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Uwe Ross
founded Ross-Tech in 1999 and remains the chief cook and
bottle washer. Although he developed the original
versions of VAG-COM himself, Uwe no longer does much programming,
but continues to set direction for business with a focus
on product development. Uwe was born in Freiburg, Germany. He attended the
University of Pennsylvania majoring in Physics and
Natural Sciences. He has been a VW enthusiast
since 1982. You can find
Uwe's ill-maintained personal web page here. |
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Linda
Ross handles activations and pays the bills. Linda
and Uwe have been together since they met at the
University of Pennsylvania in 1979, where Linda majored
in Decision Sciences at the Wharton school. She
quit a lucrative consulting career, which included a
lengthy stint at one of the big international accounting
firms, to start working for the business
full-time in 2001. |
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Andy
Smith is our technical support leader and assists with product testing,
trade shows, and keeping the website up to date.
Andy became our first full-time employee in 2002.
Andy has degrees in mechanical engineering and business
administration. You can find an homage to
Andy's
old Mini Cooper here.
Andy now drives a Tennessee-built Passat TDI. |
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Eric Maurier
is our senior engineer/programmer now. He first
came to work for us as an intern while he was a student
at the ENSAM University in France in 2002. After
Eric wrote VC-Scope and TDI-Graph, we knew we had to
find a way to bring him on board for real, and he's been
with us full-time since he graduated in 2005. Eric
is also in charge of distribution in French-speaking
markets. When they need to get away from it all
for a while, Eric and Uwe like to go for
long
rides on their motorcycles. |
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Bruce Ruhf is our
operations and marketing manager. Bruce has extensive
experience managing a small business as well as a background in
Electrical/Electronic Engineering. Bruce and Uwe have worked together at two other companies in the
past, a very large one the the 1980s, and a very small
one in the 1990s. Bruce joined Ross-Tech in
2004 after selling his
previous business. |
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Santos Vega
assists with telephone sales, tech support,
order fulfillment, graphic arts, and whatever else needs to be
done. Santos joined the company in 2004.
Although he has little formal education beyond high school,
he's a fast learner with a great attitude and has become a VW
enthusiast by working here -- both Santos and his wife drive VWs
(one of them a Unicorn)
now.
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Sebastian Stange is our
applications guru. He first came to us in 2004 as an
intern from the TU Dresden, and developed our Wiki in
2005. Since then, he has produced most of
the content in the Wiki, as well as a majority of the
label files included with VCDS. In addition, Sebastian
helps with tradeshows and does product
support, the latter primarily for the German-speaking market.
Sebastian lives in Magdeburg, Germany, and is a former
VW enthusiast -- he currently seems to prefer Skodas ...
and '67 Mustangs ... somehow. |
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Tom Newingham is our MIS,
accounting, and logistics guy.
Prior to joining Ross-Tech in 2006, Tom worked in MIS at
a number of logistics companies. He also assists with
show preparation and with special events. For reasons we
can't fathom, Tom still drives GM and Toyota products
which always look out of place in our parking lot. |
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Yanping Sun is our operations
engineer and database specialist. She developed
the CRM system we use to keep track of orders,
customer records, support requests, inventory, and just
about everything else needed to run our business, and
her data crunching skills have been invaluable in
reducing the ODX data used by the latest cars to a
manageable format. Yanping also manages
distribution and marketing efforts for Chinese-speaking
markets. Yanping is married to Eric and has been
with us since 2006. She drives a turbo
Beetle. |
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Karri McKenzie works in our
shipping department testing interfaces and packing
orders. She also has a talent for photography and
has taken many of the pictures on our website.
Karri has been with us since 2007 and traded her BMW for
a B6 Passat recently. |
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Helen O'Neill
is in charge our order fulfillment department.
Helen has held previous positions in customer service
and order fulfillment, as well as car sales prior to
joining Ross-Tech in 2009. Helen likes Jeeps
and convertibles of all sorts. She doesn't
have a VW or an Audi yet, but we're working on it. |
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Dana Smetanick is a tech support specialist and assists with product testing
as well as documenting procedures in the Wiki and
creating label files. Dana has been a VW
enthusiast since she was in her teens and spent 6 years
as a VW dealer technician prior to joining Ross-Tech in
2009. Dana drives an 4-door GTI and always
seems to have an assortment of other VWs around.
|
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Jef Damewood is a tech support and sales
specialist. Jef has been a VW enthusiast for as long as anyone can
remember, and was a dealer technician for the better
part of 10 years. Jef has helped us with
sales at at various shows like Waterfest and AAPEX for
many years, and finally came to work for us for real in
2010. Yes, his name really only has one 'f' in it;
we're told his parents couldn't
afford the second 'f'. Jef and his
wife have a matched set of Jetta TDI wagons and share a
Mk.4 R32. Jef has a 2012 Golf R which he presumably does
not share. |
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Olga Racek is our distributor support
specialist. Olga's focus is providing support to
the distributors who make translations of VCDS into
other languages. Olga is a native of the Ukraine
and speaks a number of eastern-European languages, but
has lived here in Pennsylvania for quite some time. Olga
joined the company in 2011. |
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Shaun McElhinney is a software developer
and is currently working on
VCDS-Mobile.
Shaun first worked for us an an intern during the summer
of 2010 and joined to company for real in 2011 after
graduating from the University of Maryland.
After the engine in his old Toyota died, he upgraded to
an Audi A4. |
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Peter Schumacher is a tech
support specialist. He has over 20 years of experience as a VW and Audi technician, both at dealerships and at independent shops including his own. Peter joined
Ross-Tech in 2012. He drives his trusty 1996 GTI VR6
while maintaining his wife's Jetta GLX. Ask him about
the Coast Guard! |
