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Management Team

Matt McShane

Vice President

As VP of Buildtopia, Matt brings over 20 years of experience in the home building industry. Previously, Matt worked as the Director of Client Services for the Ryland Group, Inc. In this position, he was responsible for all IT finance, procurement, systems training, website development, and help desk, as well as all sales and marketing systems.

Prior to his information systems experience at Ryland, Matt was a sales trainer, a division sales and marketing manager, and a sales representative. It is in these capacities that he learned the homebuilding business from a sales and marketing perspective.

Matt has a B.S. degree in Finance from James Madison University. He also received his MBA from The Johns Hopkins University with concentrations in both Marketing and International Business where he graduated at the top of his class.


Wendi Pannell

VP Services & BTLearningCenter

Ms. Pannell brings over 11 years of professional experience in the technology field working with corporate, non-profit, and government organizations. She has extensive experience with project management initiatives, software specification development, and software product implementation and training. Ms. Pannell manages the BTLearningCenter providing educational services to both BT customers and employees. The BTLC provides learning tools in the form of online curriculum, product documentation and demonstration materials as well as employee orientation and our internal knowledge management system.

Prior to joining BuildTopia, Ms. Pannell worked as a Systems Analyst leading software development efforts for Information Concepts. As a consultant with Hewlett Packard, she led project management initiatives to successfully implement accounts across a diverse customer base. She is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a Bachelor of Science degree.


Erik Cofield

VP, Sales and Marketing

Mr. Cofield has been in the housing industry for 9 years. His 26 year career has afforded him the opportunity to provide business value as a Chief Operations Officer, Business Reengineer, and Business Process Consultant. He has the ability to analyze problems, implement and manage solutions, people and programs, as well as build relationships.

He functions as a business strategist for BuildTopia, as well as directing the sales and marketing team for the company. Erik Cofield, CGA has leveraged technology and provided business management consulting for all sizes and types of builders, developers and Remodelers since 2000, including volume, multi-family and custom, to help them improve their business. As a long time advocate for education and professionalism in the residential construction industry, he managed the education program for the Greater Houston Builders Association for 2 years and holds the CGA (Certified Graduate Associate) designation from the National Association of Homebuilders. He is authorized to instruct several NAHB courses, regularly speaks at events for builder associations and is the main content provider for the BuildTopia blog www.buildtopia.com/blog.


Sean Wilhelm

Director of Application Development

Sean has over 15 years of experience working in the Information Technology field developing software. Prior to managing software development for Buildtopia & Builder1440, Sean was a Senior Project Manager for G.1440, the sister company of Builder1440, where he was most recently responsible for managing development teams for several Consulting Solutions projects. His past positions included Project Manager for Nationwide and Software Developer for First Data Corporation. Sean holds a BA and an MBA in MIS from Loyola College in Maryland.