Management Team
Brian M. Requarth
CEO, Co-Founder
Brian has a deep understanding of business and culture in the US Hispanic market and Latin America. He co-founded ColConnect, LLC in 2004, a real estate web design and translation firm focused on US Hispanics. The company was founded in Bogota, Colombia targeting real estate agents in the US looking to grow their business in the Hispanic community. In late 2007 seeing the bigger opportunity he led the charge to build pure play real estate marketplaces for the largest countries in Latin America, launching the VivaReal.
Brian has over 5 years experience living, working and studying in Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Portugal, Costa Rica and Spain. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese.
Thomas W. Floracks
COO, Co-Founder
Thomas Floracks has been working as VivaReal's COO since 2004. He also manages the office in Bogota, Colombia. Before co-founding VivaReal and moving to Bogota, Thomas worked at T-Systems, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom (German Telekom), and managed extensive XML/HTML based documentation projects. He successfully implemented a web based solution that significantly improved the usability of a 5000+ page on-line software documentation.
He has closely followed the development of the Internet and its associated technologies from its early beginnings until present. Besides the general usability of the web he has made Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and the visitor-to-customer conversion of websites his special focus. Thomas speaks English, Spanish and German and has a special understanding of multi-language SEO and on-line marketing.
Diego E. Simon
Brazil Director
Diego Simon has a degree in Business Administration from the top business school in Brazil, EAESP-FGV, with post-graduate studies specializing in small to medium sized company management from the same university. Diego worked for 5 years as the General Manager of WR Engenharia, a construction company in Minas Gerais. He was responsible for B2B sales, human resources, finance, quality control and project management. He is experienced in selecting, hiring and managing teams having hired over 400 employees during his tenure. Under his management the company grew from 20 to more than 200 employees between 2004 and 2008, multiplying 12 times its revenues in the period. He is a qualified ISO 9001 consultant and auditor, with experience in the creation of a complete quality system. At the beginning of 2009 he joined the VivaReal to spearhead its operations in Brazil as the country director.
Diego has experience living abroad, studying and working in Argentina, Colombia and Spain. He speaks Portuguese, Spanish and English.
James F. Gray
Chairman
Founder, former Managing Director & CEO of the London based company GET ME IN! Ltd., a leading secondary marketplace dedicated to tickets in UK and Europe. James co-founded the company in 2003 and served as a pioneer and visionary in the emerging market.
GET ME IN! reported gross merchandise sales of approximately £9.1m ($18m USD) in 2007. In Jan 2008, GET ME IN! was acquired by Ticketmaster, the world's leading ticket company.
James was a founding member and served on the executive board of ASTA, the Association of Secondary Ticket Agents. The organization was formed to bring more consumer protection and confidence to the Secondary Ticket Market.
In 2004, he was the 134th entrepreneur in history to be recognized by the UK government with an Innovator's Visa.