Washington, D.C., November 14, 2017 – DTI Management, the leading distributor of live event tickets to online retail marketplaces, announced today two key hires that will significantly advance DTI’s initiatives in technology and ticket pricing:
- Shakir “Shak” James has been appointed Chief Technology Officer for both DTI and the wholly-owned 1Ticket
- Lonn Huston has been appointed Head of Pricing for DTI
The hiring of James and Huston demonstrates DTI’s ongoing commitment to invest in people and technology—with a singular focus on delivering results for its clients and ticketing industry partners. These key hires, which also come on the heels of Lee Shenker joining DTI as President last April, ensure that DTI and 1Ticket are positioned to meet the ever-changing needs of its clients, and work seamlessly with online retail marketplaces and other ticketing industry partners.
“We are excited and grateful to have an experienced IT mind like Shak as our CTO,” said Lee Shenker, President of DTI. “He has the unique and valuable ability to share his knowledge with the entire IT team, as a teacher and mentor. In the short time that Shak has been running the 1Ticket engineering team, all 1Ticket developers have already obtained Amazon Web Services certification—which is a tribute to the culture of excellence that Shak brings. We think he is the perfect person to lead the merger of the DTI and 1Ticket Engineering teams.”
Added Curtis Cheng, CEO, on Huston joining DTI as Head of Pricing: “I couldn’t be more excited about bringing Lonn onboard to DTI. In years past, DTI’s main calling card was our distribution platform. As we move forward, our value proposition is expanding to include not only the distribution power of the DTI platform, but also the market intelligence of the DTI Pricing Program, which will enable DTI to deliver more profitable returns on the tickets we distribute for our clients.”
As CTO, James will assume responsibility for developing, executing and communicating the strategic direction for both DTI’s and 1Ticket’s technology, and work closely with DTI’s President, Lee Shenker, to design and implement innovative and highly functional technology that will enhance the services offered by both companies. James has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering, and over 10 years of experience in web services, cloud computing and network security.
Huston will assume responsibility for building and mentoring an expanded team of pricing experts at DTI, and for shaping and implementing “Version 2.0” of the DTI Pricing Program—which will combine the human intelligence of DTI’s pricing team with technology solutions to automate many day-to-day pricing tasks, in order to deliver optimal ticket pricing for DTI’s clients. Huston joins DTI after several years of running his own company, where he provided expert ticket buying and pricing services for some of the most successful ticket brokers in the industry.
