Brian Ratzliff

A long-time entrepreneur and technology manager, Brian has spent the last twenty years holding successive positions of leadership in companies generally focused on leveraging technology to bring a compelling consumer benefit to the marketplace.

Recently, Brian has led the strategic thinking and growth strategy for Basketball Travelers, Inc., and BTI Events, around the possibilities associated with the marketing of key sports assets, and emerging new world of digital and broadcast rights for global amateur athletics. Out of these strategic sessions has come the core management team and approach for GLOBAL University Sports Properties. In addition, Brian and a small team are developing a new SaaS platform for the social media influencer space.

Previously, Brian was the co-founder and President of WhatCounts, Inc., a leading permission email and social media platform that was sold to Mansell Group (Atlanta) and Riverside (NY), a private equity firm specializing in growth development for mid-market organizations. Brian served as a Board Director for six years until a final sale was completed in 2016.

Previously, Brian was part of the leadership team at ShareBuilder.com, an innovative online brokerage and financial services firm that was eventually sold to ING. Brian led the marketing and early business development teams as the organization grew through successive venture capital rounds from fewer than a dozen employees to almost one hundred fifty staff during the go-go dot com years. Be sure to ask him about the life-lessons learned from the post-dot com years.

Brian began his technology career in 1994 – 1998, during the dawn of the internet commercialization phase, when he was a member of the product management and business development teams at Internet pioneer – Starwave Corporation, a Paul Allen company. The firm was eventually sold to Disney and the respective product organizations rolled into ESPN, ABCNews, and Infoseek.

Brian holds an MBA from the Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada, and a BA from Trinity Western University in Vancouver, Canada.

Weidong Chen

Founder and president of HAORAY LLC, is a Beijing native from China. He has established HAORAY consulting in 2007, which provides the strategic and management consulting for the companies and high net worth families in global development and investment areas.

Mr. Chen has more than 25 years of experience in strategic and operational development and implementation, strategic partnership, marketing & branding, and M&A due diligence & advisory across various industry sectors, mainly focusing on China, U.S. and Japan markets.

Some of its current and previous clients include Auris Surgical Robotics, Trident Seafoods Corp., Tencent, Amdocs, Haimo Technologies Group Corp., China Hainan Airline Group, Xiu.com, Infotainment China Media Inc., China Swan International Tourism, China Hightran Media and PR, Japan Material Corp., Tully’s Coffee, Stiebs LLC, Whatcounts.com, Blue Marble Energy, Xi’an Hi Tech Zone, and Suzhou Development Zone etc.

Before HAORAY, Mr. Chen worked as Vice President of marketing (China Market) for the Seattle based business social network start up, 9SPACES.com. Before that venture, Mr. Chen had more than 6 years’ of marketing and strategy leadership roles at Sprint Corporation in Marketing Communications, e-Business, Corporate Strategies and Global Development since 1999. Before joining Sprint Corporation, he also worked in the corporate finance and marketing research areas at Jefferson Davis Associates, Inc. and Alliant Energy.

Also, Mr. Chen has actively helped several non-profit organizations, such as Stellar International, Wokai and Landesa. He is currently a board member of CPN, a U.S. medical charity group. CPN is dedicated to help training and working with Chinese healthcare professionals to bring the better care to the children with cerebral palsy in China. All of these organizations have had significant China operations and involvement.

He acquired B.S. degree from Xiamen University (China) in Biology in 1992, and MBA degree at the University of Iowa's Henry B. Tippie School of Management in 1998.

Nan Zhang

A Beijing native and is in charge of ClearCreek’s China operation. He has established his own firm, HSBH Marketing Consulting, which focuses on providing specific and agile marketing, PR and Advertising agency services based on the each customer’s unique need and capacity to domestic and international companies in China.

Mr. Zhang is belonging to the energetic and aspiring, young generation of Chinese executives who acutely understand the younger generations of consumer behavior and preferences who were born in 1990s and 2000s, under ever-changing social and cultural backgrounds in last 40 years since China opened up and had One-Child policy. These generations, who are much pursued but hard to maintain by many businesses, who has very different lifestyle and work/living philosophies are from the generations preceding them.

Mr. Zhang was educated in New Zealand and is a bilingual Marketing and Agency services guru. He has tremendous experience in PR & Ad agency services, retail branding and Channel development through working at various multi-national companies and agencies experience at Volkswagen Group (China), Pico Global Services Ltd., Uniplan (Beijing) Co. Ltd. (German), Beijing HighTeam Communications Ltd., and SingTao News Corporation Ltd. (Singapore)

With Mr. Zhang join in as our China operation partner, we are able to covering the full scope of Marketing & Communication Agency functions and services including: public relationship, government relationship, marketing research, branding & advertising development, sponsorship and key media partnerships, retail creative and packaging design, market implantation, and commercial and consumer event management.

He acquired B.S. degree from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand