Michael Barak

Founder / CEO

Mr. Barak's passion for weather and keen interest in its economic impact on the private sector led him to assemble a team capable of the most accurate forecasts. He developed a close relationship with two meteorologists, Joe Bastardi and Joe D'Aleo, whom he believed to be second to none in forecasting ability.

Prior to founding WeatherBELL, Mr. Barak was a Vice President at Crossways Consulting Group, an aerospace/defense focused consulting firm. Mr. Barak helped develop channels to market and business opportunities for clients in the United States and abroad. He worked alongside industry leaders where his input was strongly valued.

Mr. Barak received his Bachelor's Degree in Engineering from Cornell University in 2005.

Mike Shanahan

President / COO

Mike Shanahan serves as Chief Operating Officer for WeatherBell Analytics, having been with the company since WeatherBELL's inception in 2011.

Prior to WeatherBELL, Mr. Shanahan held positions across multiple industries: as a Project Engineer for American Infrastructure, a heavy/highway contractor in suburban Philadelphia and as a Senior Analyst at America's Growth Capital in Boston.

Mike received a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering from the Cornell University School of Engineering and also holds an MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

Joe Bastardi

Chief Forecaster

Joe Bastardi is an institution in the science of weather prediction and is co-chief Meteorologist at WeatherBell, which he joined at the company’s founding. Many companies across a multitude of industries, including energy, winter maintenance and retail/supply chain, are profiting from his forecasts. His exceptional skills are rooted in a comprehensive understanding of global oscillations and in-depth analysis of historical weather patterns. Mr. Bastardi's analog approach, which finds similarities between current and historical weather patterns, allows him to make an accurate forecast, sometimes in defiance of computer model consensus. Mr. Bastardi is well known for his WeatherBell Premium blog, featuring the popular videos "The Atmospheric Avenger," "The Raging WeatherBull” and "The Saturday Summary”.

During his 32 year tenure at Accuweather, Mr. Bastardi built a large private client services business and honed his skills at applying his knowledge of the weather to various applications. His reputation for making bold and accurate forecasts has landed him on major television programs including Fox News Live, ABC World News, The O'Reilly Factor, The Colbert Report, CBS' The Early Show, Imus in the Morning, and several others.

Mr. Bastardi graduated from Pennsylvania State University and holds a Bachelor's Degree in Meteorology.

Joe D'Aleo

Chief Forecaster

Joseph D’Aleo has been co-chief Meteorologist of WeatherBell since the company started in 2011, is a major contributor to WeatherBell Premium and serves WeatherBell Commercial and WeatherBell Premium Agriculture clients. He continues to research how sea surface temperatures, global oscillations, soil moisture and solar cycles influence seasonal weather.

Mr. D'Aleo was a co-founder and the first Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel. He has over 45 years experience in professional meteorology, previously Chief Meteorologist at Weather Services International Corporation and the WSI Intellicast.com website. He was a partner and Chief Meteorologist at a hedge fund trading energy and agriculture before joining WeatherBell at its founding.

Mr. D'Aleo was a college professor and chaired the Meteorology program at Lyndon State College. He has authored a resource guide on El Niño and La Niña and papers on how research into ENSO and atmospheric, oceanic and solar oscillations have made skillful seasonal forecasts possible. Mr. D'Aleo has also published numerous peer-reviewed papers and books and made numerous presentations focused on seasonal forecasts and their impacts on agriculture, energy, and industry to conferences for government, professional societies, and industries in the U.S., Brazil, Canada and China.

Mr. D'Aleo is a Certified Consultant Meteorologist and was elected a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He has served as a member and then chairman of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Weather Analysis and Forecasting, and has co-chaired national conferences for both the American Meteorological Society and the National Weather Association. Mr. D'Aleo was elected a Councilor for the AMS, the first private sector meteorologist to be elected by his peers for that role.

Mike Furlender

Web & Technology Developer

Mike Furlender has been with WeatherBELL since September 2012, and has helped the company innovate while maintaining both back end and front end infrastructure. Mike's responsibilities at WeatherBELL include web design, full stack programming, product engineering, DevOps, and database administration.

Mike previously worked with FFK International, a New York based investment firm, to create automated trading algorithms for the foreign exchange market. He began programming in QBasic when he was just 10 years old and has progressed to become and avid contributor to open source projects. Mike is passionate about emerging technologies, and makes a point to stay on the cutting edge. Although it is Mike's job to write code, it remains his hobby as well.

Mike Furlender is a 2010 graduate of University of Massachusetts Amherst where he earned a Bachelor's of Science Degrees in Computer Science and Microbiology. While at UMass, Mike was the recipient of the Intel Award for excellence in computer science.

Thomas E. Downs, V

Operational & Forensic Meteorologist

Thomas Downs has been with WeatherBell since January 2014, ensuring that all of the commercial forecasts are issued in a timely manner. He also provides forecasting expertise and support to a wide variety of commercial level clients and occasionally contributes to WeatherBell Premium through blogs and videos.

In his capacity as Director of Forensic Meteorology, Mr. Downs continues to serve the legal and insurance communities, which he previously did for over 10 years while at Expert Weather Investigations and Weather 2000, Inc. He has provided numerous expert reports for a broad spectrum of legal and insurance cases in various state and federal jurisdictions and has been cited in multiple appellate court decisions. Mr. Downs has been deposed and has appeared in court to testify as an expert in analyzing official weather records. He has been interviewed by various media as a weather expert, and has assisted in the production of various documentaries.

Tom earned a B.S. in Atmospheric Sciences from Cornell University and is a member of the American Meteorological Society.

Mark Taylor

Vice President, Business Development

Mark Taylor is a veteran of the weather industry, with nearly two decades of experience of leadership in weather media and technology. Mark was most recently Senior Vice President for Strategy and Business Development with Weather Decision Technologies (WDT). Mark led the teams that invented and deployed the world's first products which integrated real-time weather and traffic information into an interactive mapping platform (iMap). Mark also led the team that developed the first mobile alerting product that used polygon based alerts and "follow-me" technology (iMap Weather Radio). Mark has been awarded multiple patents for location-based mobile alerts as well as for mobile augmented reality.

Previous to WDT, Mark was with The Weather Channel Interactive as Vice President of Mashups, and before that he spent 2 years at Fox Interactive Media as the Vice President of Weather and Traffic Strategy and Services. Mark spent a total of 12 years at WSI in two different roles earlier in his career, mainly focusing on sales and business development within the television broadcast and cable programming industries.

Antonio Riggi

Meteorological Developer

Antonio Riggi has been with WeatherBell since December 2013 and specializes in obtaining, processing, visualizing, and rendering large meteorological datasets, including maps and data products.

Mr. Riggi's interest in meteorology goes back to the many snowstorms he experienced growing up in northern New Jersey. His desire to learn more about meteorology led him to pursue a degree and ultimately a career in meteorology.

Antonio earned his Bachelor of Science degree in 2010 from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and Master of Science degree from Florida State University in 2013. In his graduate work, he investigated transport and dispersion of atmospheric tracer gases using high-resolution modeling ensembles, also employing variational data assimilation, through which he gained extensive knowledge of the inner workings of numerical weather models.

Stephen Hallett

Meteorological Developer

Steve Hallett joined the WeatherBELL team as a Meteorological Developer in June of 2018. He specializes in the synthesis of meteorology and computing as well as developing innovative products that advance the meteorological industry.

As an undergraduate prior to joining WeatherBELL, Mr. Hallett co-founded two companies, SunsetWx and Innovation Weather. Despite his young age, the skillsets he developed growing the companies led to national recognition in addition to establishing relationships with industry leaders.

Mr. Hallett attained his Bachelors of Science in Meteorology and Atmospheric Science from The Pennsylvania State University in 2018.

R. James Woolsey

Jim Woolsey is a Board Member with WeatherBELL Analytics, LLC.

Jim is also a Venture Partner with Lux Capital, and a Venture Partner and Senior Advisor to VantagePoint Venture Partners. Previously, Jim served in the U.S. Government on five different occasions, where he held Presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations, most recently as Director of Central Intelligence from 1993-1995.

Jim has also been a Vice President and Officer of Booz Allen Hamilton and a partner at the law firm of Shea & Gardner in Washington, DC, now Goodwin Procter, where he practiced for 22 years in the fields of civil litigation, arbitration and mediation. Jim currently chairs the Strategic Advisory Group of the Washington, D.C. private equity fund, Paladin Capital Group, and is Counsel to the Washington, D.C. office of the Boston-based law firm, Goodwin Procter. He also serves as an officer or advisor to a range of government, corporate and nonprofit groups, including the National Commission on Energy Policy, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Clean Fuels Foundation. Previously, he was Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Board of Regents of The Smithsonian Institution, and a trustee of Stanford University.

Jim has also been a member of The National Commission on Terrorism, The Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the U.S., The President's Commission on Federal Ethics Law Reform, The President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management, and The President's Commission on Strategic Forces.

Tuvia Barak

Tuvia Barak has served as a Board Member with WeatherBELL Analytics since 2013.
In 1982, Mr. Barak joined Tadiran, Inc., the North American subsidiary of Tadiran, the largest electronics conglomerate in Israel. During his 12-year tenure, over $3 billion in revenue was achieved under his direction, and Tadiran became one of the major suppliers of tactical communications to the U.S. Army. Mr. Barak developed strategic alliances and partnerships with some of the largest aerospace and defense companies. In 1993, Mr. Barak established his own marketing and consulting practice, advising U.S. and international companies on business development, marketing strategies, technology assessment, and mergers and acquisitions in the aerospace and technology fields.

Mr. Barak is a member of the Board of Directors of Skyline Software, WhiteCanyon Software, and Toonimo, a Venture Partner with Lux Capital, and special advisor to Kymeta Corp., and Heller Industries. He previously served as a Board Director at Brashear LP., Fairchild Imaging, and Arinc Corp., all of which were acquired by major companies with exceptional returns to their investors. His many clients have included The Carlyle Group, Boeing, L-3 Communications, ITT, General Dynamics, AAI/Textron, BAE, EDS, DRS, Elbit Systems, Schott, Selex, Ness Technologies, Vought Aircraft, SanDisk, United Defense, Mantech International, NanoSys, MapInfo, Rockwell Collins and Raytheon. Mr. Barak has a M.Sc. in E.E. from the Technion Institute of Technology, Israel.

Steve Pudles

Mr. Pudles has been a Board Member with WeatherBELL Analytics since 2011.

Steve has more than 30 years of electronics manufacturing industry experience. His most recent positions include CEO of Spectral Response, CEO of API Technologies Corp. and API Defense USA and CEO of Nu Visions Manufacturing (OnCore).

Mr. Pudles has been a member of the Board of Directors of the IPC, a leading global electronics manufacturing trade association, since 2000 and has recently served as Chairman, Vice Chairman and headed the Budget & Investment Committee, Nominating and Governance Committee, and Audit Committee. Steve also serves as co-Chairman of Origo Acquisition Corp., A SPAC in the Aerospace, Avionics and Defense space, a Director for Answernet Inc. and Apex Remarketing Group (ARG), as well as WeatherBELL. Steve has a Bachelor's of Engineering and Master of Science in Management from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Michael Barak

Mr. Barak's passion for weather and keen interest in its economic impact on the private sector led him to assemble a team capable of the most accurate forecasts. He developed a close relationship with two meteorologists, Joe Bastardi and Joe D'Aleo, whom he believed to be second to none in forecasting ability. Prior to founding WeatherBELL, Mr. Barak was a Vice President at Crossways Consulting Group, an aerospace/defense focused consulting firm. Mr. Barak helped develop channels to market and business opportunities for clients in the United States and abroad, working among industry leaders.

Mike Shanahan

Mike Shanahan serves as Chief Operating Officer for WeatherBell Analytics, having been with the company since WeatherBELL's inception in 2011.

Prior to WeatherBELL, Mr. Shanahan held positions across multiple industries: as a Project Engineer for American Infrastructure, a heavy/highway contractor in suburban Philadelphia and as a Senior Analyst at America's Growth Capital in Boston.

Mike received a Bachelor's Degree in Civil Engineering from the Cornell University School of Engineering and also holds an MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.