Tom Cortese

Tom Cortese is co-founder and CEO of Proust.com, where he oversees the company’s day-to-day operations and continues to build a unique space for family and close friends to share and preserve their memories. Follow him on Twitter @tcortese.Recognizing the importance of close bonds and passing stories along from generation to generation, Tom sought to create a simple tool that could help guide people through the process of recording and sharing their own memories and aspirations. In 2010, along with co-founder Jason Fotinatos, Tom began work on building what is now Proust.com. Tom is most pleased with one unintended side effect of his entrepreneurial endeavor: his mother now posts 90% of her most embarrassing comments and photos to a close group of family and friends on Proust.com, instead of broadcasting to a much larger set of people on Facebook!Prior to Proust, Tom ran product development for the successful comparison shopping site, Pronto.com and was Product Manager for the not-so-successful startup Revolution Health. Tom started his career with Ashoka, a global network of "social entrepreneurs," and has long been attracted to using the power of the social web to foster deeper collaboration and more valuable sharing.