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Al Kapoor has three decades of experience with cutting edge industry formation at either startups or established corporations. His newsletter Pioneering Minds serves over 100,000 industry leaders worldwide to reveal epicenters of new industry formation. He has a Master’s degree in Engineering (Material Science, Robotics) and also an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Al was a member of YPO from 1999-2019 and has been a member of The National Scientific Research Honor Society (Sigma Xi) since 1991. Al is on the advisory council for the AIM Academy at MIT that fosters education in photonics integrated circuits. From 2005-2015, Al was an executive volunteer for TiE (largest entrepreneurship non-profit organization in 60 cities and 20 countries), serving as chair of innovation conferences 2006-2008, president in Boston from 2008-2012, and then Global Chairman in 2015.
As Chairman, he also worked with the White House for a year to establish a national and global entrepreneurship program.
Al started his career in 1992 at Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, Indiana where he led a new product development team for cam systems. He also worked at BMW in Munich, Germany advising the head of R&D. In 1999, Al began to start ventures like Syntec Optics, Wordingham Technologies, RTM that he grew over tenfold. He has also been involved as an investor in several companies, most recently Spark Photonics, a spinoff from MIT AIM Academy, and an advisor for over a dozen other companies.
Mr. Ransford has nearly 30 years of experience in the optics industry. His previous positions include:
Mr. Ransford holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. from the University of Michigan.
Matt Carey oversees customer sales/program management, engineering, and shipping. He is focused on driving innovation and collaboration across these teams to ensure seamless customer service.
At Syntec, Matt has contributed close to a decade of service in various roles, including manufacturing engineer, program manager, and operations lead. He spearheaded the development of the company’s manufacturing ERP system for bill of materials and pursued further education in supply chain management at RIT.
Prior to his time at the company, Matt served as a Logistics Officer in the US Marine Corps, managing real-time military gear inventory valued at $900 million.
Dean Rudy brings over 30 years of experience with a unique combination of financial and operational leadership skills cultivated in small, medium, and fortune-100-sized businesses with the common thread of partnering with the management team and achieving profitable company growth. Dean started his career and worked for 17 years at Xerox Corporation, where he held many roles within their manufacturing organization. He also served as the worldwide controller for their Small Office / Home Office division and the general manager of their Personal Copier Unit. More recently, Dean has led the finance and accounting at medium-sized businesses across a broad array of industries, including printing and publishing, metal recycling, and retail. His last assignment was CFO for Auction Direct USA, a multi-state used car superstore company.
Mr. Rudy’s experience includes enabling the division at Xerox to grow from under $50M to $500M and improving the management of accounting, reporting, and strategy during rapid growth. At other manufacturing organizations after Xerox, he implemented enterprise systems, seamlessly combining all material flows, purchases, sales, and accounting while enabling reporting capabilities to drive pricing and competitive strategies. He drove streamlining systems for customer processes, KPIs, forecasting, IT infrastructure, and new product expansions.
Dean has an MBA in finance and accounting from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis and a BA in economics from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN.
Mr. Manzone brings decades of expertise in strategic vision, operational excellence, M&A, talent development, and compensation planning. Mr. Manzone was at McKinsey and Company from 1993-1997, followed by PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP) for over a decade, working on many critical initiatives in the global operations including the acquisition and post-close operations integration of Tropicana, Quaker, and Tropicana. Mr. Manzone has held numerous executive leadership roles including President, Europe at Oettinger Davidoff AG; President Consumer Health, Southeast Europe, at Novartis (NYSE: NVS); President, Europe at Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company; and CEO of Whole Earth Brands (NASDAQ: FREE) leading a successful turnaround and doubling in size. Mr. Manzone serves as Director and Member of the Talent & Compensation Committee on the Perrigo (NYSE: PRGO) Board; Member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University; President of the Board of the Northwestern Alumni Association; and Director of the Price Albert II of Monaco Foundation for the Environment. He holds a Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, and a graduate degree in international business from the Sorbonne University.
Mr. Bishop brings decades of expertise on regulatory compliance, independent financial audits, and corporate governance. He began his career as an audit manager at KPMG in 1985. He held the positions of Chief Administrative Officer for Barclay’s Bank (NYSE: BSC) from 1995-1997. He joined Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) in 1997 retiring as Chief Operating Officer of Deutsche Bank’s US Bank after over two decades in 2019. Mr. Bishop served as a senior advisor to the SPAC Thunder Bridge Capital Acquisition II, which merged with indie Semiconductor in 2021 (NASDAQ: INDI). As Chair of the Audit Committee, Mr. Bishop will provide the independent oversight of independent auditors. Mr. Bishop received his BBA from Baruch College and an MBA from St. John’s University.
Mr. Rosenthal brings decades of expertise in M&A and financings in public and private markets for equity and debt in the communications end-markets. Mr. Rosenthal started his career as an auditor at Deloitte in 1993. As a partner in affiliates of W.R. Huff Asset Management from 2002-2016, he served as an adviser and observer of the board of directors of Virgin Media (NASDAQ: VMED) and as a consultant to the company, providing operations improvement services, financial analysis, and recommendations. From 2007 through 2010, he served as an advisor to the executive management of Time Warner Cable (NASDAQ: TWC). In addition, Mr. Rosenthal worked on financing the bank debt and sub-debt for Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN) in a public-to-private market transaction and supported the venture capital investment behind American Idol (NASDAQ: CKXE) and certain IP rights. Mr. Rosenthal served on the Board of Directors of Rentrak (NASDAQ: RENT) from 2008 to 2016 including as non-executive Chairman of the board from 2011 through 2016. Most recently, Mr. Rosenthal has been focused on small and micro-cap equities especially in communications end-markets that is seeing increasing use of optics and photonics, OmniLit’s focus. Mr. Rosenthal earned his B.S. from Lehigh University and an MBA at Cornell University.