Escapia Management Team

Escapia’s leadership team brings decades of experience and success in software, innovation, and business to address 21st century challenges in the vacation rental industry. Bringing tremendous value to professional vacation rental managers through innovative software, world-class support, and technical excellence are top priorities of Escapia’s management team.

Bill Furlong, President and CEO

Bill leads the company in discovering and launching ways for professional vacation rental managers to take advantage of the opportunity the Web provides to increase bookings and grow revenue.

Prior to joining Escapia, Bill was Chief Operating Officer at Mpire responsible for Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, and Customer Service. Prior to Mpire, Bill was the VP of Sales and Marketing at Cranium, responsible for driving the company's revenue goals and domestic brand development. Bill expanded retail distribution to all major toy retailers in the U.S. and helped Cranium become the first company to win the toy industry’s Game of the Year award for three consecutive years. Before Cranium, Bill was the President and CEO of Mountain Travel Sobek, one of the nation's leading travel outfitters. He has also held several Group and Product Management positions with Microsoft working on Expedia, CarPoint, HomeAdvisor, and Sidewalk. Prior to Microsoft, Bill held positions at Time Warner and Morgan Stanley, and holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA from Dartmouth College.

John J. Suzuki - Vice President of Sales

As Vice President of Sales, John Suzuki is responsible for sales and marketing of the Escapia platform. John works to maintain Escapia’s reputation across the vacation rental industry of honesty, courtesy, and professionalism.

John has been in high technology for over 25 years. His experience includes serving in enterprise and international sales and managerial positions with IBM, Sun, StarTouch International, and Dimension Systems. He holds an MBA and BS degrees in Business Computer Methods, Financial Management, and Financial Investments from California State University, Long Beach.

Evan Gull - Director of Products

Evan Gull, Escapia's Director of Products, is a true pioneer in vacation rental software, and has nearly three decades of experience writing vacation rental management software. Evan’s disciplined and traditional approach to building vacation rental software, combined Escapia’s team of talented Internet software developers brings the best of all worlds to Escapia’s customers.

Evan started writing vacation rental software 1981 when IBM introduced its first Personal Computer. Evan co-founded First Resort Software (FRS) in 1985 and served as Vice President of Software Development until 1999, after it went public on the NYSE as the technology arm of Resortquest, Inc. Evan was the creator and chief developer of FRS’ flagship software product Avmain. Prior to FRS, Evan worked for NASA during the Apollo lunar landing program, and was a Manager of Software Application Development for Arabian American Oil in Saudi Arabia. Evan holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Ryan Trayers – Vice President of Engineering and CTO

As Vice President of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer, Ryan leads Escapia’s research and development of new business applications for vacation rental managers. In developing Escapia’s breakthrough web-based software and services, Ryan manages "old school" discipline to building mission-critical applications with the "new frontier" of the Internet. With over a decade of experience developing Internet software and services, Ryan has successfully launched the most advanced and integrated online marketing and distribution system for vacation rentals, EscapiaNET, and leads the development of the most powerful, best-of-breed set of vacation rental business applications and online marketing systems available today, EscapiaONE.

Prior to joining Escapia, Ryan served as Development Manager of the Platform and E-commerce Services at Expedia responsible for the core back-end systems including bookings, payments, fraud, rewards and analytics as well as the core platform infrastructure for these and other services. Ryan started at Expedia as a software developer and worked on various teams including Classic Vacations and Transportation Systems for over 8 years, advancing to Development Lead and then to Development Manager. Ryan holds a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Simon Fraser University.

James Sells – Director of Client Services

As Director of Client Services, James oversees Escapia’s Technical Support, Installation, and Professional Services teams. Under James’ leadership these teams assist clients in becoming proficient in using Escapia technology so that their businesses are more profitable, efficient, and progressive.