About Us
Our Company
GivShop is a new venture located in Austin, TX. We’ve created a unique partnership that brings consumers, businesses and non-profit organizations together to harness commerce for the benefit of the local community. We support local businesses and local non-profits by providing consumers with great deals on shopping and fun things to do while generating funds for local charities.
Our Mission
Harness the power of commerce to bring businesses, consumers and non-profits together to uplift their community.
Our Values
- Create an environment that empowers our employees to be successful and grow
- Take excellent care of our customers (businesses, NPOs, and GivShoppers)
- Create value for GivShoppers, NPOs, business partners and investors
- Run our business in an environmentally responsible manner
- Inspire innovation, be open-minded and have fun
- Be honest, ethical and transparent
Our Team
Brad Mellema (Founder and CEO), brings a diverse set of experiences and skills to the team, including market research, opportunity analysis, product development, product management and product marketing. After graduating from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin with an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, he worked for AV Labs, a seed capital venture fund where he developed business plans and provided market research and opportunity analysis. In 2000 he joined an AV Labs portfolio company called Newgistics as a Product Manager, working as the liaison between the marketing and software engineering teams. In 2004 he joined a management consulting firm specializing in Product Development and Supply Chain Management, where he consulted on projects at Fortune 500 companies. Brad graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Jim Sutherlin (COO), has spent more than 30 years in the technology industry, contract manufacturing and with startup companies. He has extensive experience in supply chain management, commodity management, personnel leadership and planning. During his 27 years with IBM Jim held many leadership positions in procurement, commodity management, supply planning and held a leadership role for a critical project to align global commodity management with new product development. This project was considered one of the key success factors to IBM’s return to competitive leadership in the mid 1990s. A true advocate for giving back to his community, Jim volunteers for a variety of nonprofit organizations in Austin. Jim brings a strong background in operations, management and relationship building and earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Florida Atlantic University.
Bryan Bunch (CTO) brings 14 years of IT experience, primarily in the Internet realm, with him to GivShop. Bryan’s first IT experience was as the Web Technologies manager for Ruby Tuesday, Inc. He oversaw the initial development of Ruby Tuesday’s web site at a time when corporations were just starting to realize the potential of the Internet. Next, Bryan co-founded Walls New Media, where he was the VP of Information and Technology in addition to being one of the owners. In his 10 years with the company he oversaw all of the hardware and software technology and helped develop one of the early online publishing platforms that small-town daily newspapers use to publish their content online for subscribers. Bryan is an alumnus of Millsaps College.
Betsy Roberts (VP of Operations) brings 10 years of experience leading sales and marketing operations programs at Freescale Semiconductor and organizational change efforts at Motorola. Prior to receiving her MBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, Betsy worked as a senior consultant for Booz-Allen & Hamilton, leading a variety of organizational change management projects across multiple industries in both the private and public sectors, including banking, technology, manufacturing and national security. Betsy holds a bachelors degree from the University of Maryland at College Park.