MOVIA’s Robot-Assisted Instruction was selected by the U.S. Department of Defense for their schools around the world!
Our Team
Leadership Team
Elliot Lewis
Chief Executive Officer
Elliot Lewis joined MOVIA as a Board Director and CEO. His leadership extends from startups to Fortune 10 companies, where he has led end-to-end functions.
Finance and Investments: Revitalized financial strategies, recouping over $750K annually and identifying $500M in unmet SLA penalties. Led a strategic tech plan, gaining leadership endorsement and securing a $16M budget increase. Aligned investments to forecast a potential revenue surge of $250-500M within 18 months.
Timothy D. Gifford
Founder & Chief Scientist
Timothy Gifford is the Founder and Chief Scientist of MOVIA Robotics, INC. Timothy is responsible for developing MOVIA’s core technology and conducting advanced research and development.
While continuing his research at the UCONN, Timothy has consulted and presented internationally on Robot Assisted Instruction, Autism, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Collaborative Robotics, Human Perception & Assistive Technology.
Sean Thurston
Chief Operations Officer
Sean Thurston joined MOVIA as Chief Operations Officer. He has a demonstrated history of working on and solving hard security and compliance problems.
Strong Start-up, Financial, Communication, Healthcare, Military, and protective services professional skilled in Infrastructure, Networking, IT Strategy, Data Center, System Deployment, Governance, Risk, and Secure Cloud enablement.
Shai Guday
Chief Product Officer
Shai Guday is an accomplished and highly innovative executive Chief Product Officer at Movia, having held equivalent roles with a proven track record of product leadership in highly challenging technology sector fields.
He has led end to end functions across start-ups as well as Fortune 10 companies. Shai has spearheaded delivery of industry leading customer centric products, often while rebuilding the organizational structure of the product teams. Notably, Shai is a primary/co-inventor on over 50 widely cited Microsoft patents, and is a co-author of 5 journal publications on operating system and platform technologies.
Pamela Welles
Vice President - Operations
Pam Welles joined MOVIA in 2020 as VP of Operations, managing the coordination of MOVIA's internal operations. With a wealth of experience in project management and creative services, Pam brings her management experience as well as an artist’s eye to her position as VP of Operations for Movia Robotics.
Pam is an organizational and creative expert, specializing in workflow processes and personnel management. As an award-winning creative professional with strong project management and solid creative thinking and problem-solving skills, prior to joining Movia, Pam worked with a variety of interactive, creative, and marketing firms as a video editor, web designer, project manager and as a VP of Creative Services.
Christian Wanamaker
Development Lead
Christian Wanamaker has been with MOVIA since the early days of research and development. As a career developer with interests in robotics, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and computer vision, Christian leads the software development team that produces the WOZ Teacher's Aide and develops the dynamic robot control systems.
Previous to MOVIA, Christian worked at the Lead Developer for the University of Connecticut CHIP Advanced Interactive Technology Center. Christian holds both B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Connecticut.
MOVIA Team
Katie Gifford
Education Designer
Laura Martinsen
Sales/Customer Success
