Co-founder and CEO of Sitaro LTD.,which was acquired by CoActive Marketing Group. At CoActive, Neil was a member of the executive team as the President of the Digital Business Unit and as the EVP of Business Development. While at CoActive, Neil expanded the client portfolio into the automotive, technology, financial services and sports & apparel verticals. Prior to co-founding Sitaro, Neil was a Vice President of Marketing Technology & Strategy for Young & Rubicam / Wunderman. Neil began his career with Andersen Consulting as a software developer and an engagement manager, where he created technology solutions for the Fortune 50.
Jim Douglass
Jim Douglass
Board Member
Jim loves what he does because he works with the same kinds of companies he's been working on for years. As a leader of these organizations, he wakes up every day thinking about how he can help his portfolio CEOs grow their business. Outside of Fulcrum, he is an active member of Atlanta’s entrepreneurial community. He is also a board member of Venture Atlanta and UNICEF Southeast Region.

Grow your business with our award-winning product and team

Insider logo
Insider.com's Hottest Ad Tech Company
Digital Technology Awards
Best Monetization Platform
Martech logo
MarTech Best Overall Ad Tech Company
AdExchanger logo
AdExchanger Best Publisher Tech
Saas Awards logo
SaaS Awards - Best SaaS Platform
American Business Awards logo
Most Innovative Company of the Year
Titan Awards logo
Titan Awards - Best B2B Software
G2 Award High Performer summer 2021
G2Crowd Top Ad Serving Tech
Tirangle business journal logo
TBJ's Best Places to Work
Fortune.com logo
Fortune.com Best Place to Work
IT World awards logo
Company of the Year
Business Intelligence logo
Business Intelligence Company of the Year
API Awards
Top API Innovator
Stratus awards logo
Stratus Award Finalist for Cloud Computing
Best in Biz logo
Best in Biz Gold Winner
American Business Awards logo
Software of the Year
Cloud Awards
Cloud Awards Finalist - Best SaaS Platform
Certification

Feel confident working with an industry-certified partner

AWS Partner
AWS Select-Tier Tech Partner
Google Partner Logo
Approved Google Ad Technology Provider
IAB Member Logo
Official IAB Member
SSAE 16 Certified Type 2 logo
Soc 1 Type II Certified

It’s time to make a change

Help us make the Internet a better place. Join the team at Kevel.