Dennis Andrews, Chief Executive Officer
Phil Smith, President
James R. Wodach, CPA, Chief Financial Officer
Ron Kraft, VP/General Manager, North America
Steve Gooderham, VP/General Manager, Extended Caribbean
Greg Lee, VP and Director General, Cash and Transactâ„¢
Fred Schade, Chief Information Officer
Mark Beckner, Chief Technology Officer
Shane Belovsky, Director of Customer Service
Martyn Fricker, Director, Marketing and Business Development
Brian Hoshiko, VP of Production Systems
Dennis Andrews, Chief Executive Officer
Dennis brings more than 30 years experience in the technology industry to Emida, including serving as former Chairman and co-founder of eCatalystOne, also a provider of global online payment services. Dennis started his career at IBM, where he spent 21 years with IBM during the initial explosion of the IBM PC business. He has been the president and/or CEO of advanced software companies since 1991, including seven-plus years in Silicon Valley. Dennis most recently served as CEO of Axcelerant, Inc., which was successfully sold to GRIC Communications in 2003. He graduated with honors from Penn State University with a BS in Theoretical Mathematics. Dennis went on to pursue graduate studies, also in theoretical mathematics, at Syracuse University and the University of North Carolina.
Phil Smith, President
Philip joined Emida from Stone Capital Venture Partners, LP where he was responsible, as a member of the Fund’s general partner, for identifying investment opportunities, negotiating investment terms and growing the Partnership’s portfolio companies to their profitable sale. As a managing partner of the Fund, Phil participated on the boards of Lighting Technologies International, Gumps of San Francisco, Ceyx Technologies and Emida (9/05 thru 12/09). Prior to joining Stone Canyon, Phil’s career spanned a wide variety of industries including real estate development, electric power generation, cable television, and oil and gas exploration. Phil holds a B.S. degree in Finance from University of Denver.
James R. Wodach, CPA, Chief Financial Officer
Jim has been with Emida since 2001 and has more than 20 years of financial and operational experience. Throughout his career, Jim has raised in excess of $125 million through both public and private financings. From 2000 to 2001, he served in various capacities including CEO, COO, CFO and board member of Vicus.com. Jim has also held the position of Senior Vice President and CFO for PharmaPrint Inc., a publicly traded pharmaceutical and consumer products company. He received a BS in Business Administration from California State University, Fullerton, and is a Certified Public Accountant.
Ron Kraft, VP – General Manager North America
Ron brings over 20 years of Sales and Account Management experience in technology and consumer goods industries to Emida. Previously, he served as Senior Account Manager and Vice President of U.S. Sales at Emida. Prior to joining Emida, Ron served as Director of Account Management at GoRemote where he managed relationships with Fortune 1000 companies, primarily focusing on IT deployments to pharmaceutical organizations such as Johnson and Johnson, Novartis and Bristol-Myers Squib. Ron graduated from the University of Redlands with a BA in Communications.
Steve Gooderham, VP International
Steve has over 25 years of international experience with technology based companies. He has successfully negotiated and deployed multi-million dollar telecommunications projects in Europe, the Middle East and North America. As General Manager for England-based Microvitec Multimedia, Steve’s team developed one of the first video-on-demand systems to be deployed by British Telecom. More recently with Subscriber Computing and Corsair Communications, Steve led the deployment, management and support of prepaid systems throughout the Americas and Caribbean. Since joining Emida, Steve has been responsible for managing the company operations in the extended Caribbean, as well as establishing a 7×24 support team for domestic and international clients.
Greg Lee, VP and Director General, Cash and Transactâ„¢
Greg joins the Emida team with 6 years experience in prepay payment applications for mobile. He is currently deploying branchless banking, mobile e-wallet and international prepay top up and peer-to-peer money transfer applications for Africa, Latin America and other markets. Lee’s experience includes mobile phone advertising and promotion and Mobile Micro Payments, as well as 10 years experience working closely with MNOs, MVNOs, telecoms equipment manufacturers, managing software developers and developing new products/features and services in Europe and Latin America. His former positions include Founding Partner at DineroMobi, a London consultancy for prePaid payments applications, Director, Business Development at Mi-Pay, and Senior VP Europe, Payzy.
Fred Schade, Chief Information Officer
Fred brings more than 23 years of experience in IT and software development to Emida. Prior to joining Emida, Fred served as CTO for QComm, where he led the engineering team to turn around its platform into a robust, secure and scalable solution in the prepaid processing industry. Fred also lead QComm’s Operations department, focusing on controls, scalable processes and a service-focused culture. Prior to QComm he served as Vice President of Research and Development and as CTO for MediConnect.net Inc. Fred brings significant experience in process automation, user interface development and technology leadership to building information system that are stable, scalable, secure and flexible for customers. He has worked with numerous industry standards committees and is an expert in the medical information privacy and security community. In addition, he is the inventor/co-inventor of six technology and business process patents, and he has held director of development positions with educational software developers NetSchools Corp and Waterford Institute. Fred graduated from BYU with a BS in Computer Science and began his career at IBM as a software engineer and product manager.
Mark Beckner, Chief Technology Officer
A veteran of technology development and deployment for mission critical systems and services, Mark leads Emida’s efforts to ensure that its technology platform meets the ever-increasing service demands of its growing customer base. He has managed large-scale research and development programs at Bell Laboratories, Bellcore, Ameritech, and US West and was a key contributor to development and standardization of telecommunication network systems and services. At Subscriber Computing, Inc., he was a key technical contributor to the development and deployment of the first WIN-based prepaid calling platform, which has been widely deployed by numerous international wireless carriers. Prior to joining Emida, Mark was Chief Architect at Objectwave, a Chicago-based software consultancy.
Shane Belovsky, Director of Customer Service
A customer service professional with extensive experience in the IT and prepaid cellular industries, Shane brings proven leadership and a customer-focused management style to Emida. Since starting with Emida, Shane has completely redesigned the company’s Customer Support department, implementing 24×7 worldwide support, an automated call answering and tracking system, and an online ticketing system so that customers may track the flow and lifecycle of open issues. In addition, Shane launched a bi-annual customer satisfaction survey that compares year-over-year results. Prior to Emida, Shane worked as Vice President of Customer Relations for Foldera. As a founding member of Foldera, Shane built a customer service department from the ground up that was servicing over 100,000 customers by the time he left the company in 2007. Shane graduated with honors from the University of California, Irvine, with a BS in Cognitive Science.
Martyn Fricker, Director, Marketing and Business Development
As Director of Business Development for Emida, Martyn brings with him over 20 years of international experience in cable television, mobile and general communications services. Joining Emida in 2005, Martyn most recently served as Emida’s Regional Business Development Manager, Extended Caribbean. In this role, he managed customers in an area extending from Bermuda to Guyana, producing annual revenues of over $1m and an annualized run-rate growth of over 100%. Martyn will now head up Emida’s global business development efforts, which includes corporate, brand and regional marketing, among other responsibilities. Prior to joining Emida, Martyn enjoyed a six-year tenure at Cable & Wireless as Manager, Partner Sales, Cayman Islands, and Head, Sales Channel Development, West Indies. Earlier in his career, he worked in several business, marketing, sales and service development roles in the UK and Asia at Binariang Bhd, Telewest plc, Octagon Telecom Services and Mercury Communications Limited. Martyn has a B.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Manchester, UK, and an M.Sc. in Operational Research from the University of Southampton, UK. Following the completion of his M.Sc., Martyn completed a fellowship in Sales and Marketing Management in the UK.
Brian Hoshiko, VP of Production Systems
Brian has 25 years of experience in various roles including senior management, software development and software production. He has been with Emida since 2004 and manages a team that is responsible for supporting over 150 servers in 36 countries. Before joining Emida, Brian co-founded and engineered eCatalystOne, an internet technology company that built and launched a non-credit based payment system designed for online purchases over the internet. He also spent 14 years at Xerox where he held positions ranging from document management to systems design. Brian holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from University of California, Los Angeles.
