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Luke Ritter - Advisor
Mr. Ritter leads the Global Trade Security practice at Ridge Global, a firm founded by the Honorable Tom Ridge, the first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. The Global Trade Security practice provides strategic management consulting services to clients focused on critical infrastructure protection. His expertise is in the areas of global trade and transportation operations, security and resiliency, and business process improvement. He is the co-author of: Securing Global Transportation Networks (McGraw Hill, 2006), which has received widespread critical acclaim from industry publications such as Logistics Today, The Maritime Executive, Traffic World, and Supply Chain Management Review, and was selected as the American Society for Industrial Security, 'Book of the Month', in December of 2006. Mr. Ritter has spoken at more than thirty industry and trade events in the last five years, including keynote addresses at The American Association of Port Authorities Annual Security Conference, and the Logistics Management Magazine Global Supply Chain Conference. He has recently been published and quoted in Journal of Commerce, Security Management, Directors Monthly, Traffic World, and Cargo Security International. He has travelled extensively on business throughout the Middle East and North Africa regions, including Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Israel, and Libya. In 2009, Mr. Ritter was invited to present on counter-piracy at the Hemaya Security Summit in Doha, Qatar. Mr. Ritter is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and holds an M.B.A from Old Dominion University, with a concentration in maritime and logistics management. He is board certified by the American Society of Transportation and Logistics (AST&L), and recently completed his tenure as the Vice Chairman of the American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) Transportation Security Council. Mr. Ritter serves on the Advisory Boards of iJET International, Inc., Decision Sciences International Corporation, and the International Maritime Security Corporation. He is also a contributing scholar at the Heritage Foundation.
Kirk Lippold - Advisor
Commander Lippold was the Commanding Officer of USS COLE when it came under a suicide terrorist attack by al Qaeda in the port of Aden, Yemen. During his command he and his crew distinguished themselves by saving this American war ship from sinking. This event is widely recognized as one of the most brazen acts of terrorism by al Qaeda prior to September 11, 2001. Commander Lippold is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and received his commission in the Navy in 1981. He attended the Navy Postgraduate School from 1987 to 1989 where he received a Masters of Science in Systems Engineering (Joint Command, Control and Communications) with a subspecialty in International Strategy. He is a 1994 graduate of the United States Army Command and General Staff College and is also a 2001 graduate of the Joint Forces Staff College. He served as the Administrative Aide to the Secretary of the Navy. He served as Division Chief and Politico-Military Planner, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Directorate for Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5), War on Terrorism Division, where he was instrumental in crafting detainee policy for the war on terrorism during its initial stages following the 9/11 attacks. His most recent assignment prior to retirement was as Section Chief for Regional Affairs, International Strategy Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (N5IS). He is currently a Senior Military fellow with Military Families United, a policy advocacy group representing over 100,000 Blue and Gold Star families and serves as President of Base to Peak, LLC, specializing in motivational and business-oriented professional speaking and consulting. Commander Lippold’s personal awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (three awards), Meritorious Service Medal (three awards), Combat Action Ribbon, Navy Commendation Medal (two awards), Joint Service Achievement Medal, Navy Achievement Medal (two awards), in addition to various campaign and service ribbons.
Ambassador Michael Sheehan - Advisor
Mike Sheehan is the President of Lexington Security Group, an international security consultancy. Sheehan has a 30 year career of distinguished public service which began at West Point. After graduation in 1977, he served as an officer in the Infantry and Special Forces. He had numerous overseas assignments; as a commander of a counter terrorism unit in Panama, as a counter insurgency advisor in El Salvador, as an Infantry company commander in Korea, and on peacekeeping duty in Somalia and Haiti. Also while on active duty, he served in the White House on the National Security Council staff for Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton. In 1998, he was appointed Coordinator for Counter Terrorism at the U.S. Department of State and was confirmed by the US Senate as Ambassador at Large. Following an assignment as Assistant Secretary General at the UN in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (2001 to 2003), Sheehan served as Deputy Commissioner of Counter Terrorism for the New York City Police Department until May of 2006. Sheehan has Masters Degrees from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. He is a partner in Torch Hill Investment Partners, a private equity group in New York City. He is also a terrorism analyst for NBC News and is a fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security and at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. He is the author of the book Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves (Random House, May 2008).
Lawrence E. "Rocky" Holliday - Advisor
Mr. Holliday is President of Holliday & Associates Inc., a management consulting company that provides international business development support services to a variety of corporations around the globe. Such services include strategic planning, marketing program development, the creation of strategic alliances and the management of customer relationships. Prior to forming Holliday & Associates, Rocky was the Chief Executive Officer of Abu Dhabi Ship Building (ADSB), a publically traded company that he co-founded in the United Arab Emirates. ADSB is currently the largest and most modern shipbuilder in the Middle East and is the only shipyard in the region with the ability to build, repair and upgrade complex naval warships. In 2004, ADSB was named by the US Defense News as the fastest growing defense company in the world. At his retirement in 2005, ADSB had accumulated a contract backlog valued at nearly $1 billion. Rocky established ADSB in 1996 and, in that same year, completed a very successful public stock offering in the UAE that raised capital sufficient to fund the company’s growth over the next ten years. ADSB’s IPO was the first such private offering in the fledgling Emirates equities market and became the model by which other UAE stock offerings were conducted over the following decade. In 2004, Mr. Holliday co-founded a second company in the UAE through a joint venture between ADSB and Selex Sistemi Integrati S.p.A, a major company within the Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica. This new company, Abu Dhabi Systems Integration (ADSI), was the first in the region to provide software and hardware integration for complex military electronic systems, including combat management systems, weapons and fire control systems, naval and airborne radars and sensors, as well as military communication systems. Within the first year, ADSI captured a major contract as combat systems integrator for a series of new naval corvettes being built for the UAE Navy. During the twenty years prior to establishing Abu Dhabi Ship Building, Rocky held a variety of senior management positions within the US energy and defense sectors with such companies as Babcock & Wilcox and Newport News Shipbuilding (later Northrop Grumman). His positions within these firms covered a very broad range of business functions including Finance, Operations, Marketing, Quality Assurance, Facilities Management, Engineering and General Management. Rocky graduated from Clemson University with a BS in Industrial Management. He received a Masters in Business Administration from the College of William & Mary's Executive MBA Program. Rocky is a graduate of numerous academic programs including the prestigious Executive Program (TEP) at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He currently serves on Advisory Boards for several private and publically traded companies.
MG (ret.) James A. "Spider" Marks - Advisor
Spider Marks is CEO of InVisM, a Denver-based company which creates cutting edge, interactive products for the Knowledge, Learning, Education and Training (KLET) market. MG Marks served over 34 years in the US Army and his business experience spans defense intelligence, national security, and interagency. Currently a Managing Partner with ERGO, a leading, global primary research and consulting firm specializing in emerging and frontier markets, General Marks was previously President and Chief Executive Officer, Global Linguist Solutions (GLS), where he helped create a new joint venture of over 9000 employees deployed between Iraq and the United States with total annual revenue of $715 million. Prior to GLS, General Marks was senior VP, McNeil Technologies, a defense and intelligence-related enterprise backed by Veritas Capital. He is a former Commanding General, US Army Intelligence Center, Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, and served as Chief, Intelligence, C-2, for the Coalition Forces Land Component Command in Operation Iraqi Freedom. General Marks also served as Assistant Chief of Staff for U.S. Forces Korea. During his military career, Marks served from the tactical to the strategic levels, commanded at the battalion, brigade, and two-star levels, and was a senior intelligence officer in multiple theaters of war. He is an Honor Graduate of the U.S. Army's Ranger School, a Master Parachutist, and has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, and multiple expeditionary and service ribbons. He is a 1975 graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and holds a Master's degree in International Affairs from the University of Virginia. Marks was a military and intelligence analyst for CNN from 2004-2007.
Scott Yaphe - Advisor
Scott is a General Partner of ABS Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm. Scott focuses on software, business services and media investment opportunities. Before joining ABS Ventures, he was Director of Corporate Development at Saraide, a wireless software provider acquired by Infospace. Prior to that, Scott was a management consultant with A.T. Kearney where he focused on the technology and communications sectors. Scott serves or has served on the board of directors of Synchronoss Technologies (NASDAQ:SNCR), Workbrain (TSX:WB, acquired by Infor), IQ Financial (acquired by Misys), ScaleMP, Vesta GMS, and Adeptra. He received his Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University and MBA from Harvard Business School.
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