Michael A. Rybarski
Chairman & Founder

Mr. Rybarski was the Chief Marketing Officer of the nation’s largest funeral and cemetery firm, where he created marketing programs that produced over $800 Million of pre-need sales per year.

Mr. Rybarski has more than 25 years of general management experience in both publicly traded NYSE firms as well as privately-held entrepreneurial firms.

As Chief Marketing Officer, Worldwide, of Service Corp. International (“SCI”), Mr. Rybarski created innovatve television, radio and print media campaigns for pre-need funerals under the Dignity Memorial™ brand.  The nationally-branded Dignity Memorial Plan™ is now carried by SCI’s 1,200 funeral homes in the United States and represents a significant percentage of SCI’s approximately $2 billion in annual revenues.

Prior to SCI, Mr. Rybarski was Founder, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Age Wave Target Marketing, where created sales and marketing programs that targeted consumers aged 50+ for General Motors, Prudential Insurance and Securities, Kemper Mutual Funds, Johnson & Johnson and Merck. 

At Houghton Mifflin Company, a NYSE publisher, he transformed dictionaries into ground-breaking spelling and grammar correction software licensed by IBM, Digital, and Microsoft.  The language software division, which Mr. Rybarski founded, was ultimately spun off by Houghton in an Initial Public Offering.

Mr. Rybarski has a M.B.A. in General Management from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, an M.A. from the University of Chicago and an A.B. from Providence College.