GoBQ Grills, Inc.

Eric Goeken earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree at Iowa State University in 2004 and worked for Holabird & Root architecture firm for 7 years. He’s currently working as a Project Architect for HDR in Omaha, Nebraska. His in-depth knowledge of structural design and building materials has been key to the efficient development and refinement of several GoBQ prototypes that have led up to the final product. Eric's focus moving forward is on product engineering, research and development, and innovation. Eric currently works 6-10 hours per week at the company.

Todd Zaroban received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Nebraska in 1991. From 1990 to 1998 he worked as a graphic designer, art director and production supervisor in the graphics industry. In 1998, he started his own design company, Zaroban Design, and has sustained this successful business for over 20 years. During that time, he developed visual communication solutions for numerous global brands such as Bayer, AstraZeneca, McDonalds and Edelman. In 2002, he co-founded Get-The-Game, LLC, a startup company that provided rapid-time live scoring and stats services for college basketball. Todd's focus is on the operations, manufacturing, marketing and sales of the existing and new GoBQ products. Todd currently works about 30 hours a week at the company.

John earned a BS in Finance with honors from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln in 2005, and then spent five years working at TD Ameritrade as a new account sales specialist and investment consultant, attaining Series 7 and 66 licenses and becoming a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor. In 2010, John moved to Chicago to found several start-up companies while earning his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of business, in 2014, with concentrations in Entrepreneurship and Managerial/ Organizational Behavior. In 2012, John left the start-up world to join Real Estate Investment firm HAN Capital as a project manager for several storage facility acquisitions, and a year later became the third partner at HAN Capital.

McKay is a seasoned mechanical engineer with 18+ years working on a wide variety of consumer products. His experience ranges from creating initial prototypes to preparing products to be manufactured at rates above 1M+ per quarter. While working at Motorola and Ignite, McKay has travelled worldwide working with suppliers of all disciplines and levels of technology. Currently, he is a Staff Mechanical Engineer at Optimal Design in Chicago, laying out initial architectures and completing detailed product designs while meeting clients' cost, quality, and timelines. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.