Our Management Team
ShipServ was developed by shipping industry people, to meet the specific needs of the ship supplies market.
Paul Østergaard – Founder and CEO
Paul Ostergaard is CEO & Founder of ShipServ, the world’s leading maritime e-marketplace. Paul founded the company in 1999 with a singular vision of how the Internet could change the economics of the global maritime shipping industry, driving out inefficiencies and increasing competitiveness. Recognised as a thought-leader in shipping e-commerce, Paul has grown ShipServ from a groundbreaking idea into THE place where the global maritime supplies industry meets to do business.
For its revolutionary approach, ShipServ has been recognized through many awards including Red Herring 100 Europe 2008 Award, First Tuesday Award 2009, White Bull 2010 Bully Awards and Tech Media Invest 100 2010.
The ShipServ proposition is simple. It helps marine and offshore buyers to find the best suppliers easily, trade efficiently and build trusted relationships. Buyers speed up purchasing and save money. Suppliers better serve customers and reach new markets. In 2010 ShipServ facilitated 4m trading transactions with a total value of nearly $1.7bn and served the sourcing activity of 70,000 users in 90 countries every month.
Before founding ShipServ, Paul was Director of Strategy for Oracle Online at Oracle, the world’s largest enterprise software company. Prior to that he was a Consultant for the Boston Consulting Group. Paul’s roots are very much in the shipping industry as he started his career at J Lauritzen A/S. Paul holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Kim Skaarup – Chief Operating Officer
Kim has 22 years of shipping and IT experience and started his career as a graduate trainee at J. Lauritzen A/S, then one of the world’s largest Reefer operators.
After a period in accounting he became the company’s first IT Manager introducing, amongst other things, one of the world’s earliest e-mail systems in the early 80’s.
He then worked as Assistant to the Chairman of the Lauritzen Group (Denmark’s third largest conglomerate) before moving back to J.Lauritzen, as head of all purchasing activities and outsourced services. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Vice President of IT/Procurement.
Kim joined ShipServ in December 2000 and has been a council member of IMPA (International Marine Purchasing Association) since 1994. He has a B.Com from Copenhagen Business School and a degree from INSEAD.
Freddy Ingemann – Senior Vice President, Sales
Freddy has been part of the ShipServ team from the very beginning in 1999. During that time he has been led our worldwide sales team, helping establish ShipServ TradeNet as the leading ship supplies trading platform amongst the global ship management community. In 2008 Freddy relocated to Manila to ramp-up the ShipServ telesales operation focussed on selling advertising and listing products for ShipServ Pages. Under his leadership, we have grown the number of businesses on Pages to over 37,000 and established it as an invaluable advertising channel for suppliers.
Freddy has over 20 years in shipping (gained at the likes of Maersk, Danyard and MAN B&W) in senior sales / purchasing executive roles and is also a trained Marine Engineer.
Linda Ho McAfee – Senior Vice President, APAC
Linda was one of the founders and former CEO of iShipExchange, which merged with ShipServ in 2003. She is a Director of Fairmont Shipping and Managing Director of Fairmont Resources Ltd.
Prior to joining Fairmont in 1983, she spent six years with Citicorp and Asia Pacific Capital Corporation in New York and Hong Kong respectively. Linda has an MBA from Columbia University, New York.
David Hardy – Chief Marketing Officer
David Hardy joined ShipServ in September 2011. David is a long time marketer from several different industries and has in depth experience in both offline and online marketing.
He comes to ShipServ from Europe-wide digital marketing agency and SEO and PPC experts, bigmouthmedia, where he was Group Marketing Director. He was part of the leadership team which, as a result of organic growth, saw the agency become the largest and most respected digital marketing agency in the UK.
Prior to that he worked in online roles for Marks and Spencer Money and Hilton Hotels – in both these companies he was responsible for the online marketing budget and strategy.
David’s marketing career started with brand and offline marketing – he was with HSBC for 10 years and after that with American Airlines, where he was Head of Marketing for Europe.
Mikael Weis – Senior Vice President, Client Relations
Mikael joined ShipServ in late 2000, and runs our Client Relations department, with responsibility for Global Account Management, Implementations and Client Services. He also takes the lead on our most significant projects, which over the years have included the transition of our Customer Service Centre from the United States to Denmark, developing a Client Services Organization in the Philippines, and more recently a new strategy for key suppliers.
Mikael has more than 20 years of maritime experience including a number of years at sea with among others Chevron and DFDS A/S.
While working at the Danish Shipowners Association of 1895 he represented shipowners in various national and international committees related to working environment and technical regulation. Mikael also managed an ISM programme to assist shipowners in their development of a Safety Management System. He has a Master Mariner background and a B.A. in Law from the University of Copenhagen.
Don Staffin – Vice President, Product Management
Don was one of the founders and former EVP of iShipExchange, which merged with ShipServ in 2003. He was originally responsible for building the Americas business for ShipServ, including the successful entry into the cruise market, before moving to product management.
Don co-founded Command Line Corp. in 1985, and served as Chief Executive Officer. Command Line Corp provided ERP software for a variety of industries including commercial maritime, and was one of the early innovators in marine e-commerce. He also spent three years at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York as an Investment Banking Associate.
Don holds an MBA in Finance from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, plus bachelors and masters degrees in Operations Research/Industrial Engineering, also from Cornell University.
