Empire Avenue Assembles Board of Directors

EDMONTON, Alberta, Dec. 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Empire Avenue, the world's first social currency platform, announced today that the company has named Charles P. Garcia, Sy Fahimi, Laura I. Gomez, Greg Zeschuk and CEO Duleepa Wijayawardhana to its new board of directors. The veteran group of business leaders will bring a diverse set of backgrounds, skills and perspectives to Empire Avenue as the company helps global social media users recognize the value of their networks and earn rewards for their reputation, skills and leadership.

Charles P. Garcia, chairman of the board, is the founder and CEO of Garcia Trujillo LLC, a consulting, merchant banking and venture capital firm. Garcia founded and led Sterling Financial Investment Group, which became one of the fastest growing companies in the U.S. with sixty offices in seven counties and $2 billion in assets before it was acquired in 2006. Garcia is one of the Top 50 most connected individuals worldwide on LinkedIn and in the top 1% of Twitter users, according to the Huffington Post.

Sy Fahimi is a member of the executive team at Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm based in Palo Alto. Until 2012, Fahimi was in charge of Yahoo's Monetization and Emerging Market products. Prior to Yahoo, he was CEO of Adteractive, a performance marketing company, and held an executive role at Intuit.

Laura Gomez is the Head of International Product at Jawbone, an innovator in audio equipment. She has led international operations at YouTube, SearchRev (acquired by AKQA) and Twitter. A founding member of Twitter's international team, Gomez led the international expansion and localization of Twitter into 50 different languages.

Greg Zeschuk is the co-founder of BioWare Corp., one of the world's most successful video game companies. Under Zeschuk's leadership, BioWare transformed the industry with titles like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. In 2007, BioWare Corp. became part of Electronic Arts in one of the largest video-game related acquisitions to date.

Duleepa "Dups" Wijayawardhana is the co-founder and CEO of Empire Avenue. Before founding Empire Avenue, Dups was the Community Manager for North America at MySQL AB, now part of Oracle Corp. Prior to MySQL, Dups worked at BioWare Corp. where he helped connect games to the social web and helped grow BioWare's online community to over 8 million gamers

"We've assembled an outside board of directors with some of the most innovative, customer centric minds to help us take Empire Avenue to new heights," said Wijayawardhana. "I am looking forward to working with our new Board to put their advice, input and connections to great use in expanding Empire Avenue as a platform. We have one of the best, most engaged communities in social media and our team is excited to push into the New Year with a focus on rewarding our users for their social presence."

Today, Empire Avenue members live in over 100 countries and spend an average of 18 minutes per day on Empire Avenue. The site is ranked one of the top 900 websites in the United States by Alexa. Empire Avenue is preparing to launch a digital entertainment marketplace where users can exchange virtual reward points for music, videos and e-books.

About Empire Avenue
Empire Avenue is a social currency platform tied to networking, content discovery, reputation and engagement. Through virtual currencies, a Social Stock Market, a digital entertainment marketplace and customizable Missions, Empire Avenue allows participants to monetize their social media activity. In turn, content providers and brands can drive social engagement through a fun, gamified experience. Learn more at www.empireavenue.com       

SOURCE Empire Avenue