Jessica Lipnack, CEO, and Jeff Stamps, Ph.D., Chief Scientist, are co-founders of NetAge.

For three decades, Jessica and Jeff have provided expertise and tools that allow their clients to collaborate more effectively. NetAge's pioneering initiatives are in use in companies, public sector organizations, non-profits, and religious denominations.

Jessica and Jeff’s research and practical experience have taken them around the world. Among their clients: American Management Association, Assurant, Apple Computer, AT&T Universal Card Services, BankBoston, Becton-Dickinson, The Brookings Institution, Digital Equipment Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, General Electric, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Kerr-McGee, Macy’s, Merck, Pfizer, NCR, PeopleSoft, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Roche, Royal Dutch Shell, Steelcase, Tetra Pak, Toyota Foundation, The United Nations, Unilever, the U.S. Army, U.S. Joint Forces, and Volvo.

Their six books, including Virtual Teams, The Age of the Network, and The TeamNet Factor (all Wiley), have been translated into many languages. Recent works include “The Virtual, Networked Organization,” the final chapter in The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams (Jossey-Bass, 2008); “The Strange Beauty of Virtual Teams” (Milestone Group Quarterly, 2007); “Communicate, Collaborate, Coordinate, Decide: How IT Achieves Strategic Leadership” and “The Easier Way to Work: Collaborating in World-Class Virtual Teams” (both Cutter IT Journal, November, 2008, and July, 2005); and “Can Absence Make A Team Grow Stronger?” (Harvard Business Review, May, 2004), the landmark article reporting on best practices in “far-flung” teams. In 2008, they also co-authored and edited “Teams of Leaders Handbook” for the U.S. Army under the Battle Command Knowledge Systems program.

Howard Rheingold's Virtual Community cites them as pioneers in electronic communication. Some landmark events in their careers include these:

• In 1984, they served as faculty for the first online global executive education program sponsored by the Western Behavioral Science Institute, La Jolla, California.

• In 1993, they helped design, facilitate and launch NetResults, the first electronic cross-agency network for U.S. government employees linking thousands swapping ideas on how to reinvent government.

• In 1994, they launched www.netage.com, an early website now in its fourteenth year.

• In 1995, they co-founded MassNet: Collaboration for the Commonwealth, a cross-sectoral effort to encourage collaboration among Massachusetts business, government, nonprofits, and educational institutions. Peter Drucker was the keynote speaker at the inaugural event held at The Computer Museum in Boston.

• In a 1996 ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Library, they jointly received the 21st Century Leadership Award from First Community Bank of BankBoston.

• In 1999, they keynoted the U.S. Intelligence Community's Fourth Annual Conference on Collaboration.

• In 2002, they introduced Livelink virtualteams, collaboration software for virtual teams, based on NetAge’s methodology, developed in partnership with Open Text Corporation.

• In 2003, they signed a partnership agreement with Inxight Corporation to develop OrgScope, NetAge’s organizational network display and analysis software.

• In 2005, they participated in the design and delivery of the first "jam" outside IBM's pioneering efforts, helping produce a 48-hour online conversation among 5000 people in a European company.

Jessica is the company’s CEO. Frequently interviewed by the press, Jessica began her career as a reporter. She maintains Endless Knots, an active blog, contributes often to online publications, including The Industry Standard, and writes fiction and personal essays. In 2008, she began teaching blogging in a creative writing program and to professors in a post-graduate program. Among her distinctions: In 2000, she presented to Springboard 2000’s New England Venture Forum. In May 2001, she received the Muriel Snowden Leadership Award for her service to Freedom House (see below). From 1982 until the founding of NetAge, she was president of The Networking Institute, Inc., a consulting firm engaged by global organizations to develop their network strategies. When not writing, doing yoga, or knitting, she wastes inordinate amounts of time online.

Jeff has overall responsibility for the vision, design, and integrity of the company’s products and services. He has thirty years of consulting and writing experience, with a focus on networked organizations. Previously, he served as co-founder and research head of The Networking Institute. Under contract with firms such as Digital Equipment Corporation, Apple Computer, and Royal Dutch Shell, he has designed and developed an extensive array of digital methods and tools. These include Livelink virtualteams, NetAge’s virtual team room software, subsequently expanded to work with Sharepoint and other platforms, and NetAge’s software, OrgScope, that displays and analyzes an organization’s many formal and informal networks.

In his early years, Jeff developed a fascination with computers that won him numerous awards and scholarships. A graduate of the University of New Hampshire, Jeff has a Fulbright-supported M.Litt. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in systems theory from Saybrook Institute. He is author of Holonomy: A Human Systems Theory (Intersystems, 1981), his doctoral dissertation, for which Kenneth Boulding wrote the foreword.

Jessica and Jeff’s other books include Networking (Doubleday, 1982) and The Networking Book (Viking Penguin, 1986). Jessica also co-authored Bear Island Reflections (Bear Island Conservation Association, 1989 and 2000). Their articles have appeared in numerous publications and they have contributed chapters to a number of books.

Since 1995, Jessica has served on the Board of Directors of Freedom House, Inc., a 60-year-old Boston-based nonprofit providing leadership and technology initiatives in the city of Boston, where Jessica has co-chaired the board and on which board Jeff also served for ten years), and, from 1982-2005, both she and Jeff served on the Advisory Council of the Calvert Social Investment Fund. Jessica is a graduate of Antioch College and has served as a trustee for Antioch University.