Zukor Interactive

SAMUEL TURCOTTE
President & Chief Technology Officer

A 12-year Silicon Valley veteran,Turcotte’s first experience with videogames was playing Pong on his family’s Atari 2600 which contained a 1.19 MHz CPU and 128 bytes of RAM.  (He was one of those kids who wore a calculator watch.)  He currently owns a PS3 and a Wii, but enjoys computer and web-based games as well.  He proudly plays Angry Birds on an almost daily basis and is firmly convinced it was the best dollar he has ever spent.  However, he is decidedly not fan of Facebook games, such as Farmville, nor Facebook in general. He secretly plays Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, but please don’t tell his mom.

Turcotte’s professional game industry experience started when he served as manager of games and emerging markets at computer industry pioneer Silicon Graphics Computer Systems (now SGI) starting in 1995.  He worked with the company’s hardware engineers and software programmers to help drive game developers to use SGI computer systems to design their games.

In late 1997, Turcotte moved to Sun Microsystems where for seven years he managed digital media partners.  While there he worked with Sun’s engineering team and third-party hardware and software developers in the media and entertainment industries.  He focused primarily on video and audio hardware and applications, mobile applications and Internet technologies.

Turcotte formed Zukor Marketing in 2004 and many of the website projects the company took on required advanced interactive features, including online videogames and training tools.  Through Zukor Entertainment he co-wrote, produced and directed the feature film, “No Pain, No Gain,” which was theatrically released in the USA and earned him a Best Director award at the Houston Film Festival.

Turcotte is a veteran of the United States Air Force and won a Meritorious Achievement Medal for his contribution to developing a interactive distance learning facility at the Air Force Institute of Technology.  He was educated at The University of Texas at Austin and earned a B.S. in Radio-TV-Film, a M.S. in Communication/Advertising and an M.B.A. in Marketing.

In his early days working in the Silicon Valley, Turcotte personally trained hundreds of Fortune 500 executives and government leaders how to use the Internet, including the CEOs of Boeing, Gillette and Price Waterhouse, as well as President George H. W. Bush.