Taos - Management

Ric Urrutia is the Co-Founder and CEO of Taos. Since founding Taos in 1989, Ric has contributed to the direction, strategy, management, customer relationships, and business development of the company. As CEO, Ric makes it a point to be highly involved with developing and maintaining customer relations, listening carefully to client requirements, and then providing the leadership and direction to keep Taos service offerings at the forefront of the ever changing IT world. Under Ric's leadership, Taos has become one of the leading Bay Area professional IT consulting services companies, innovating solutions that sets it apart from all the others.

Ric's career in the technology industry spans the gamut of executive, sales, business development, and technical positions. Prior to founding Taos in 1989, Ric spent several years as a technical contributor and technical manager at several Silicon Valley start-ups and as an independent consultant. Ric holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Sciences from Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala City. Ric grew up in Guatemala and Los Angeles and has lived in the Silicon Valley since 1980.

Coco Brown joined Taos in 1997 and is the company's Chief Operating Officer. Coco has been a key contributor to the evolution of the business and the development of Taos' Professional Services offerings and staff deployment solutions. As COO, Coco is responsible for the day-to-day management of the business as a whole. She is particularly instrumental in the direction of professional services practice development, working directly with customers to innovate service applications.

Previous to Taos, Coco held the position of Corporate Manager of Training and Development for NetFRAME, a pioneer in enterprise-class multiprocessor network servers. At NetFRAME, Coco acted as a consultant to executive management, with primary focus on programs designed to ensure timely product delivery and cohesiveness between Marketing and Engineering.

Coco holds a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She began her career in the Silicon Valley in 1993 as a Human Resources consultant to start-up technology companies, helping them to implement scalable and effective organization structures and designing processes to effectively manage the employment relationship. Just prior to arriving in the Silicon Valley, Coco was an intern for the Chief Economic Advisor at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. She started her career as a Compensation Analyst for Wachovia Bank Card Services. Coco has lived in Malaysia, France, Pennsylvania, Switzerland, San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.

Mary Hale is the Chief Financial Officer of Taos. Since joining Taos in 1997, Mary has played a key role in the development of the Company’s administrative infrastructure and financial processes. As CFO, Mary is responsible for the financial, information technology, legal and human resource functions of the Company.

Prior to her tenure at Taos, Mary held several financial management positions in the banking industry, most recently as Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of Silicon Valley Bank, where she participated in streamlining the growing technology bank’s accounting and financial reporting practices and technical infrastructure. Prior to Silicon Valley Bank Mary was with Cupertino National Bank and Plaza Bank of Commerce.

Mary began her career as a CPA for Deloitte in San Jose. She holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from San Jose State University, majoring in Accounting with a minor in Economics. Mary has also lived in Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles.

Mark Johnson is the VP of Strategy and Client Solutions at Taos. Mark joined Taos in May of 2006 after serving as Sr. Director of Global Infrastructure for both Veritas Software and Symantec Corporation. In his role at Taos he is responsible for leading driving our overall strategy and development of customer centric solutions targeted at helping IT Sr. leadership optimize the overall performance, cost effectiveness, scalability, and strategic significance of the internal IT business function.

Mark’s distinguished IT career spans some 30 years during which he has held a variety of technical, managerial position, and executive positions including a seven year stint as Chairman and CEO of InER-G Solutions, Ltd., a Denver-based IT Management consulting firm. InER-G specialized in IT Strategic Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Management Decision Support Information Systems, and IT organizational effectiveness. Through InER-G Mr. Johnson was senior consultant and trusted advisor to Sr. IT leadership at organizations such as Ameritech, Sears, Roebuck & Company, Coors, Sarah Lee, Frost Bank, Discovery and the Learning Channel, Gallo Winery, Associates Bancorp, The Metropolitan Denver Regional Transit District, and London Electric to name a few.

Mark holds an Associates Degree in Applied Business - Management Information Systems from Michael J. Owns Technical College, is married and the home-schooling father of three children.

Michele Marshall joined Taos in 2007 as the Director of Sales. Michele has twenty years of technology related sales, service and solutions experience. Prior to joining Taos, she held Leadership, Business Development, and Technical Delivery roles with COMSYS, EDS, Safeway, and Wells Fargo Bank. Michele is responsible for leading and developing the Account Executive team and coordinating the sales functions across business segments. She also monitors and analyzes sales activity against goals and is responsible for managing and directing the execution of sales plans and initiatives.

Michele attended California State University of Los Angeles and is currently pursuing a Masters in Teaching and Learning with Technology.

Trish leads Taos’ Talent Management organization which includes Recruiting, Staff Management and Practice Management. She is responsible for the identification, preservation and development of the Taos consultant community. In addition, she leads the quality control around customer satisfaction, key account programs and custom solutions.

Trish joined Taos in 1999 when she relocated to the Bay Area. Starting out in an HR role, Trish moved into a variety of roles over the next few years, including Recruiting, Staff Management and Engagement Manager for a large desktop outsource in 2003 for one of largest clients.

Prior to joining Taos, Trish held administrative roles at Salomon Brothers and Starwood Design Group and was in the field of social work in New York City holding roles at Bellevue Hospital and Covenant House. She holds a Bachelors in Psychology from Lemoyne College in Syracuse. Trish has lived in New York as well as California.

Carrina heads up the IT Management Consulting Practices at Taos as well as Sales Operations and Marketing. She and her team are responsible for the development and execution of Taos IT Management service offerings. In addition, she leads the company’s partner programs, sales operations, and marketing efforts including newsletter distribution, website development and events.

Carrina is on her second tour of duty with Taos. She started out as a University Recruiter in 1999 before taking on the role of Staff Manager in the fall of 2000. After leaving Taos in the spring of 2001, Carrina pursued a career in the education industry where she managed 17 northern California locations for Score Educational Centers. Upon her return to Taos in 2006, she held the role of Staff Manager and in 2007 joined Mark Johnson in developing Taos’ Office of the CIO (OCIO) management consulting practice. She held the role of Delivery Manager for OCIO before expanding her role to include all management consulting practices.

Carrina holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Spanish from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Alexis Tatarsky is the Co-Founder of Taos. Since founding the company in 1989, he has been instrumental in determining the direction, philosophy, and strategic development of the company. He has held various management and executive roles, and engages with key customers in flexibly adapting Taos' abilities to their needs.

Alexis holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Prior to founding Taos in 1989, Alexis worked as a programmer at The Wollongong Group 1983-86 where he was involved in implementing and porting Internet protocols and tools, and working on innovative implementations of Unix. After that, he spent three years consulting in a variety of capacities: implementing a PC-based editor for genetic sequence information for Intelligenetics, assisting a team at Hewlett-Packard transition to using C/Unix; developing QA programs for Apple's first implementation of Unix; and teaching classes for UC Santa Cruz Extension, De Anza College, and Xerox Corp. Alexis is originally from Capetown, South Africa and grew up in Berkeley, California, Taos, New Mexico, and western Colorado.