Net Compliance Solutions Advisors
Charles V. McCarthy
Mr. McCarthy is a senior executive leader with extensive domestic and international consumer business experience.
With more than 25 years of executive leadership and P & L experience in the consumer packaged goods industry, Mr. McCarthy is a CEO with a unique track record in both highly competitive price sensitive markets and premium niche brands. He has personally negotiated the purchase and sale of several businesses and directed company restructuring and turnaround effects. Through his career at Campbell Soup Company, Tetley, Inc., Hasbro Interactive and recently at M.H. Zeigler, he has built winning teams and achieved consistent results that built investor and shareowner value.
In 1986 he was appointed to V.P. General Manager, Pepperidge Farm, Inc. (a subsidiary of Campbell Soup Co.) a leading producer of fresh and dry baked goods with sales of over $200 million. During his tenure here earnings doubled from $13 million to $25 million over a four-year period.
In 1990, Mr. McCarthy was asked to assume leadership of Campbell Soup Company’s sales organization as President, Campbell Sales, with responsibility for $3.5 billion revenues, $400 million cost center, 1,500 direct sales professionals, National Broker network and Food Service Business unit. As President he re-engineered the business. These actions resulted in several $100 millions in revenue, profit and cash improvements. As a key member of the North America team the resulting gain of gain at 25% EBIT annually was a key component to the highest increase in shareholder value at Campbell in 15-20 years.
In 1992, as a result of his industry leading efforts with Efficient Consumer Response, Food People magazine recognized Mr. McCarthy as Manufacturer of the Year.
In 1993, Mr McCarthy returned to Pepperidge farm as President where under his leadership the business experienced significant annual increases in sales and earnings. In addition during his tenure, Pepperidge shed two businesses and made a strategic acquisition.
In 1995, Mr. McCarthy joined Tetley Group Ltd. (U.K.) as part of a management buyout. This management group along with Prudential Venture Managers Ltd. And Schroder Ventures purchased the Tetley Group for $300 million. During the next five years as President and CEO, Mr. McCarthy’s U.S. group generated over $100 million in net cash flow using industry knowledge, building a cash oriented new team and brand repositioning. Over the next several years the group prepared for exit by refinancing the debt in 1997, preparing for a public offering in 1998 and selling the U.S. Coffee business to a Canadian Coffee company and a Cuban Coffee company. In 1999, the group was sold to Tata Industries, India resulting in a total return of over 50 times initial investment to equity owners.
In 2000, Mr. McCarthy joined Hasbro Interactive (subsidiary of Hasbro Toy Co.) as Chief Operating Officer. Challenged with two businesses with significant negative cash flow (over $250 million) diluting shareholder value, he quickly minimized business losses, prepared best case financial options which resulted in the sale to Infogrames Entertainment, France for over $150 million and long term licensing revenue stream.
In 2005, Mr. McCarthy was appointed Chairman of M.H. Zeigler’s the leading producer of fresh cider as well as providing 100% juice products to retailers across the United States. Late 2006 he assumed a direct operating role replacing the CEO. Challenged with a competitive industry, rising commodity and transportation costs, the team has been able to double profit over the last 3 years.
Mr. McCarthy studied Mathematics at Rhode Island College and completed the Cornell University Food Executive Program. He has served as a director of several private, private not for profit and industry organizations including Campbell Soup Foundation, President’s Advisory Council of Grocery Manufacturers of America, National Coffee Association, Charter Baking Company Inc., St. Joseph’s University Food Academy, and the Tetley Group Ltd.
Diem Le
Diem has over twenty years of experience as an executive and venture capitalist in the US and Asia. He has served as a senior executive at several US enterprise software start-ups in the areas of security, CRM, infrastructure and performance.
Diem was also a venture partner at Crimson Ventures, where he was responsible for evaluating investment opportunities and assisting portfolio companies in the areas of software and Internet.
Diem also founded AvantGarde, a consulting organization specializing in assisting U.S. and foreign technology companies with international sales and marketing issues.
Earlier in his career, Diem held a variety of management and sales/marketing management positions for technology companies such as Hewlett Packard and IBM.
He is currently on the board of directors of several technology companies in the US and China.
Diem holds a MBA from Harvard Business School. He graduated cum laude from Harvard College, earning a bachelor's degree in Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Frank J. Ingrassia
Frank J. Ingrassia is a private investor, consultant and advisor to a number of companies. Previously Mr. Ingrassia provided software, training and consulting services to the DB2 database community through his company, Innovative Management Solutions Inc. (IMSI), which he founded in 1984 and sold to IBM in September, 2006.
He has conducted detailed benchmarks and performance studies on every release of DB2 since V1R2, researching the internal aspects of SQL optimization which dictate DB2 performance. From 1988 to 2001, Frank taught his popular technical seminar High Performance Optimization for DB2 across the USA and Europe, training over 3000 professionals from many Fortune 500 organizations.
He is a charter member of the IBM Gold Consultants group sponsored by IBM Software Solutions, and has been concentrating his efforts exclusively on DB2, and specifically on implementations under z/OS, since 1987. His consulting clients cross many vertical industries, and some recent clients include J C Penney, Target, Time Warner, Merck, and McMaster-Carr Supply.
Interested in expert systems long before they became fashionable, some of Frank's technical work has been the creation of an expert system that emulates the DB2 Optimizer's access path selection process, and a resource estimation and costing system for DB2 queries. Through his company, IMSI, Frank brought this technology to the DB2 marketplace in products like the Query Costing Facility, or QCF, and Super-EXplain. Prior to that, he also developed modeling tools for IMS, IDMS, and DB2 databases (as third party to BGS Systems, now part of BMC Software), and for other unique architectures, like fault tolerant computers (for Chicago Board of Options Exchange), home-grown distributed systems (for Mead Data Central’s Lexis/Nexis systems) and nationwide retail systems (Sears stores).
His latest software innovation is the SQL Performance Analyzer, now an integral part of IBM's DB2 Toolset for DB2 customers. Frank provides ongoing development and maintenance for this IBM performance enhancement tool.
Frank is the author of numerous papers and articles on DB2 and the Optimizer, software development, application modeling, database performance, expert systems and management techniques. He is a frequent speaker at IDUG, CMG, ICCM, Guide, and local user groups, and his work has appeared in the IDUG Solutions, Relational Journal, Database Programming and Design, Enterprise Systems Journal, Datapro Research, plus other publications and forums.
Not just a technician, Frank's 35 years of computer experience include positions as Regional Vice President - Software Development for Anacomp, Inc., where he ran an organization of 225 personnel responsible for the design, development, testing and support of online, real time banking systems, based on IMS and IDMS database structures. He was previously Manager - Technical Resource Measurement and Planning for the New York Telephone Company, where his staff was responsible for the performance management and hardware planning for all 10 data centers and 32 mainframes deployed statewide at that time.
A native New Yorker, Frank holds AS and BS degrees in Engineering-Computer Science from the City College of New York, and currently resides in the sunshine state of Florida. Visit the IMSI website for more information on IMSI products and services.
Kent George
Since July 2000, Kent has been with Synkinetics and has been instrumental in structuring and directing the company from a research-driven organization to a product-focused company. He has actively and successfully negotiated working agreements with two eminent bearing companies in this country.
Kent has had a career spanning three decades working in and with major corporations managing finance, manufacturing, and operations. Early in his career, he worked in corporate finance with Sears Roebuck & Co., Frank B. Hall & Co., and The Wm. Underwood Company. As CFO at BGS Systems, Inc., he successfully managed that company's IPO.
As principal of his own consulting firm started in 1987, he has held COO and CEO positions in several companies and currently sits on the boards of three companies in addition to his position at Synkinetics. His experience includes turnaround situations and international finance operations as well as mergers and acquisitions.
After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps for over four years, Kent received both a BSBA and an MBA degree from Suffolk University in Boston.
Bob Markell
Bob is currently a private investor and advisor to a number of companies. He is an accomplished senior executive and technologist with over 35 years experience. During his career, he has served as a senior technology executive at a number of Technology Companies including IBM, UNISYS, Candle, and Programart Corporation. Bob is an expert in product development and research, quality and project management, organizational development and customer support.
He has had P&L responsibility for substantial organizations spanning multiple locations and product lines. He has played an instrumental role in the development and support of some of the most successful products known in the computer industry.
Most recently, Bob was Vice President of Product Development at Programart Corporation where he dramatically increased the output and dependability of the R&D organization. He rebuilt the management team and doubled the size of the group enabling the company to keep pace with technology changes critical to support the company’s products, which are licensed by most of the Fortune 1000. Bob’s work helped set the stage for the successful acquisition of the company by Compuware Corporation.
At Candle Corporation as Vice President of the Product Group, he managed an organization of 400 with a budget in excess of 42 million. This group had responsibility for the development and customer support for the industry-leading suite of performance and systems management software products.
At UNISYS as Vice President & General Manager of Applications Development, Bob was responsible for 1000 developers in five sites. Here he completely turned around a failing organization, guiding it to a leadership position in quality and customer satisfaction.
During his career at IBM Corporation, Bob was Division Director – Mid Range Systems (VP level position) where he was responsible for systems software strategy for OS/400, VM/370, and DOS/VSE. Here he had direct management responsibility for 500 programmers and engineers.
As Vice President – Entry Systems, Robert had P&L responsibility for all Personal Computing Software Products. He directly managed all development activities and the marketing, financial, and product planning staffs consisting of over 1200 programmers in 2 sites. During this time, Bob negotiated projects with several independent software vendors, including the widely publicized joint development agreement with Microsoft.
As Director MVS Systems Development, he managed key system strategies across 7 locations, developing components of IBM’s primary large processor operating system MVS. MVS is one of the most successful and widely adopted software products ever developed. In addition, Bob held the positions of Director, Corporate Technical Staff and Senior Manager, MVS Development.
Bob is a graduate of Providence College with a B.A. in Mathematics and a graduate of the summer executive program at University of Southern California
Thomas W. McDonald
Tom comes to Network Compliance Solutions with over 30 years of industry experience. He initiated his career as a systems programmer and data network communications specialist with Bank of Boston, NCR, and BGS Systems. He was a co-founder of MGT Technology in 1986, a pioneer in the field of network and database performance management and capacity planning. As vice president of network technologies, he led the firm’s network analysis and planning services to global 1000 customers.
In 1995 he left MGT and become a partner at Pamet River, Inc, a leader in secure database-driven customer relationship management solutions. As corporate CIO and Director of UK operations he developed the first UK web-based portal for small businesses and its associated security environment. After helping to facilitate the sale of the company to Teletech holdings in 1999, he took charge of Digital Creators, an eCRM company where he had responsibility for overall company performance, new product development, and security policies. He grew the company’s revenues at a 25% per annum basis to $12m. He left Digital Creators for a sabbatical, during which he served in the US Peace Corps (2006-8) developing new businesses and their associated marketing environments for Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), an agency of the Mexican Federal Government.
Through his deep experience in many facets of IT operations, product development, and business management, he brings a broad perspective and wide-range of expertise to the challenges faced in meeting today’s IT security threats.
He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Pennsylvania State University. He has authored papers and been a speaker at major technology conferences in the U.S. and abroad. He has written many articles for professional publications including ComputerWorld, Data Communications, NetworkWorld, and Communications Week.