Leadership Team

As co-founder and CEO, Bryan's vision remains entirely focused on creating the most effective digital resources available for political and public affairs professionals. Bryan believes that the best crystal ball is simply listening to clients' greatest needs on a daily basis.

Borne out of lessons that could only be learned in his decade-long high tech experience in the Silicon Valley, Bryan integrates hard work and fun into everything that the Activate Direct team does.

Before starting Activate Direct, Bryan was a Senior Strategist at the enterprise software firm, PeopleSoft. He also founded and worked with several Internet startups in the pioneering days of the dot-com era. Merica started his career in IT/management consulting, working with international consulting powerhouses Deloitte & Touche and Price Waterhouse.

Bryan currently serves on the board of WEAVE, a non-profit provider of crisis intervention services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Bryan was a bit of a bookworm, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of the Pacific.

As co-founder and the company’s lead technologist from its very beginning, Josh grew Activate Direct’s technology from the ground up by combining user interface experience and innovative new solutions with tried and true, stable and secure technology.  Vermette’s belief that complex needs can always be broken into simple ideas has helped drive Activate Direct’s philosophy that simple things should be easy, and everything should be possible.

Before starting Activate Direct, Josh was one of the early engineers at Yahoo where he helped create the user interface and backend infrastructure for Yahoo Mail.  He was also responsible for creating the translation engine that helped to launch Yahoo into the international market, and for creating the interpretive programming language which drove many of Yahoo’s early products.

Josh holds Bachelors of Arts and Science from UC Berkeley in Philosophy and Computer Science, which he assures you are not as divergent as they might seem.

As chief creative guru, Matt takes pride in providing strategic design and development services to a number of the nation's leading political consultants, elected officials, candidates, and statewide ballot measure campaigns. He believes that entirely new models of interacting online are crucial in an increasingly tech-savvy world. Matt is committed to providing the most creative direction possible to Activate Direct's clients.

Before joining Activate Direct, Matt served as Director of e-Communications on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s successful reelection campaign. In this role he spearheaded new media projects that included daily Web operations, producing video blogs and executing an extensive statewide e-mail and SMS text messaging campaign that reached millions of Californians.

Matt loves politics and studied international relations at the University of California, Davis, focusing on National Security Policy and East Asian culture.

As Sr. Account Manager, Jonathan has a communications and public affairs background with extensive experience in state government, political and media campaigns, coalition building and issue advocacy.

In 2004, Jonathan was selected as a Jesse M. Unruh Assembly Fellow, where he directly participated in California's legislative process by working in the California State Assembly. The Fellowship is one of the nation's oldest and most prestigious legislative fellowship programs.

Prior to joining Activate Direct, Jonathan served as Assistant Press Secretary for the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Texas and Deputy Communications Director for the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii. Jonathan was also the Deputy Communications Director for a gubernatorial campaign in Hawaii, where he was the director of new media operations, including Twitter and Facebook.

Jonathan earned a bachelor's degree in International Relations from California State University, Chico and master's degree in Public Administration from the University of Southern California.