Pace Lubin

 

Second Annual Pace Pitch Contest
Panelists

Banking and Finance
Michael Debernardis
VP & Credit Team Leader, JP Morgan Chase Small Business Banking
Douglas Palumbo
VP & Treasury Officer, JP Morgan Chase Treasury Services
Charles F. Ryan
VP & Market Manager, JP Morgan Chase Small Business Banking

Angel Investors and Venture Capital
William Fontana
Manager, Second Century Innovation and Ideas Corp.
Peter Kash
Co-founder and Chairman, Two River Group Holdings, LLC

Marketing and Branding
David Oreck
Founder and Chairman, Oreck Corporation

The Press and Publicity
Marc R. Angel
Senior Business Manager
Geoffrey C. Lewis
Editorial Director, Primedia
Warren N. Bimblick
Senior Vice President and General Manager, Primedia Financial Services Group

Legal Issues and Intellectual Property
Lori Hoberman
Partner, Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP
Larry Perlstein
Ombudsman, Gartner, Inc.,

Social Entrepreneurship
Rob Johnston
Executive Director, the Wilson Center for Social Entrepreneurship
Alice Korngold
Author, Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses

Life as an Entrepreneur
John Fox
President and Co-Founder of Homeland Energy
Regina Lian
Founder and President of Financial Comfort Inc.
Lori Anne Wardi
President and CEO of Pebble AlleyT LLC

Small Business Services
Victor Goldsmith
Executive Director, Second Century Innovation and Ideas Corp.
Robert E. Ortiz
Program Director, Students In Free Enterprise
Jose Sifontes
District Director, U.S. Small Business Administration

Additional panelists to be announced.

Faculty Facilitators
Dennis Anderson, Associate Dean, Seidenberg School of CSIS
Narendra C. Bhandari, Professor of Management
Branko Bucar, Assistant Professor of Management and Management Science
Melissa S. Cardon, Assistant Professor of Management
Alan B. Eisner, Associate Professor of Management and Management Science
Robert A. Isaak, Henry George Professor of International Management
Noushi Rahman, Assistant Professor of Management
Kathy Winsted, Associate Professor of Marketing

Marc Angel

 

[Marc Angel]

Marc Angel has over 17 years of diverse media experience across various industries with expertise in business development, strategic planning, sales & marketing and corporate finance. Mr. Angel is an Account Executive for Registered Rep. and Trusts & Estates magazines; two market leading franchises under the Primedia Business brand. Prior, Mr. Angel was the Director of Strategic Planning for World Wrestling Entertainment’s branded merchandise division. He was also with Bloomberg Financial Markets for six years where he specialized in new business ventures and product development. Mr. Angel played a key role in the start-up of Tradebook, Bloomberg’s electronic trading business. Other experience includes five years at PepsiCo where Mr. Angel held several corporate finance positions. Mr. Angel holds a MBA in Financial Management from Pace University’s Lubin Graduate School of Business and a BA in Economics from University at Albany, State University of New York. Mr. Angel also serves on the Lubin Alumni Association Board of Directors.

Warren N. Bimblick

[Warren N. Bimblick]

Warren N. Bimblick is senior vice president and general manager of the Primedia Financial Services Group. In this position, which he has held since the Group’s formation in August 2001, he is responsible for the B2B Financial Services brands of Primedia, which include Registered Rep, Trusts & Estates, National Real Estate Investor and Retail Traffic. He has developed many new print, on-line and custom conference products as well as integrated solutions to customers’ marketing needs and joint ventures. He is also publisher of the new Small Business Review, an on-line product for small business owners with an initial subscription base of 425,000.

Prior to this position, Mr. Bimblick was vice president, investor relations for Primedia from 1997 to 2001, and held a similar position with TRINOVA Corporation from 1985 to 1996. Formerly, as a partner in the firm, Corporate Annual Reports, Inc., he conceptualized and wrote corporate magazines, literature and annual reports for dozens of Fortune 500 companies.

Mr. Bimblick lives in New York City and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of the American Red Cross in Greater New York, where he also serves as treasurer. He is a graduate of New York University.

Michael DeBernardis
Michael DeBernardis joined Chemical Bank, a predecessor institution of JP Morgan Chase, in 1987 and has held positions in branch sales & administration, national mortgage sales, credit analysis and Middle Market Relationship Management where he was responsible for the most profitable portfolio in the Bronx region. Michael spent six years in the Bronx market before moving to a new opportunity—leveraged finance, where he served as a senior associate with underwriting and origination responsibility for mid-cap leveraged buy-out finance. Currently, Michael is heading up a credit team for Small Business Banking in the Manhattan Region. This opportunity has proved to be professionally rewarding. Over the years, Michael has received numerous awards for recognition of service and performance, including relationship manager of the year, circle of excellence, and best practices recognition.

William Fontana

[William Fontana]

Bill Fontana is the Incubator Manager of Pace University's SCI2, a commercialization incubator designed to provide early- stage companies with funding and commercialization expertise. Prior to joining SCI2, Mr. Fontana had more than 20 years of financial services experience in both the US and internationally. Ten years were spent as a troubleshooter and business development specialist for CitiGroup. Mr. Fontana lived and worked in Athens, London, Bangkok and Jakarta. He has been Division Head of Citibank Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and most recently Southeast Asia. While living in London, Mr. Fontana was responsible for establishing de-novo branches in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. Subsequently he relocated to Bangkok where he was responsible for business development in Southeast Asia. In 1995 he established the Citibank branch in Hanoi. In 2001 Mr. Fontana was asked to assume responsibility as Executive Vice President of Thai Farmers Bank, the second largest bank in Thailand with assets of $15 B and 12,000 employees. Mr. Fontana has been a frequent guest speaker for the Economist Forum and Business Week forum in Southeast Asia.

John Fox

[John Fox]

John Fox is president and co-founder of Homeland Energy, his third entrepreneurial venture. He has been active in the energy industry for the past five years building Homeland Energy's business as well as managing business development for a mid-sized independent oil and gas producer and an environmental company specializing in anaerobic digester gas technologies. Before entering the energy business, Mr. Fox led technology product development teams for GeoVideo, a Lucent Technologies company, and was a vice president at Wheat First Butcher Singer, now Wachovia Securities. Since the mid 1980s, Mr. Fox has been a partner at Renard Properties, a family-owned real- estate development and management company. He holds a BA from Syracuse University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
 

[Victor Goldsmith]

Victor Goldsmith
Dr. Victor Goldsmith is the Executive Director of Second Century Innovation and Ideas Corp., the Associate Provost for Research and Economic Development (SRED), and a professor at Pace University. He has been with Pace since January of 2003. Formerly, he has served on two New York State Governor's Coastal Erosion Task Forces, the NY/NJ Harbor Oil Spill Oversight Advisory Panel, and the NY State Task Force on Petroleum Spill Emergency Environmental Protection Plans. Dr. Goldsmith is the proud recipient of the NASA Achievement Award for "Outstanding Contributions" for developing computer efficient models for studying shelf waves."
 

[Lori S. Hoberman]

Lori S. Hoberman
Lori S. Hoberman heads the Private Equity Group of Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner LLP. She has considerable experience in the structuring of, and tax planning for, domestic and offshore private equity funds and their portfolio companies. She focuses primarily in the technology sector and works with start-up, later stage and publicly-traded companies in various industries, including telecommunications, biotechnology and life sciences, investment banking, real estate, consumer products, advertising and motion pictures and television.

Ms. Hoberman is a member of the Board of Directors of the MDS Life Science and Technology Fund, USA, the New York Chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum, The SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) Foundation and a member of the Board of Advisors of ceslie.com. She has written for numerous publications on tax and venture capital related matters and speaks frequently at seminars and conferences on various venture capital issues.

Rob Johnston

[Rob Johnston]

Rob Johnston has spent more than twenty years working for and with nonprofit organizations. For twelve years he worked for the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and its successor the Leader to Leader Institute, where he led its program development and publications programs, and served as president from 2001-2003. Johnston also worked as editor of the Foundation Center's Philanthropy News Digest, and for the merchandise operations at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He co-edited the four volumes of the Leader to Leader Guides: On Mission and Leadership; On Leading Change; On High Performance Organizations; and On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal, and contributed a chapter to Enterprising Nonprofits (Dees, Emerson, Economy). Johnston has a BA in the History of Art from Yale and an MBA from Stanford, and serves on the national advisory board for the MBA- Nonprofit Connection, an organization providing MBA students and graduates as interns and employees to nonprofit organizations.

Peter Kash

[Peter Kash]

Peter Morgan Kash is co-founder and Chairman of Two River Group Holdings, LLC and the President of Riverbank Capital Securities, Inc., a NASD broker-dealer specializing in conducting private placement financings for public and private development stage biotechnology company. Mr. Kash has co-raised nearly $600 million in private equity financings for more than 20 biopharmaceutical companies. He has also served on the board of directors of several privately held and publicly traded biotechnology companies and currently serves as Vice Chairman of Javelin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Tigris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Velcera Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Mr. Kash is also a co-founder and former Vice Chairman of Keryx Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.

Mr. Kash has worked on Wall Street for 25 years, including Shearson Lehman Hutton and Paramount BioCapital, Inc., where he served as Senior Managing Director from 1991-2004. From 1990-1992, he served as an Associate Professor of Marketing at Polytechnic University. Mr. Kash was a television host for FNN's business program "International Spotlight," and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and International Venture Capital at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania from 1996-2000. Mr. Kash was Entrepreneur in Residence at Pace University in the spring of 2001 and at Ball State University in May 2002. He was also a Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Sy Syms School of Business from 2003-2005. Currently, he serves as a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Business at Nihon University in Tokyo.

Mr. Kash earned his BS in Management Science from SUNY Binghamton and his MBA in Banking and International Finance from Pace University. He has completed post-graduate studies at Harvard Business School on how to make Not-For-Profit Board of Directors more effective. He serves on the Board of Keren-Or, a charity for blind and multi-handicapped children, as well as Kids Kicking Cancer, a charity for terminally ill children.

On November 16, 2001, Mr. Kash published his first book, Make Your Own Luck, now available in Hebrew, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean and Russian.

Mr. Kash has been a guest on CNN, Fox News, WB11, WOR Radio, WFAN, The Joey Reynolds Show, and The Bill Mazer Show.

Alice Korngold

[Alice Korngold]

Alice Korngold, author of Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses, (Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, 2005), consults to national corporations and nonprofit organizations in the areas of leadership development, corporate social responsibility, and nonprofit governance. Alice was the founding CEO of Business Volunteers Unlimited, a national model organization that has trained and placed over 1,000 corporate executives on 275 nonprofit boards. Alice is a social entrepreneur whose pioneering work has been featured in a page one article of The Wall Street Journal and other national media. She has a BA and M.S.Ed. from the University of Pennsylvania.


Geoff Lewis

[Geoff Lewis]

Geoff Lewis is currently group editorial director for PBI Holdings, where he oversees four financial services magazines and Web sites, plus Small Business Review, an online publication and newsletter aimed at the more than 800,000 small business owners who subscribe to PBI magazines. A 25-year veteran of b-t-b and consumer business journalism, Lewis started his career covering the computer business for Fairchild Publications' Electronic News. He was also a senior editor for Cahners' Electronic Business before joining Business Week in 1984 as a staff editor, covering computers and information technology. He went on to become a senior editor in charge of the magazine's technology coverage for most of the 1990s before being promoted to become the Front of the Book news editor. Leaving Business Week in 2000, he became managing editor of TheStreet.com and then editor-in-chief of CNBC.com, before joining Primedia Business Magazines (now PBI).

Regina M. Lian

[Regina Lian]

Regina Lian is founder and President of Financial Comfort Inc.

Ms. Lian is a former senior finance administrator who now brings the keys of corporate success to growing businesses. She offers twenty years of finance and management expertise gained with corporate giants including Avon Products, Fox Video and Starbucks Coffee. She has consulted for CNN News, New Line Cinema, and Republic National Bank.

Ms. Lian received her MBA in finance from Fordham University and her BBBA in accounting from Pace University. She is a faculty member with New York University and Baruch College. Ms. Lian has also taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology and American Women's Economic Development Corp (AWED).

She has been a featured speaker for Fordham University Women in Business, the United Hospital Fund of New York City, the Health Care Association of New York State, Air Conditioning Contractors of America, ESBN Business Radio, National Association of Women Business Owners, North Fork Bank, New York New Media Association and the Association of Image Consultants International. Ms. Lian was quoted in Inc. Magazine. She has served on the Board of the Financial Women's Association of New York, is a member of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and is a Certified QuickBooks Professional Advisor.

David Oreck

[David Oreck]

David Oreck is the 79-year-old founder and chairman of Oreck Corporation, the manufacturer of high quality, premium vacuum cleaners. For five decades, he has been the company's chief spokesman, appearing in newspaper, magazine, television and radio advertisements across the country. He was recently named one of the country's most recognized personalities.

Mr. Oreck traces his devotion to his company's products to his 50 years as an airplane pilot. Mr. Oreck avers, "Like airplanes, great vacuums must be light, powerful, dependable, brilliantly designed and exceptionally engineered." He maintains a fleet of vintage airplanes, including a one-of-a-kind 1944 Beech Staggerwing.

Born in Duluth, Minnesota, David Oreck headed for the excitement of New York City after flying combat missions for the Army Air Force in World War II in a B-29. At 21, he landed a job selling RCA radios, televisions and phonographs. He rose through the ranks at RCA and accompanied RCA founder David Sarnoff to Washington, DC, for Congressional hearings on setting technical standards for a newfangled invention: color television. When RCA needed a new distributor in New Orleans, a poor-performing market, Mr. Oreck jumped at the opportunity. In two years time, he turned it around and went from last to first place.

In 1963, David Oreck established Oreck Corporation, first selling upright vacuum cleaners to the hotel industry. At the time, hotel maids and janitors were burdened with heavy and bulky machines that were cumbersome and difficult to maneuver. Workers were delighted with Oreck's light but powerful upright, and eventually, they began purchasing the machines for home use. From there, word spread quickly to the public about a product that would make vacuuming easier and more effective. Today, his most popular product, the upright Oreck XL, weighs a mere eight pounds.

Mr. Oreck is proud of his company's other innovations, such as his products' hypoallergenic qualities (much sooner than "indoor air quality" concerns became a national concern) and the ability for a vacuum cleaner to switch from cleaning bare floors to rugs without having to switch attachments.

Recently, a satisfied customer wrote to David Oreck and said, "How do I get my teenager to clean his room with the vacuum?" Mr. Oreck designed an upright vacuum cleaner with an FM radio and headphones in the handle.

Today, Oreck Corporation employs 1,500 people, who work at its New Orleans headquarters and its state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Long Beach, Mississippi.

Robert E. Ortiz

[Robert E. Ortiz ]

Robert E. Ortiz is a Program Director for SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise). SIFE is a global non-profit organization active in over 40 countries and territories. SIFE is funded by financial contributions from corporations, entrepreneurs, foundations, government agencies and individuals. Working in partnership with business and higher education, SIFE establishes student teams on university campuses. As Program Director for the Northeast Region, Robert is responsible for maintaining SIFE programs as well as starting new programs in his territory. His territory includes the District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Before joining SIFE, Ortiz spent 9 years in the banking and insurance industries. In the banking industry, he worked as a Consumer/Commercial/SBA Loan Officer in South Texas and most recently as a Loan Analyst with State Farm Bank based in St. Louis, MO. He also worked as a Property and Casualty Representative for State Farm Insurance Companies in Austin, TX.

While at State Farm Insurance in Austin, TX, Robert served on the Emerging Markets Committee. The committee was created to serve the needs of customers in the South Texas Region whose primary language is Spanish.

Robert holds a bachelor's degree in Economics and a minor in English from the University of Texas – Pan American.

Larry Perlstein

[Larry Perlstein]

Larry Perlstein is the Ombudsman at Gartner, Inc., the largest information technology industry advisory firm. His responsibilities are to represent customer's interests in demanding ethical, responsible and objective behavior from Gartner's analysts and associates. Previously, Mr. Perlstein was a group vice president in Gartner Research, responsible for the application development, application integration, middleware, Web services and portals analyst teams. Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. Perlstein worked for IBM, where he focused on object technology and component software strategy and marketing. Previously, he worked as a consultant for various companies, including General Electric, General Foods and MCI, on a variety of application development and business issues. He began his information technology career at PepsiCo, Inc., building and delivering systems to support international locations. Mr. Perlstein earned a bachelor's degree in marketing and a master of business administration degree, with a concentration in information systems, from Pace University.

Charles Ryan

[Charles Ryan]

Charles Ryan has over 17 years of Commercial Banking experience with a focus on Small Business finance. Mr. Ryan has held various positions in Small Business Banking for JP Morgan Chase and has been the Market Manager for the Westside of Manhattan for the past 3 years. He manages 6 Area Managers and 57 Small Business Relationship Managers and is responsible for acquiring new customers and the relationship management of existing Small Business clients. Mr.