Background
Elias was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
founder Chief Executive Officer of Red Ventures
Elias was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Moving to the United States for college, Elias knew very little English and had to improvise: "I adjusted my schedule and took only classes that dealt with numbers my entire first year.” He earned a B.S in accounting from Boston College in 1989 and his Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1994.
Elias was a survivor of Flight 1549, an event which drastically changed his life and led to his widely viewed Ted Talk “3 things I learned while my plane crashed.” A recipient of Ernst & Young"s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Elias is cited as aspiring to create the “Google of the East Coast” within his company’s culture and facilities. Elias began his career in General Electric’s financial management program In 1999, Elias and Feldstein formed Red F, which served as a precursor to Red F formed in the aftermath of the dot-com implosion of mid-2000, and was predominately an online discount and loyalty program that evolved into a marketing consulting firm.
In 2005, Dan and Ric sold Red F to focus on developing, which focused on customer origination on behalf of service-related brands.
Specializes in customer origination for large brands in high-growth industries including telecommunications, insurance, energy, software and financial services. controls end to end customer origination by leveraging proprietary technologies, advanced web analytics, and an in-house sales force. Focusing on expanding their presence in the Carolinas, selected Fort Mill, South Carolina for its corporate campus. also has two offices in Charlotte, North Carolina and acquired marketing firm Imagitas in Waltham, Massachusetts, in 2015.
Employing more than 2,500 employees, has been voted a Best Place to Work by the Charlotte Business Journal, and has twice been ranked among the top 20 fastest-growing companies on the Incorporated, 500 list, growing more than 30% a year since 2008. Ric Elias was a survivor of Flight 1549 which crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009.
Surviving the crash was a transformative moment in Elias’ life.
Two years following the crash he spoke publicly for the first time at a Ted Conference with the talk “3 things I learned while my plane crashed,” which has generated more than five million views. In 2012 Ric Elias launched a non-profit that helps undocumented students attend college. Elias invested $2 million of his own money and raised $700,000 in private donations to fund the program
Golden Door has expanded, launching an offshoot called “Techworks” which provides high school graduates with career-readiness training and employment in the field of Web development.