Meet the QRyde Team!

Our Highly Qualified Team is your team – with the right mix of both Technical and Business skills bringing superior industry knowledge.

We do more than simply sell software solutions. Every day we are looking for ways to help transform the transportation industry for the better, by truly partnering with our customers. Your account team is dedicated to your successful operations.

Himanshu Bhatnagar

Himanshu Bhatnagar

CEO

Dr. Bhatnagar has more than 22+ years of experience developing turnkey systems in on-demand transportation, micro transit, paratransit/ADA transportation, brokerage call centers, Medicaid automation systems, shared ride management systems, intelligent transportation systems, demand response scheduling, logistics, intelligent agents, and Electric Vehicle design and manufacturing. He is pioneering Sustainable On-Demand/Micro transit Transportation Technology that has the potential of replacing the traditional fixed route bus service in urban areas, Brokered Transportation Technology powering large call centers across the country for managing coordinated transportation across varied government departments, and other industries in the areas of Public Transportation systems. He conceptualized and implemented Veterans Transportation Coordination systems to bring all available public, non-profit, and private transportation options to the benefit of returning Veterans and their families, and created QRyde Cloud, a community-based transportation management system. Dr. Bhatnagar has a Doctor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts and a Bachelors-Degree in Electronics and Communication from Delhi College of Engineering.

Ryan Larsen

Ryan Larsen

President of Transit

Ryan started his career in 1985 at the University of Iowa’s Cambus as a bus washer. Ryan has held positions as driver, driver trainer, paratransit manager, Assistant General Manager, General Manager VP, President, COO and CEO at both public and private transportation and software companies. Ryan serves as QRyde’s President overseeing business development and the transit system customer experience. Ryan has worked with hundreds of transit agencies, NEMT, microtransit and on demand operations. Ryan holds a BA in History and an MA in Transportation Planning from the University of Iowa.
Doron Cohen

Doron Cohen

COO

Doron recently assumed the position of COO at HBSS bringing with him extensive experience in business development, strategic planning, sales, and mergers and acquisitions. He is also responsible for the design and implementation of business operations, establishing policies that promote company culture and vision, and overseeing HBSS operations. He possesses strong analytical, managerial, communication, and leadership skills. Mr. Cohen attended Dalhousie University in Canada where he was awarded a Bachelor of Business Management Degree.

Shalabh Bhatnagar

Shalabh Bhatnagar

CTO

Mr. Bhatnagar is esponsible for Overall Project Management QRyde Platform and is the chief architect of the proposed QRyde technology platform. He has over 15 years of information technology and business management experience in both the public and private sectors, with key emphasis on transportation technology management, billing, telecommunications, as well as vendor and program management.  He is experienced in managing client solution implementations and is our Lead Technical Project Manager for the on-going, 20,000-trip-per-day brokerage management operation at the Montachusett Regional Transit Authority (MART) in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Mr. Bhatnagar provides business consulting, in strategic performance management methodologies, process assessment work, and the application of technologies to business. He fosters customer loyalty by ensuring our clients benefit from the value of our solutions and services.

Valerie Hough

Valerie Hough

Chief Solutions Officer

Ms. Hough has over 30 years of experience in Demand Response Transportation. She worked with over 100 different transit providers of all sizes. Her wide variety of skills and experience include a detailed analysis of user needs at a very large paratransit client, Project Management, analysis of data export / import of transit data, sales support, and customer support. She is currently responsible for managing analysis of user needs and overall Project Management for a new Paratransit / ADA Demand Response deployment for RTD in Denver, Colorado. Before joining HBSS, Ms. Hough was the CEO of PCTrans, a paratransit software company in Ann Arbor, MI. Valierie has a Bachelor of Mathematics degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Douglas Spears

Douglas Spears

VP of Products

Mr. Spears has more than 20 years’ experience in cloud-based (SaaS) product management, product development and product marketing and has been actively involved in the transit sector since 2004, including participation in various industry organizations and partnerships in the US and European market. With a strong background in cloud-based software applications and benchmarking market, competitive, customer and partner requirements for product offering and management, he serves as a trusted advisor and confidante to executives, management teams, organizational partners, and relevant staff. He inspires the identification of hidden opportunities and the development of innovative solutions by collaborating with key stakeholders and works with diverse teams driven to achieve unprecedented results. He is responsible for driving the strategic direction of our product portfolio, requirements management, life cycle management and roadmaps for creating a regionalized global product strategy to equate with local market needs. He frequently serves as keynote and subject matter expert for speaking engagements at industry events. Throughout his career he has eorked directly with various transit agency C-level teams to define new service mode concepts.

Zachary Gruba

Zachary Gruba

Director of Technical Support

Mr. Gruba is an Application Developer with 10+ years of experience managing infrastructure and application code for businesses with hundreds of users. His main focus is on streamlining business processes, scalability, and performance. Mr. Gruba is responsible for delivering architecture guidelines for web, mobile, and desktop deliveries, designing new and innovative solutions to challenges in the company, and providing support and results in the On-Premise services to the cloud including the infrastructure and networking design.

Mital Parikh

Mital Parikh

Director of Products

Dr. Parikh has over 15 years of experience implementing HBSS technologies, specializing in integrating modules with third-party systems as well as integrating multiple Agency systems. He was involved with implementing VTCLI projects across multiple states and the product management of electronic fare cards, consumer apps and portals, driver apps, and our scheduling system. Dr. Parikh earned his PhD from the University of Massachusetts in 2006 completing his thesis on “Availability and Connectivity for a Hybrid RF/FSO Airborne Network” while working on a project for MIT Lincoln Labs, and an MS in Electrical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, where his thesis was “Traffic Metrics for Adaptive Routing.” Dr. Parikh gained valuable experience in data mining, analysis, and models during his research work in Internet traffic engineering.

Stephen Pellegrini

Stephen Pellegrini

Director of Business Development

Stephen is the former owner and CEO of Automated Business Solutions acquired by HBSS in 2021. With ABS he deployed over 300 PtMS scheduling and reporting software systems with brokers, transit authorities, NEMT companies, and not for profit transportation organizations. His experience includes software development, training, support, sales, marketing, and project management in the transportation industry. In his new role at HBSS, he works on business development, sales, marketing, proposals, contract negotiations, and sales team building. Stephen holds a BA in psychology from Boston College, a Masters from Hahnemann University in Evaluation Research, and completed doctoral studies in Public Policy Analysis at the Fels Institute at the University of Pennsylvania

Aastha Chaturvedi

Aastha Chaturvedi

Director RFP Team

Ms. Chaturvedi joined HBSS in May 2021with 23 years of work experience in diversified industries including Information Technology, IT Sales, project management, business development, and education. As Director of the HBSS RFP Team, her responsibilities include streamlining the Request for Proposal (RFP) submission process and managing client interactions post-RFP submission, and contract negotiations post award. Ms. Chaturvedi holds a double Master’s Degree in Computer Science & Information Technology from Sacred Heart University in Fairfield (CT) and a Master’s in Business Administration from India.

Jim Stec

Jim Stec

Regional Sales Manager

Jim is an experienced transit professional with 9 years experience in implementations, project management, sales and consulting. He has personally spearheaded over 125 implementations, visited over 200 transit agencies, and been part of a statewide transit scheduling software project with 50 deployments. Additionally, he has been involved in sales to both large urban and small rural transit agencies during his career.

Vikash Kumar

Vikash Kumar

NEMT Product Manager

Mr. Kumar joined HBSS in 2006 with more than 17-years of experience working with us in the public transit industry. His responsibilities include designing, building, and maintaining the QRyde software platform. He specializes in Trip Booking software, Consumer Portal, Facility Portal, Eligibility, EDI transactions, Vendor Portal, Shared Rides, Lowcost, Reporting and Billing functions, as well as Medicaid transportation and HIPAA compliancy. His experience includes working closely with a variety of our transit customers, including Montachusett Regional Transit Authority and is an expert in database design and proficient in Oracle PL/SQL development. He has experience in developing applications in Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports, in developing applications written in C# and ASP.NET, as an Oracle ETL Developer, working with the Data Management Team working with Healthcare data, in generating Medicaid Invoices in 837p file, and writing algorithms. He has strong programming, object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD), and problem-solving skills. He is also responsible for Business Process Reviews with the clients, estimating project timelines, creating project implementation plans, developing functional specs for developers ,and making sure the product is deployed within budget.

Cornelius Beasley

Cornelius Beasley

Demonstration Specialist

Cornelius joined the QRyde marketing team as in July of 2022 and  has worked directly with QRyde customers to ensure training and technical support for customers in Mississippi and Georgia since April of 2019. He has a history of working in the non-profit organization management industry and is quite skilled in customer service, leadership, and community outreach. He is a strong program and project management professional with a bachelor’s degree focused in Sociology from Tougaloo College in Mississippi.

Dan Barone

Dan Barone

Sales Engineer/Training and Implementations Team

Dan has been involved in over 90 onsite software implementations across the US and has learned from this ‘boots on the ground’ experience rapidly in the last 5 years. He brings a transit mindset and a driver/dispatcher focus to the table during development meetings and will be a direct link between our quality assurance team and QRyde users.

He has been working in the transit sector since 2018 and is the son of his home county’s local paratransit dispatcher. With that in mind, he is always ready to help and improve transit for everyone – from rider to stakeholder and everyone in between. He holds an English and American Literature degree from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences of Rowan University in New Jersey.

Tammy Paige

Tammy Paige

Business Development Manager

Tammy is a Consultant, Entrepreneur, and Chef and is currently a Business Development Manager with HBSS Connect Corp, owner and publisher of QRyde Scheduling and Transportation Management software. In this capacity, Tammy handles governmental and customer relations, business and contract development, grant proposal management, and contract negotiations. She has been working for HBSS since March 2021. Following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, she served as a client recovery specialist for the American Red Cross for victims of the hurricane. Tammy has served as the director and administrator of the Drug Prevention Grant for the Laurel, Mississippi Housing Authority. Tammy also managed a $1.3 million federal grant for Jefferson Davis County Schools which focused on providing opportunities for kids through tutoring services, arts and crafts, field excursions, computer literacy, and aptitude testing preparations. Tammy proudly served her country for fifteen years in both the Mississippi Army National Guard, as a Logistics technician and Mississippi Air National Guard, as a flight EMT. Tammy also owns Tpaigeconsulting, LLC, a consulting firm providing political and business consulting. In 2017 Tammy was selected by Mississippi Business Journal as one of the 50 Leading Women Business Leaders in Mississippi. She received her culinary training from Jones Community College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Southern Mississippi, and is a graduate of Leadership Jones County in Mississippi.

Jack Kelly

Jack Kelly

Proposal Writer/Editor

Mr. Kelly joined HBSS in July 2021 where he is a proposal writer/editor on the RFP Team responsible for helping to draft/edit proposals in response to both State and U.S. Government Request for Proposals and Grant opportunities, as well as interacting with customers during both the pre-award proposal demonstration/evaluation phase and in the initial, post-award deployment phase. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, and completed PhD courses and exams at the Graduate Institute of Geneva in Geneva, Switzerland.

Breyonia Williams

Breyonia Williams

Business Development Representative

Breyonia joined QRyde in August 2021 as a Technical Support Specialist, and later got promoted to Technical Support Manager. In this capacity, Breyonia assisted QRyde customers in identifying support issues, recording issues into actionable support system tickets, and helping customers navigate QRyde support services. Breyonia’s technical understanding of the QRyde software system and her deep understanding of customer support issues, has been critical to her new role as a Business Development Representative. Her work with the Business Development Team has been in outreach for customer prospects, working on product messaging and prospect follow-up communication, and in performing discovery research for prospective clients.
Breyonia has a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Criminology from Mississippi State University, and she is working toward completing her master’s in social work from Jackson State University in Mississippi.

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