Paul Kozma joins Our Hometown as President & CEO
Our Hometown Inc, today announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Paul Kozma as President and Chief Executive Officer. Kozma, previously chief operating officer at TracFone Wireless, succeeds Stephen Larson, the company’s founding CEO. Larson was named chairman of the board; and Jeremy Beha, was named Chief Technology Officer. The new executive appointments are effective immediately.
As an internationally recognized business leader, Kozma brings more than 30 years of experience in management and strategic planning to Our Hometown. Larson first met Kozma when the two were at AT&T at the beginning of both their careers. Larson had just launched his entrepreneurial consulting service, which eventually lead to the founding of Our-Hometown.com, and was working under Mr. Kozma in his first management role. “I am excited about this opportunity and very happy to be able to work with Steve Larson again,” says Kozma.
“Paul is exactly what Our Hometown needs to continue improving our content management service, as well as develop new products for the newspaper industry,” said Larson. “His metrics-driven approach to improving systems, and 15 years experience managing operations at a $7 billion plus technology company, will be critical to supporting the company during this time of transformation.”
The appointment comes at a time that the company is expanding its traditional product offerings and launching a reseller program to provide production and engineering support to newspapers through third party arrangements. Until now, the company’s engineering resources have been largely devoted to managing operations. Mr. Beha’s new role as technology officer will allow him to dedicate his time to developing a whole new family of traditional products, as well as innovative new media technologies.
“We are about to release a new Points Mentioned product, which will go beyond highlighting the locations in the story, and bring context to all named entities appearing in the news; this includes the who, what, where, and when of the story.” Points Mentioned Geo already has millions of monthly users and has served over 20 million maps to date. The company aims to continue investing in Points Mentioned R&D, which will require a steady source of funding from the traditional side of the business. “With an experienced, dedicated manager looking after our traditional business, I will be able to focus on developing the software that will support Our Hometown’s next generation of products and services,” explained Beha.
Kozma has served in several top leadership roles at TracFone since 2000, most recently holding the position of COO for its indirect channel. “I am a strong believer in looking for solutions, no matter how difficult the challenge…I am very confident that good things will happen in the near future and as the transition evolves the best is yet to come,” says Kozma. “Optimizing operations, developing key metrics to maintain world class support, and [the] innovation of our product will steer the ship where we want to be.”
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