About Us

Founded in Burlington, Vermont, Escape Velocity Inc has a physical presence in Vermont and RTP, North Carolina. We serve clients across the United States and Canada.

Leadership

Jill Kaplan, Co Founder and CEO

Jill started Escape Velocity Inc after leading multiple marketing, sales and channel teams at Cisco and IBM. She likes to build big sustainable sales and marketing engines to create pipeline which converts into revenue. Her engineering background brings an analytical and disciplined approach to her efforts. Jill started her career as an engineer in semiconductors but moved to the sales side where she worked with research universities and colleges. She has been focused on building analytically driven B2B revenue across various channels, direct and inside sales, SaaS companies and large and small integrators.

Jill has a B.S.E.E. from Tufts University and a M.S. in Material Science from University of Vermont. She has been working with FIRST.org for the last five years where she and John collaborated to dramatically expand the FTC program in the NC Triangle.

Jill believes all information has value and unlocking its potential is her passion.

John Toebes, Co Founder and CTO

John comes to Escape Velocity Inc with over 125 patents issued World Wide in the areas of data management, compression technology, user experience and recommendation systems. John has had leadership roles at SAS, Cisco and Extreme Networks. At SAS, he was the founder and VP of Research and Development for Southpeak, a SAS company, he was the producer for Men in Black: The Game. While at Cisco he led development of multiple advanced technology groups and Cisco’s Intellectual Property team. He put in place processes and tools to streamline patenting which resulted in Cisco’s patent portfolio becoming top in the industry and Cisco received its 10,000 US patent during his tenure.

John is passionate about STEM and has coached First Robotics and Science Olympiad for over a decade with his wife, Mary Ellen. He has been recognized by First as the Volunteer of the Year in 2011. John graduated NC State and a member of the ECE Advisory Board. John served in US Air Force as a 2nd Lieutenant.

Sharing his love of technology with the next generation of leaders inspires John and his energy is contagious.

Our Team

Escape Velocity is quickly building a team of talented, energetic individuals. We love our young skill and have even engaged contributors who are still in their college years. We look forward to changing this picture many times as we grow.

Hire Our Vets

Escape Velocity from its inception committed to working with our Vets. They were fortunate after much searching and interviewing to find two amazing resources, Brian Dunn of DunnTek, and Alison Sigmon, who have guided them in the development of their digital and communications plans. Both Brian and Alison, beside being talented digital resources, are exemplary individuals and it is a privilege to work with them.

Our Artists

Much of the art work featured on our site is that of ANTHILLcollective in Vermont. They have been beautifying the Vermont arts scene since 2012. They have worked with Magic Hat, Dealer.com, Long Trail Brewing, South End Arts and Business Association (SEABA) to name just a few from their workshop at Arts Riot in Burlington, VT.