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 and the First Tuesday Award 2009 for Most Promising UK Technology business.
The ShipServ proposition is simple. It helps the buyers and sellers of ship supplies to reduce the costs associated with doing business together. Buyers speed up purchasing and save money. Suppliers better serve customers and reach new markets. In 2009 ShipServ facilitated 5m transactions with a total value of nearly $1.2bn, serving over 30,000 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.
Kay Sangha - Chief Financial Officer
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.
Freddy Ingemann - Senior Vice President, Sales
Freddy has been part of the ShipServ team from the very beginning in 1999. During that time he has been led our worldwide sales team, helping establish ShipServ TradeNet as the leading ship supplies trading platform amongst the global ship management community. In 2008 Freddy relocated to Manila to ramp-up the ShipServ telesales operation focussed on selling advertising and listing products for ShipServ Pages. Under his leadership, we have grown the number of businesses on Pages to over 30,000 and established it as an invaluable advertising channel for suppliers.
Freddy has over 20 years in shipping (gained at the likes of Maersk, Danyard and MAN B&W) in senior sales / purchasing executive roles and is also a trained Marine Engineer.
Stuart May - Vice President, Product Management
Stuart joined ShipServ in August 2007 and heads up the development of new products, managing engineering teams in London and Manila.
Previously, Stuart was the founding CTO of Ulysses Systems, where he led the design of the award winning ‘Task Assistant’, an innovative knowledge management platform for the commercial shipping industry. Prior to this he held software development positions at Novell and Toshiba Information Systems.
Stuart studied for his Ph.D at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. He also holds an M.Sc in Information systems Engineering and a B.Eng in Software Engineering.
Linda Ho McAfee - Managing Director, APAC
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, she 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.
Donald Staffin - Managing Director, Americas
Don 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 Don 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 - Chief Marketing Officer
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.
John has received many awards in recognition of his marketing leadership and in 2009 was named Marketer of the Year by B2B Marketing Magazine. He has a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester.
Mikael Weis - Senior Vice President, Client Relations
Mikael joined ShipServ in late 2000, and runs our Client Relations department, with responsibility for Global Account Management, Implementations and Client Services. He also takes the lead on our most significant projects, which over the years have included the transition of our Customer Service Centre from the United States to Denmark, developing a Client Services Organization in the Philippines, and more recently a new strategy for key suppliers.
Mikael has more than 20 years of maritime experience including a number of years at sea with among others Chevron and DFDS A/S.
While working 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 programme to assist shipowners in their development of a Safety Management System. He has a Master Mariner background and a B.A. in Law from the University of Copenhagen.
