Eileen Gittins

Eileen Gittins wanted to create a beautifully designed and produced photo essay book, something that looked like a book you'd buy at the bookstore, but she only needed 40 copies. This turned out to be remarkably painful, expensive, and time-consuming, and she thought that was just wrong. So she founded Blurb.

Throughout her career, Eileen Gittins has been at the intersection of the Internet, consumer and enterprise software, imaging systems, search, and digital photography. A passionate advocate for enabling technologies that offer new ways to do valuable things, Eileen is now democratizing publishing for the rest of us with her new company, Blurb, a software and services company that passionately believes in the power of books: making, reading, sharing and selling them.

Eileen has served as CEO of several pre-IPO venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, including Personify, an e-commerce data mining and analytics company; and Verb, a context-based search engine company. Each was acquired by Accrue and Attenza, respectively. At Qbiquity, a viral marketing platform company, Eileen served as Board Chairman and interim CEO, where she was instrumental in negotiating the merger of Qbiquity into Collabrys. As a CEO, she has raised over $40M in venture capital throughout her career. Most recently, Eileen served as interim executive management at Viant, a San Francisco-based investment-banking firm in the technology and media sectors. She has also served in executive positions at Wall Data; Pivotal Corp, an Eastman Kodak spinout; and Kodak's Business Imaging Systems.

Previously, Gittins was vice president and general manager at Salsa Products, a division of Wall Data, where she created a 100-person department and launched 17 product lines. She was also co-founder and vice president of marketing at Pivotal Corporation and held various sales, marketing and management positions with Eastman Kodak's Business Imaging Systems Division.

Gittins completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in art (photography/digital imaging emphasis). She has also completed the Stanford Executive Management Program.