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Marshall Fisher, Chairman and Co-Founder
Ananth Raman, Co-Founder and Academic Affiliate
Jiri M. Nechleba , President and Chief Executive Officer
Walter Salmon, Board Member and Academic Affiliate for 4R Systems, is the Stanley Roth Sr. Professor of Retailing, Emeritus, at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration. He has been a member of the Harvard Business School faculty since 1956. He earned his BBA from the City College of New York and his MBA and DBA from the Harvard Business School.
Professor Salmon's major fields are Consumer Marketing and Retail Distribution. His current research concerns trends in distribution and issues of organization, logistics and information systems in retailing. He currently serves on the boards of 4R Systems, Inc., Circuit City Stores, Inc., Cole National Corporation, Hannaford Bros. Co., Harrah's Entertainment, Inc., Luby's Cafeterias, Inc., The Neiman Marcus Group, PETsMART, Inc., and The Quaker Oats Company.
Thomas R. Shepherd, Board Member, currently serves as Chairman of TSG Equity Partners LLC and is a director of CCI, Inc., Community Resource Systems, Inc., 4R Systems, Inc., Myutility, Inc., OptaSite, Inc., Rayovac Corp., and Vermont Teddy Bear Co., Inc. Previously, Mr. Shepherd served as a director of Amerace Corp., Andover.Net, Inc., General Nutrition Companies, Inc., Playtex Family Products Corp., PNC-New England, Signature Brands, Inc. and Thermoscan, Inc.
Mr. Shepherd was an independent consultant from 1986 to 1998 during which time an important client was the Thomas H. Lee Company in Boston, MA, where he served as Managing Director and currently serves as a Special Partner.
From 1983 to 1986, he was President of GTE (Sylvania) Lighting Products, a major business unit of GTE Corporation where he had total responsibility for Sylvania lighting products worldwide.
Prior to this appointment in 1983, Mr. Shepherd was President of N.A.P. Commercial Electronics Corp., a subsidiary of North American Philips Company, providing communications and entertainment systems to institutional and commercial customers. His previous assignment was Senior Vice President and General Manager of the Entertainment Products Group of GTE (Sylvania) Corporation where he had total responsibility for GTE's consumer electronics business in North America. Prior to that, he was Vice President and General Manager of the Entertainment Products division of GTE (Sylvania) in Canada. From 1970 to 1973, he was President of his own consulting company, specializing in training and multi-media.
Born in Washington, D.C., he received is B.A. degree in Economics from Washington & Lee University in 1952 and his Masters degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University in 1956 and completed the executive program at the Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College. He served on active duty with the U.S.N.R. from 1952 - 1954. He has been active in community service serving as a member of the Stow, Massachusetts Finance, School, and Spring Festival Committees. Through active participation in several organizations, he maintains an ongoing interest in land conservation and affordable housing. He has served as Senior.
Warden, Vestryman and Lay Reader in several Episcopal parishes. He is also a Trustee Emeritus of Washington & Lee University and Treasurer of Fieldstone Foundation, Inc.
Warren (Renny) C. Smith, Jr., Board Member, is a Managing Director of TH Lee Putnam Ventures, where he is one of the four senior partners responsible for making mid-to-late stage venture capital investments. TH Lee Putnam Ventures was created in 1999 by the Thomas H. Lee Company and Putnam Investments. The fund has over $1.1 billion in capital available for investments and has partners located in New York, Boston and London.
From 1990 to 1999 Mr. Smith was one of the partners responsible for investing Thomas H. Lee Company's LBO Funds II, III and IV. In 1999, Mr. Smith helped found TH Lee Putnam Ventures and now spends the majority of his time investing the Venture Fund. He continues to be a Partner of the LBO funds, including the $6.1 billion Thomas H. Lee Equity Partners V fund raised in 2000.
From 1983 to 1990, Mr. Smith worked as a corporate finance generalist in the Investment Banking Division of Merrill Lynch & Co. At both the Thomas H. Lee Company and at Merrill Lynch, Mr. Smith has focused primarily on transactions in retailing and consumer products. Some of the investments in the Thomas H. Lee Company portfolio for which Mr. Smith was responsible, include Finlay Fine Jewelry, Thermoscan, Rayovac and Eye Care Centers of America.
Mr. Smith began his career as a lending officer with Manufacturer Hanover Trust Company, where he worked from 1978 to 1981. The lending group with which he worked specialized in LBO and financial buyer financings. The group evolved into Manufacturer Hanover's leveraged lending group (now part of J.P. Morgan Securities Financial Sponsor Coverage Group).
Mr. Smith currently serves as a director of Eye Care Centers of America, Inc., 4R Systems, Inc., Symphony Services Corp., BillMatrix Corp., and Parago, Inc.
Mr. Smith received a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University in 1978 and an MBA from The Amos Tuck School in 1983, where he serves on the Board of Advisors of the Tuck Center for Private Equity.
Todd Miller, Board Member, is a Managing Director of AEP Capital, an opportunistic investment and merchant banking firm with a focus on minority investments, buyouts, and debt financing solutions.
Prior to joining AEP Capital in 2008, Todd was with TH Lee Putnam, a growth buyout firm sponsored by Thomas H. Lee Partners. While at TH Lee Putnam, Todd helped lead the firm’s investment strategy in business services and offshore services. Todd structured, executed, and managed a wide variety of investments for TH Lee Putnam, including some of the firm’s leveraged, take-private, and cross-border transactions.
Notable companies include Sentient Flight Group (private jet membership and aircraft charter management company, www.sentientflight.com), SPI Technologies (largest private outsourcing company in Asia, www.spitech.com), Symphony Services (global leader in product engineering outsourcing services, www.sympserv.com), Parago, Inc. (turn-key manager of rebate programs and other promotional services, www.parago.com), and ClickSquared, (multi-channel direct marketing, www.clicksquared.com).
Before joining TH Lee Putnam in 2000, Todd worked for Alpine Capital Group and Morgan Stanley’s Real Estate Fund.
Todd began his career in Merrill Lynch's Investment Banking Group, where he advised on various domestic and international M&A transactions in the banking and insurance sectors.
Todd received a BBA in Finance from the University of Wisconsin and an MBA from Harvard Business School.