Dmitri Don, together with Katrin Lilleoks, founded Fotki in 1998 in their spare time. Katrin and Dmitri were interested in a means to communicate with friends around the world and relatives staying abroad via sharing photos. Being a hobby, Fotki’s first headquarters was in its founders’ New York City apartment.

Before Fotki, Dmitri was VP of Software Development at Epsylon Technologies, and also Lead Developer for SenseNet and Citipost.com. Dmitri has a wealth of web-development experience; he conducted development work on About.com, New York Public Library, several Warner Brothers movie sites, Olympus, Lucent, Smithsonian, RCN.com, and worked as a consultant for MasterCard, CitiPost and other companies. He also served as a Lead Developer of one of the leading PR portals of the Dotcom Era, Courtney Pulitzer’s Cocktails with Courtney.

Dmitri is an expert in areas such as back-end, front-end, usability and complex application development. He taught several software development courses, including courses on Java and other technologies.

To contact Dmitri, email: ddon@fotki.com.

Igor Shoifot
Co-Founder & COO

A perennial entrepreneur, Igor was CEO of Microsoft WebTV’s largest entertainment portal, Epsylon Games, and, over the course of his 20 years in business, ran and co-founded start-ups in digital video, VoIP, document management, software development and publishing. He published articles and interviews on technology, Internet business and digital media in: The Wall Street Journal, Venture Beat, TV Technology, eMedia, Dagens Industri Magazine, Outsourcing Offshore and other publications. Igor is a frequent panelist at San Francisco and Bay Area Internet-related events, such as BizSessions and TechCoire. For a decade, Igor taught graduate and undergraduate courses in digital media, online advertising and marketing, e-commerce and e-business at New York University and other schools.

He has an MBA from Boston University, a PhD from the Russian Academy of Sciences, an MA from Central European University in Budapest and a BA Summa Cum Laude from Moscow Pedagogical University.

To contact Igor, email: ishoifot@fotki.com.

Leo Goldfeld
Co-founder & VP Business Development and Strategy

Leo Goldfeld was actively involved in new product introduction, innovation, building new markets and spearheading international business on behalf of GE Security, Motorola, Honeywell, KP Electronics, SIMS. Iseco, the first company, he founded, became the market leader in wireless data networks, law enforcement technologies, security video and central monitoring in CEE and FSU. Leo’s business development experience is spanning into software, R&D, electronic design and engineering product development services, building partnerships and alliances with such market leaders as Boeing, Microsoft, Arrow, GE. His latest focus was on leading new business development initiatives in Silicon Valley for Infotech and Aditi Technologies. He was driving adoption of latest technologies and platforms in cloud computing, UI, applications lifecycle management, web and enterprise content management systems, social collaboration, advertising and publishing solutions, mobile and RIA, BI and analytics.

Leo’s international experience in EU, CEE, FSU, Middle East, China, India, APAC helps Fotki in its goal to become the social media collaboration leader in global markets.
Leo leads Fotki strategy development, partnerships and alliances initiatives, investments and M&A activities. He is also actively engaged in B-to-B strategic initiatives of Fotki in Telecom, Publishing, Electronics, E-Retail, Advertising segments.

To contact Leo, email: lgoldfeld@fotki.com.

Katrin Lilleoks
Co-Founder & VP, Finance & Administration

Katrin Lilleoks played a key role in Fotki development as well. She was Fotki’s first test lead and copy editor. Her duties also included technical writing and customer-support development; and in the course of time she had been engaged into business operation and administration.

Before assuming her current position at Fotki, Katrin served as web designer at SenseNet. Among Katrin’s accomplishments of that period were the creation of websites for Olympus America, and The New York Public Library, as well as the official websites for the hit movies “City of Angels,” and “Analyze This.” Prior to joining SenseNet in the U.S., K. Lilleoks established herself in the world of international finances as a manager at Tallinn Bank in Estonia.

To contact Katrin, email: klilleoks@fotki.com.

Pavel Merdin
Co-Founder & CTO

Pavel Merdin joined Fotki in 2000. He is responsible for software development and system administration in the company. His efforts are aimed towards optimizing service costs via developing original technical solutions in Fotki’s system software.

Pavel worked for the Internet services department at JSC “Electrosvyaz”, a leading Eastern European telecommunications company, where he participated in designing high-level scalable network architecture and developing Internet hosting and network services. Pavel is also an expert in routing management, server administration and service marketing.

Mr. Merdin is a MS degree graduate of a prestigious Bauman Moscow State Technical University with a major in systems management. He also earned an MS in Development and Application of Information Systems from De Monfort University, United Kingdom, and possesses numerous international technology certificates.