Later this month, members of Lebanon High School's Class of 1990 will come together to celebrate their 20-year reunion. Among those in attendance will be former LHS three-sport athlete Corey Cleek, whose career in business and technology has taken him around the globe over the past two decades.

The Chattanooga-born co-founder of Uloop.com arrived in Lebanon as a first-grader at McClain Elementary School, which has since closed its doors. Cleek's family was very active in the Wilson County community; his father, Ray, served as pastor at First Baptist Church of Lebanon, and mother Gail taught Spanish, French and English at Mt. Juliet High School.

"Growing up, we housed a few exchange students, and they would ride to Mt. Juliet High School with my mother each morning," Cleek recalled.

As a youngster, Cleek developed a strong passion for sports. He grew up playing soccer before transitioning to football, baseball and basketball during his days as a Blue Devil at LHS. While he thoroughly enjoyed athletic competition, he was equally as committed to academics.

Shortly after graduating from LHS, Cleek entered the United States Air Force Academy but was medically disenrolled following basic training. From there, he relocated to Tallahassee, Fla. to attend Florida State University.

"I enjoyed going to Florida State, but ultimately I decided I was spending too much money on out-of-state tuition, so I went on to the University of Tennessee and finished up my bachelor's in accounting there," he explained.

During his summers as an undergrad, Cleek sold books door-to-door for Thomas Nelson Publishers. He enjoyed his role in sales and began working for the Nashville-based publishing company full-time after graduating from the University of Tennessee.

From there, Cleek moved on to sales positions with Nashville Life magazine and, in the late 1990s, he joined the Nashville office of Citysearch.com. His business interests soon began to evolve, and his focus moved to Internet sales and media.

"In the fall of 1998, I went to Duke University to get my MBA with an emphasis in marketing," Cleek said, noting the additional education provided him with the opportunity to intern in Seattle at Amazon.com. " ... That experience was extremely valuable. Amazon was growing rapidly at the time."

The summer internship at Amazon saw Cleek tasked with establishing relationships with new affiliate marketers as part of the company's affiliate program. Amazon offered him a job even before he'd completed his studies at Duke.

"I seriously contemplated it," Cleek said. "But, I decided it would be best to go back and finish my MBA."

Bitten by the tech bug, Cleek moved to California's storied Silicon Valley upon earning his master's degree from Duke. While there, he worked with both the national and international marketing teams assembled by Internet auction giant eBay.

"(As part of the international marketing team), I spent most of my time outside the United States. At the time, eBay was active in over 30 countries," he said, adding his involvement with Duke's GATE (Global Academic Travel Experiences) program had helped prepare him for the role.

Although travel frequently kept Cleek on the go, he still found time to indulge in a hobby that dated back to his days as a young athlete.

"When I was in college, I started keeping a list of all these sporting events I wanted to attend ... the Super Bowl, a World Series game ... a heavyweight title fight," he said. "As I moved farther into my career, the list began to grow. I've seen the Sumo Wrestling Championships in Tokyo, the Summer Olympics in Sydney ... my wife Sally and I were able to go to Wimbledon last year, and I've run with the bulls in Pamplona. My job enabled me to see a lot of places I wouldn't have gotten to see otherwise."

After five years on the West Coast, however, Cleek said he was ready to return to his family and to Middle Tennessee, noting he loved Nashville and had always "envisioned coming back at some point."

Upon returning to the mid-state, Cleek joined a Franklin-based start-up digital music company known as Passalong Networks, which counted former Microsoft executive Dave Jaworski among its founders.

"It was a great experience," he said of his time with Passalong Networks. "I was responsible for business development for the company. It was great exposure to a start-up."

One year into his post with Passalong Networks, Cleek and a few friends began brainstorming the idea for a new company that would eventually become Uloop.com. Launched in January of 2007, Uloop is an online classified website tailored to college students, a modern-day campus bulletin board which allows students to connect for free in a marketplace environment. Three years later, the site boasts roughly a half-million regular users on college campuses across the U.S.

And while Uloop provides a full-time workload for Cleek these days, he also serves as an adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. Having visited several colleges and universities as a guest lecturer during his days at eBay, Cleek said he was excited by the opportunity to teach.

"I've just found that I really enjoy it ... I team teach Internet marketing with Erick Goss," Cleek said, noting he and Goss were former colleagues at Amazon. "It helps that Erick and I are both practitioners. We're doing every day what we're teaching."

Cleek said he continues to grow as an entrepreneur just as Uloop continues to grow into an ever more popular resource for America's college students. He added he hasn't given much thought as to what might be next in the world of Internet media.

"With the success that we're having (at Uloop), I'm just enjoying the ride," he said, "learning and growing through what we're doing."

By BRIAN HARVILLE

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