Talents drawn from all disciplines and corners of creativity.
Our Story
It started with the observation that software development and digital marketing were growing closer together, would inevitably intersect, and be forever intertwined. The Refinery Haus was born from the idea to build an agency at that very intersection. Its evolution into an uber-creative, industry-leading agency is simply the beginning. The Refinery Haus is a carefully filtered group of talented individuals that come from cross-disciplined backstories — proud of where we came from, excited by where we are going.
The Refinery Haus is built on integrity, passion, and limitless creativity.
Our Leadership
We intend for our people to work united, pursuing excellence with unconquerable persistence and dominating energy.
Robert, our legal practitioner, is an attorney that’s been immersed in business and tax planning for more than a decade. Robert developed a keen insight for sifting through and assessing the risk elements that are uniquely associated with small business operations. He speaks federal compliance fluently. Robert is The Refinery Haus counsel; he provides client strategy risk assessments and guides client-sourced, follow-up risk mitigation policy.
Mitch Hadley is an experienced IT executive and creative problem-solver who continues to succeed by introducing a “culture of change” philosophy in his consultancy. This agile approach to constant change is the operating model we live in today, and with his qualifications and demonstrated success, he has added value by helping his clients evolve into the new business and operating models in the financial services and bio-pharma industries.
His recent consulting experience includes an acting COO role in an IT Field Services startup, and leading the PMO in a Fortune 100 company while building a cybersecurity program. Other recent projects include consulting as an Agile development coach, leading development in a “follow the sun” development environment for an international multi-currency settlement platform.
As Director at TIAA-CREF, he was successful in leading an outsourcing program that moved network and communications departments to an outside service resulting in a $35 MM annual savings and standing up a new online banking operations group.
Previously, he was a Partner and Managing Director with the Strategic Identity Group, LLC. This limited liability company was formed by Mitch and other partners to manage the startup of SAFE Biopharma LLC under a contract from PHARMA. He led vendor management and technical implementation teams throughout the startup. At the conclusion of launching safe-biopharma.org, the Strategic Identity Group was purchased by Verizon and is part of their identity management practice today.
Prior to joining the Strategic Identity Group, he was a Vice President with Visa USA in the eVisa division. In this role, he was a program manager leading testing of new retail and commercial payments products. At the conclusion, YUM brands implemented the new card-based POS infrastructure and executed the marketing campaign to promote the new fast-lane concept in the Atlanta market and later nationally.
From 1992 through 1999, he worked at Bank of America. As Senior Vice President of the Strategic Technology Group, he worked as a research analyst for the CFO and managed the innovation lab. The analysis of emerging technology companies provided by Mitch during the infancy of the Internet era yielded many profitable investments in companies like Ariba, Cisco, and Verisign.
Prior to 1992, he held various positions as Certified Network Engineer, Systems Administrator, and Accounting Systems Consultant.
John is a talented and driven designer and developer with nearly a decade of experience. He believes that the little things are the biggest when building products, and as the Head of Product, he brings an appreciation of fine craftsmanship and fixation on details to The Refinery Haus. Before he led product creation here, John had several years of experience designing and building high-quality iPhone apps and websites, which earned him Apple’s Wordwide Developers Conference Scholarship, and a spot on Apple’s list of the top young developers in the world.
At the intersection of design and technology, Steven Turoff has been developing software for over 30 years for companies as diverse as intel, Sony, The BBC, Dow Jones, National Geographic, and Apple Computer. He graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and attended graduate school at the Pratt Institute where he studied Industrial Design with a concentration in User Interfaces.
Before joining The Refinery Haus, Steven was the CTO of Mumms Software, overseeing the growth of the company from half a dozen employees to over 100, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Using agile methodologies, such as SCRUM and Feature Driven Development (FDD), he forged a technical and design team of 30 people to create an enterprise-class EMR unlike anything in the hospice industry.
Joel’s background is at the intersection of healthcare, technology, and digital marketing. With Johnson and Johnson for over 10 years, Joel has deep knowledge in the elective surgery and medical device markets. He has assisted in operating rooms from Boston to Beijing and led sales to new product development teams. His technology and digital marketing skills were honed at Red Ventures where he led cross functional teams in the design, development, and optimization of digital platforms for Fortune 500 companies. Joel built technology solutions for healthcare and large pharma companies focused on disruptive ways to acquire and engage customers. Most recently, Joel started a business focused on elective surgery patient acquisition and improving pathways through advancements in digital health.
Business-aware before he was thirteen, he was a precocious entrepreneur. He independently negotiated the purchase and finance of the full complement of high-grade commercial equipment to assure that his lawn care business held an acres-per-hour production advantage that his competitors weren’t able to match. He thrived in building that first business presence; the process was music to him.
Following his innate scientific interest by studying biochemistry at the College of Charleston, his continued migration into a medical career seemed inevitable. Reluctantly at first, he was compelled over time by an ineluctable attraction to business, a draw that pivoted him into a career of serial entrepreneurism, beginning with developing and exiting his first application business before the age of twenty-two.
Today, he works to shepherd digital marketplace capability into opportunities and circumstance that his competitors cannot.