uc-santa-barbara
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Alexzendor Misra and the business hidden inside a search engine
At UCSB, Alexzendor Misra helped build Correkt, an AI search engine that reached 43,000 users. Now the Shofo co-founder and CTO is working on the video data that other AI systems learn from.
Jason Spievak and the Six-Hour Test
The founding CEO of Invoca spent years helping advertisers understand a ringing phone. As an investor and teacher in Santa Barbara, Jason Spievak turned his attention to the people on the other end of the pitch.
Bill Weeshoff Is Making an Old Bank Feel Present Tense
After three decades selling ideas, places and institutions, First Hawaiian Bank’s marketing chief has learned that a legacy brand stays relevant by showing up in the life of its community.
Justin Kassan
Justin Kassan is the Chief Marketing Officer of Honeylove, the Los Angeles-based sculptwear and intimates brand founded by musician Betsie Larkin. He joined in 2025 after roughly a decade spent inside some of the most recognizable direct-to-consumer brands in America: he ran paid social acquisition at Dollar Shave Club, climbed from Director of Acquisition to VP of Growth at the watch brand MVMT, and served as Vice President of Media at Fabletics from 2023 to 2025. His specialty is the unglamorous engine room of modern retail - media buying, attribution, creative testing and the arithmetic of turning ad spend into repeat customers. He studied Environmental Science at UC Santa Barbara before ending up, improbably, in the business of compression panels and wireless bras.
Heather Hochrein
Heather Hochrein is the founder and CEO of EVmatch, a peer-to-peer electric vehicle charging network she likens to Airbnb for chargers. What began as a master's thesis project at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School became a venture aimed at the least glamorous corner of the EV revolution: helping renters and apartment dwellers find a place to plug in. A self-described accidental business owner with roots in energy efficiency and workforce development, she has spent over a decade arguing that the clean energy economy only works if it is also a just and equitable one.