With great sadness we announce the passing of our friend and the mother of Riis, Andréa Riis Skov on November 26, 2022. Andréa was born in Zurich Switzerland on September 10, 1951 to Camille Burleigh and Neils Aage Skov. As a child her family moved to a farm in New Hampshire. At six, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mother to their new home in Lexington, Massachusetts. Together with her sister Camilla, Andrea and her mother lived in the same home for 20 years.

At 8 years, Andrea was selected to learn ballet, to eventually become a ballerina dancing with the Boston Ballet until 28. Andrea attended Northeastern University, and graduated with a Bachelors and Masters degree in Physics. At 24, her first job was with General Electric, building and selling command and control systems for the Air Force. She was given a company credit card and asked to meet with customers across the country. Designing and building display systems for GE Cat Scanners, Pfizer, and color matching systems before moving on to Ramtek in Santa Clara. She switched over to Marketing, met her friends Cheryl Landman and Michael Gordon.

At 29 she married Michael Gordon, then worked for Logical Business Machines as a VP of Marketing, living in Saratoga with Michael. Together they both worked for Nolan Bushnell at Atari back in the days of Pong. Over the years, she and Michael grew apart, when Andrea met Keith with whom she stayed with for the next 10 years. Fast forward several roles with Structured Systems Group, where they produced Window Master, an early competitor to Microsoft Windows.

She worked with Molecular Design systems, where she met and married Jim Thompson, with whom she had a son, Riis McKay Thompson in 1993. She then helped develop the first credit verification system on a PC with IC Verify. IC Verify was acquired by Cybercash, then went to work for All Covered.

She met and married Richard Pierson, and together formed Cool Speak, a product that enabled free internet calling, texting, email and faxing. After selling Cool speak, she joined a startup Teneros as Chief Marketing Officer. Most recently Andrea has served as the Chief Marketing Officer for Diffusion Data.

She has lived in Saratoga for 30 years, and Campbell/Los Gatos for the last 8 years. Andrea has been an avid skier at Squaw Valley, dedicated Los Gatos Volunteer – Jazz in the Plazz, and loving mother to Riis.

Andrea and her mother shared a trait of the "2 am club". Those friends who would show up to help without question. We would like to thank those members of the 2 am club who have reached out to help Andrea and create a more memorable environment for her.

Please join us on Friday January 27 ^th at 2 PM at the Alameda Family Funeral & Cremation (12341 Saratoga Sunnyvale Rd Saratoga CA 95076) for a memorial service.