Built by a development team with the same love for travel as you, Traxo is an intelligent new system for organizing, managing, and sharing all your trip details. This community is all about you, and we hope Traxo can be a place where all people with a passion for travel can meet.
Andres Fabris, Co-founder and CEO
While writing a whitepaper about network effects in graduate school, Andres conceived the idea of a web-based travel proximity alert service that would allow him to stay in better touch with his classmates (who he knew would spread out across the globe after graduation). He figured that if he proactively knew of everyone’s upcoming travel plans and could be alerted in advance of any future overlaps there was a much greater chance he’d actually be able to see more of his classmates in person. This idea eventually became Traxo.
Andres was born in Argentina and moved to the United States as a child. Inspired by his international heritage and a love for travel, Andres has spent his entire 13-year career in the travel industry and has held several key leadership positions including VP of Business Development at Travelocity.com where he was responsible for establishing and negotiating the company’s major distribution, content and technology partnerships, CFO / COO at World Choice Travel and Director of Emerging Businesses, Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Sabre.
Andres holds a B.B.A. in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin and a M.B.A from Harvard Business School.
Andy Chen, Co-founder and President
Growing up in a traveling ex-pat family, Andy attended elementary school in Bangkok, Thailand and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, middle school in the United States and graduated high school from an international boarding school in Leysin, Switzerland. Having friends across the globe, Andy immediately saw the usefulness of Traxo in helping him to reconnect with friends and bring them closer together.
Andy has held a variety of travel marketing and business development roles with Sabre and Travelocity. Most recently, Andy served as Director of Business Development for True.com, a leading online dating site, where he led all strategic partnership activities. Andy started his career with Northrop Grumman as an Aerospace Engineer and an Associate in the company’s Corporate Leadership Development Program. He also worked as a Senior Consultant with Cambridge Management Consulting where he assisted distressed Fortune 500 companies in implementing operational turnaround plans.
Andy holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University and a M.B.A. with distinction as a Sord Scholar from the University of Texas at Austin.
Richard Pendergast, Chief Technologist
Richard is an avid traveler, but his preferred mode of transport is aboard his second home, Hello Texas, a 38 foot sailboat. Richard and his wife Nicki lived on their boat while Richard led the technology team at World Choice Travel based in West Palm Beach, Florida. Prior to joining Traxo, the couple spent 6 months sailing around the Bahamas on their sailboat. You can follow their adventures on their blog ( here ).
Richard brings over 25 years of broad technology and product development experience to Traxo including 13-years as a technology Executive with Sabre and Travelocity. He has also been a part of launching two previous startup ventures that provided software management, consulting, and software development services. In 1999, Richard was appointed to the Texas Electronic Government Task force by Texas Governor George W. Bush to help guide the development of TexasOnline.com which brought government services to the Web.
Richard holds a BS and MS in Computer Science Engineering for the University of Texas at Arlington.
Chris Stevens, VP – Site Operations
Chris was born and raised in rural Iowa and now lives with his wife, daughter and golden retriever in Fort Worth, Texas. He has been a private pilot for more than a decade and he enjoys exploring the nation with his family in their red, white and blue Mooney aircraft. Traxo makes it easy to make the most out of each trip, no matter how big or small the destination.
Chris has held engineering, product management, and leadership roles within the aerospace and defense industries and serves as a technology consultant developing scalable, high-performance web applications. Prior to joining Traxo, he introduced a real-time flight reservations and e-commerce platform for the private air travel industry.
Chris holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Texas A&M University and a M.S. in Management of Technology from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Nelson Hsu, VP – Product Marketing
Over the summer, Nelson achieved one of his life goals of visiting all 7 continents before he turned 40. Having just returned from a 3 month Asia backpacking trip with his wife, he wishes he had had Traxo to not only keep track of his travel details, but to let his wife’s family know which swine flu hotspot they were in.
Nelson has spent his career managing global product launches and multimillion dollar marketing campaigns for companies as diverse as Newell Rubbermaid, Lucent Technologies, and Remy Martin Cognacs, as well as starting an internet e-commerce art company, eArtGroup.com. He also worked for McKinsey & Company advising technology firms on their business strategies.
Nelson holds a B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford, as well as an MBA from Kellogg Business School where he was an Austin Scholar.
Bijal Modi, VP – Engineering
Bijal lives in Mumbai with family and enjoys travelling around the world. He believes that everything is possible with software and is excited to build at Traxo a new generation of connected web and mobile applications.
Bijal has 15 years of research and software architecture experience in the web, mobile and telecommunications industries. He founded Rinira, a software application company in addition to being the Director of Application Development at CollabNet: focused on web based collaboration and the Director of Software at Lasso Technologies: online consumer trading platform.
Dr. Modi received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.
