Our Management Team
ShipServ was developed by shipping industry people, to meet the specific needs of the ship supplies market.
Paul Østergaard - Founder and CEO
Paul Ostergaard is CEO & Founder of ShipServ, the world’s leading maritime e-marketplace. Paul founded the company in 1999 with a singular vision of how the Internet could change the economics of the global maritime shipping industry, driving out inefficiencies and increasing competitiveness. Recognised as a thought-leader in shipping e-commerce, Paul has grown ShipServ from a groundbreaking idea into THE place where the global maritime supplies industry meets to do business.
For its revolutionary approach, ShipServ received the Red Herring 100 Europe 2008 Award, which recognizes Europe’s most innovative technology companies.
The ShipServ proposition is simple. Buyers speed up purchasing and save money. Suppliers better serve customers and reach new markets. In 2008 ShipServ is expected to facilitate 3.5m transactions with a total value of nearly $1bn, serving over 25,000 users in 90 countries.
Before founding ShipServ, Paul was Director of Strategy for Oracle Online at Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company. Prior to that he was a Consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. Paul’s roots are very much in the shipping industry as he started his career at J Lauritzen A/S. Paul holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Kim Skaarup - Chief Operating Officer
Kim has 22 years of shipping and IT experience and started his career as a graduate trainee at J. Lauritzen A/S, then one of the world’s largest Reefer operators.
After a period in accounting he became the company’s first IT Manager introducing, amongst other things, one of the world’s earliest e-mail systems in the early 80’s.
He then worked as Assistant to the Chairman of the Lauritzen Group (Denmark’s third largest conglomerate) before moving back to J.Lauritzen, as head of all purchasing activities and outsourced services. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Vice President of IT/Procurement.
Kim joined ShipServ in December 2000 and has been a council member of IMPA (International Marine Purchasing Association) since 1994. He has a B.Com from Copenhagen Business School and a degree from INSEAD.
Neil Firth - Chief Technology Officer
Neil joined ShipServ in 2000 and is the principal architect of our innovative technology platform. Neil has overseen the growth of our technology team from a small group of London-based developers to the present distributed operation comprising Product Management in London, Software Engineering in Manila, and our global IT Operations.The team follows an Agile development methodology and other best practices under Neil’s experienced leadership.
Before ShipServ, Neil held senior software and telecommunications engineering positions including 10 years with shipping insurance specialist, Thomas Miller & Co, and before that with international oil major, Conoco. He has a B.Sc (Hons) degree in Electronic Engineering from Southampton University.
Linda Ho McAfee - Senior Vice President
Linda was one of the founders and former CEO of iShipExchange, which merged with ShipServ in 2003. She is a Director of Fairmont Shipping and Managing Director of Fairmont Resources Ltd. Prior to joining Fairmont in 1983, Ms. McAfee spent six years with Citicorp and Asia Pacific Capital Corporation in New York and Hong Kong respectively. Linda has an MBA from Columbia University, New York.
Freddy Ingemann - Senior Vice President of Sales
Freddy was part of the ShipServ team from the very beginning in 1999.
He left ShipServ in 2002 to do a turn-around as CEO of maritime crane manufacturer Acta, a project which he successfully completed.
He has 20+ years in shipping (Maersk, Danyard and MAN B&W) as senior sales / purchasing executive and is also a trained Marine Engineer.
Kay Sangha - Vice President, Finance
Kay Sangha (FMCA) joined ShipServ in November 2007. In her previous position as Global Financial Controller at GoIndustry PLC, an international b2b e-commerce platform for surplus and used equipment, she was responsible for AIM listing and a reverse acquisition of Goindustry into Grashopper Investments. She previously held positions as FD of Lucas/TRW and Case Technologies and also spent some years as a Consultant working with financial modeling, systems implementation, cash management, risk management, US GAAP compliance testing and SOX Management.
Donald Staffin - Senior Vice President
Donald was one of the founders and Executive Vice President of iShipExchange, which merged with ShipServ in 2003, and he has been involved in maritime e-business since 1996.
He served as CEO of Command Line Corp., a developer of ERP and maritime software, which he co-founded in 1985.
Previously Donald was an investment banking associate at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.
He holds an MBA in Finance from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, plus bachelors and masters degrees in Operations Research/Industrial Engineering, also from Cornell University.
John Watton - Vice President of Marketing
John has 20 years’ marketing leadership experience in the IT and telecommunications industry, spanning software, managed services and outsourcing. Before joining ShipServ, John was Director of Global Marketing for telecoms software pioneer Cramer Systems, where he was responsible for marketing communications and demand generation worldwide. In 2006 Cramer was acquired by Amdocs in one of the biggest ever deals involving a European software business.
Previously, John held marketing management positions at Microsoft, Ariba, SAP and Oracle. At Ariba, he was part of the leadership team that grew the company’s European revenues to $100m in three years and helped create the now widely accepted market category of spend management. John has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester.
Mikael Weis - Vice President of Implementation & Support
Mikael joined ShipServ in late 2000, and as well as running our Global Implementation & Support team, also takes the lead on our most significant projects. These have included the transition of our Customer Service Centre from the United States to Denmark in 2001, and more recently the development of a Customer Service Organization in the Philippines.
Mikael has more than 20 years of maritime experience including a number of years at sea with Chevron and DFDS A/S.
During his time at the Danish Shipowners Association of 1895 he represented shipowners in various national and international committees related to working environment and technical regulation. Mikael also managed an ISM project to assist shipowners in their development of a Safety Management System. He holds a Master Mariner ticket and a B.A. in Law from the University of Copenhagen.
