Andrew Schmolka, Esq. – SVP, Chief Operating Officer & General Counsel

Over the past 15 years, Andrew has accumulated a wealth of strategic and hands-on legal, business and executive management experience in dynamic transactional, operating and advisory environments.

Andrew joined Jonathan and Michael at OCE in 2005. In his dual leadership roles as COO and General Counsel, Andrew spearheads OCE’s business planning, legal and strategic policy-making, and corporate communications efforts.  He manages our day-to-day business operations and legal affairs, including OCE’s relationships with personnel, technology and data vendors and consultants, and leads the negotiation and execution of our financing arrangements and commercial and operating transactions.  Andrew also maintains our budget and financial projections and is integral to OCE’s investor and customer acquisition and support efforts.

Prior to OCE, Andrew spent six years as a multi-disciplined executive at PRIMEDIA, a publicly-traded multimedia content and technology subsidiary of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts (KKR).  There, he cultivated a company-wide reputation as an effective problem-solver across a full range of disciplines bridging law, corporate governance, business development, strategy and operations.  Andrew was a principal advisor both within PRIMEDIA’s senior corporate leadership team and to the company’s many subsidiary and business unit heads worldwide.  He also was a key strategist and the lead negotiator on billions of dollars of financings, mergers-and-acquisitions transactions and other business initiatives. His diverse transactional emphasis included venture capital and joint venture investments, strategic operating alliances and intellectual property and technology licensing deals.

Before joining PRIMEDIA, Andrew spent over five years as a corporate lawyer representing many of the world’s largest banking, securities and investment firms and major, multinational corporations at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, concentrating particularly on finance and mergers-and-acquisitions transactions.

Andrew graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Yale University in 1990 and Harvard Law School in 1994.  He lives in Chappaqua, New York with his wife Margot and their three children, daughters Jordan and Corey and son Zachary.