Zondervan names BibleGateway.com president

Written by Eric Tiansay

Thursday, 02 July 2009 03:12 PM America/New_York

Zondervan has announced the appointment of Internet entrepreneur Joseph Park as president of BibleGateway.com--the most popular Web site for reading and researching the Bible, acquired by the Grand Rapids, Mich., publisher from Gospel Communications in October 2008.

In his role, Park will be responsible for all leadership and management aspects of BibleGateway.com and Gospel.com, company officials said. His initial focus will be to assemble a staff, including designers, software developers and account executives as well as marketing and operations support. BibleGateway.com will have offices in Seattle, New York and Grand Rapids.

Park joins BibleGateway.com after four years with Amazon.com, where he served as the head of new product development and was the founder/CEO of Askville.com--Amazon's social networking-based community question-and-answer Web site.

He also worked in the Corporate Strategy Group at Microsoft and was the founder of Kozmo.com during the 1990s Internet boom. Park will be responsible for bringing new levels of interactivity and social communications to BibleGateway.com.

"We are extremely blessed that Joe has decided to join our team and put his incredibly relevant experiences and skill sets to work to help us realize our vision for BibleGateway," said Moe Girkins, president and CEO of Zondervan.