Poplar Team

Rob Freeman Jr.
Founder/CEO - Green Buildings Online Inc.
Rob founded Green Buildings Online Inc. in 2008. Prior to founding GBO, he worked for 7 years in property and asset management for New York commercial real estate private equity firms. Rob also owned and operated a hospitality company that built, managed and sold bars and restaurants in New York and Providence, RI. Rob is a LEED AP and GPRO-O+M, and earned a BA from Skidmore College, an MBA from Babson College and is a candidate for a Masters Certificate in Real Estate from NYU Schack. He is also a licensed property and casualty insurance producer in the State of Connecticut.
Alex Spilger
Founder of GreenStep
Alex Spilger, LEED AP, is the Founder of GreenStep Education; He is also the Director of Sustainability Cassidy & Turley, Alex is a green building and LEED consultant to Google, Skype, Twitter, Salesforce.com, GoPro, Oracle and many other companies. He has conducted LEED exam workshops and provided training to over 10,000 people and taken the LEED exams 21 times and counting... more than any other person. Alex holds a BS in Civil Engineering from UCLA.

Investors and Advisors

Riley McDonough
Investor and Advisor
Riley McDonough is the Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Americas consumer publishing group for Thomson Reuters, where he leads the sales, marketing and development of the company's multimedia news and information products. Prior to Thomson Reuters, Riley was the Senior Vice President of Consumer Markets at WebMD Health, where he led the sales and marketing efforts across all non-pharmaceutical and wellness categories. Preceding WebMD, Riley was the Vice President of sales and marketing at ESPN.com. Riley is a founding Board Member and Secretary of the Online Publisher's Association and Board Member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
Michael Allio
Investor and Advisor
Michael Allio is a founder of Allio Associates, a strategy consulting firm to start-ups and multinationals. Most recently, Michael is the former Deputy Director of Strategy and Management at the Gates Foundation. Prior to Gates, Michael served as Chairman and interim CEO of a development-stage biotech firm, Director and Principal of a manufacturing start-up, and as a consumer products marketing executive. He is a graduate of Harvard College and a John Harvard Scholar.
William O'Farrell
Investor and Advisor
William O'Farrell was co-founder, Chairman and CEO of SpeechWorks (NASDAQ: SPWX), a developer of speech recognition systems, which was acquired by Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN). He is also a co-founder of the company that created After Effect, a video editing product, acquired by Adobe Systems (Nasdaq: ADBE). He was also co-founder, Chairman and CEO of OpenAir, an application service provider of enterprise software for professional service organizations which was acquired by Netsuite (NASDAQ: N). He is a provider of strategic counsel and consultant to high-growth companies. He is a graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School.
David Allio
Investor
David Allio is a strategy specialist with over 30 years of practical experience in strategy development, implementation and merger/acquisition integration. He rejoined Allio & Associates in 2007, after fifteen years of applied senior management experience. His background includes strategy consulting for Fortune 1000 and middle-market firms, financial services, and marketing and corporate development.