Robert Zakari began his career as General Counsel and VP of Business Affairs for 1-800-US-SEARCH shortly after graduating from law school in 1996.

Within days of relocating to Los Angeles, Mr. Zakari was listening to the John & Ken Show on KFI AM640 when he heard a story about a senior community that refused to allow the fourteen-year-old grandson of one of the residents to live with his grandparents.

Listening as the child, Chaz Kope, recounted his tale of losing touch with his father, Mr. Zakari immediately thought of US-SEARCH. He called his friend who worked at US-SEARCH and relayed the boy's story. Within days, US-SEARCH founder Nick Matzorkis arranged to reunite Chaz and his father on the John & Ken Show, paving the way for father and son to meet.

With no prior legal department at US-SEARCH and, for newly graduated Mr. Zakari, no prior on-the-job experience, the company presented many challenges from day one. Mr. Zakari rolled up his sleeves and dove in, quickly building the internal structures and policies that eventually led US-SEARCH to an IPO three years later.

With nearly 100 percent of US-SEARCH's revenue in 1996 being generated from television advertising, Zakari embarked on a mission to expand the company's reach to the Internet, ultimately landing the service on every major online white-page directly.

By 1999, US-SEARCH ads appeared on every major web presence.   At the same time, US-SEARCH's TV ad campaign charged on with spots appearing on numerous other daytime talk shows and cable news outlets.

To stay at the forefront, US-SEARCH voluntarily joined the Internal Reference Group (IRSG), an independent trade group comprised of information giants Experian, Trans Union, Equifax, Acxiom, LEXIS-NEXIS and Choicepoint, among others. As such, US-SEARCH committed to upholding to the highest standards in disseminating public record information, earning Price Waterhouse Coopers' seal of approval at the conclusion of an independent audit.

Upon the company's successful IPO in 1999, US-SEARCH began trading on NASDAQ under the symbol SRCH. The milestone marked the culmination of years of work that began when the company was founded in 1994.

In addition to US Search, Mr. Zakari also acted as General Counsel and VP of Business Affairs for several other companies operating under the banner "InterAct Entertainment Group".  InterAct businesses included web development, television and music productions and distribution, musical and theatrical artist management, and telecommunications, making the company perhaps the first to successfully converge these formerly disparate enterprises into working business models in the heart of the entertainment industry.

Zakari faced his greatest challenge, however, dealing with the media attention and disruption that came in March of 1997 when an employee of US-SEARCH discovered the 39 bodies of the Heaven's Gate group in Rancho Santa Fe. That morning, Zakari was leaving the office to do legal research when he noticed a package for one a US-SEARCH employee.

He handed the package to the employee, left, and later that day learned that the tape contained footage of mass suicides victims, which prompted the discovery of the bodies of the group.

When Zakari was notified that the San Diego Sheriff's Department wanted to speak with the employee, Zakari represented the employee throughout the investigation. When it was determined that the group had chosen to take their own lives, and that the US-SEARCH employee was not involved in the matter, the media insatiable appetite for more information reached a feverish pitch. Over the next few weeks, Zakari accompanied the employee and Nick Matzorkis to numerous media events, including interviews with Diane Sawyers, Newsweek, CNN Live with Larry King, and other major news outlets.  In his first attempt at crisis management, Zakari was able to move US SEARCH beyond this one event, and get the company back on track.

In 1999, Zakari left US-SEARCH to join a small technology start-up named X:Drive, which delivered technology to allow consumers to store their data online and access it from anywhere in the world via the Internet. X:Drive was a pioneer in cloud computing at a time when bandwidth, and storage costs were vastly more expense than today.

As X:Drive's fifth employee, Zakari was hired as General Counsel, and VP of Business Development as part of a team of colleagues who would go on to become hugely successful Internet innovators, including Chris DeWolfe, Tom Anderson, and Josh Berman, the trio behind MySpace.  X:Drive raised significant funds as it grew to become the leader in online storage. Zakari was instrumental in helping develop and finalize a Japanese joint venture with Softbank before leaving in 2001 to start his own business.

Zakari reunited with Matzorkis in 2001 to work on public record services, whose philosophy was to utilize technological advances in Internet connection speeds, storage capabilities, and search algorithms to give the public the most powerful and thorough way to locate information about individuals. The duo re-invented the way people searched for public records much in the same way US-SEARCH did 1990s. However, there remained one more paradigm shift.  The day would come when the same high-quality public search information would be made available for free.

Though many white-page like services had offered free addresses and phone numbers for years, it was not until the advent of ZabaSearch.com in 2005 that consumers had access to a the kind of free public record search the public was seeking.  And while Google was excelling general Internet searches, there was no search engine solely focused on public records and publicly available information about individuals that offered its services for free.

ZabaSearch was the first step in the democratization of information that had previously been available to attorneys, the government, bill-collectors, and financial institutions for years. With the advent of Zabasearch, access to that same information was open to everyday citizens.  ZabaSearch was sold to public record powerhouse, Intelius at the end of 2008. 

After the sale of ZabaSearch, Zakari continued to work on various business projects that he co-founded, including Global Agora, as a board member, and he worked at SUP ATX, as acting Chief Executive Officer for almost two years.  SUP ATX was founded in 2009, and has grown to become the #1 Stand Up Paddle Board  maker worldwide.

In February of 2012, Zakari joined BeachMint as Vice President of Business Affairs and General Counsel.  BeachMint currently operates four exciting web properties including JewelMint, StyleMint, ShoeMint, and BeautyMint.

Mr. Zakari lives in Southern California with his wife, three children, and a Rhodesian Ridgeback.  When he has a bit of free time, he enjoys riding his motorcycle, or driving around in his 1962 Mercedes Benz 190SL.