Emida Appoints Ron Kraft as Vice President & General Manager of USA and Fred Schade as Chief Information Officer
FOOTHILL RANCH, California, September 30, 2007 (Business Wire) – Emida Technologies, a leader in the global prepayment and value transfer market, has announced two key appointments to its senior management team.
Ron Kraft becomes Vice President and General Manager of Emida USA and will be responsible for expanding operations in USA. Ron brings 20 years of Sales and Account Management experience in technology and consumer goods industries to his new role. Previously, he served as Senior Account Manager and Vice President of U.S. Sales at Emida. Prior to joining the company in 2005, 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. He graduated from the University of Redlands with a BA in Communications.
“Ron’s promotion is well-deserved. His knowledge of the US market is unmatched and he has material experience working with key partners to grow business to mutual benefit.” said Dennis Andrews, Emida’s CEO. “Ron was a key player in our recent merger with QComm International, Inc. and is undoubtedly the right person to leverage the opportunities it presents.”
Emida has also appointed Fred Schade as its Chief Information Officer. Fred brings more than 20 years of experience in IT and software development to Emida. Schade served as CTO for QComm International, Inc. and prior to that served as the CTO and Vice President of R&D for MediConnect.net Inc. He developed the de facto standard (EDI) for medical record retrieval now used in the multi-billion dollar medical record retrieval industry. Prior to MediConnect.net, he was the director of software development for NetSchools Corp. From 1993 to 1997 he was director of software development for the Waterford Institute, where he was responsible for development of the Waterford Early Reading Program. From 1989 to 1993 he served as Software Engineer and Product Manager for IBM. He is the inventor/co-inventor of six technology and business process patents, four of which have been issued and two of which are pending.
Dennis Andrews said “Fred’s background impresses me greatly and he is very much up for the challenge of making the most of our Emida technologies. He not only knows the QComm technology like the back of his hand but is already intimate with Emida technologies and his fluency in Spanish is essential for enabling communications across our teams in US and Colombia.”
Dennis added “I am delighted to have Ron and Fred join our senior management team and look forward to working with them to drive Emida forward.”
About Emida
Emida is a leader in the global prepayment and value transfer market, operating in 27 countries in North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. Emida POSA (point-of-sale activation) and value-transfer technologies allow domestic and international carriers and distributors to offer many types of prepaid products, including prepaid wireless, long distance, lottery and stored value. The company’s strategy is to build profitable, robust distribution networks for many prepaid products in multiple operating geographies and to introduce unique cross-border value transfer products between these geographies. For more information, please visit the company web site at www.emida.net or email info@emida.net.