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Michael Lee - Mr. Lee brings over 13 years of experience in the IT and communications industries. Most recently, Mr. Lee was President and CEO of Ardent Communications, a tier-one national service provider of enterprise WAN services, including VPN, Web hosting and remote access to businesses across the United States. At Ardent Mr. Lee oversaw the complete restructuring and rebranding of the company from a provider of broadband access to hotels into a strong, growing national access and value added services provider.

Prior to Ardent Communications Mr. Lee was Chief Business Development Officer at TelePacific Communications, a Los Angeles-based next generation integrated communications provider ("ICP") of converged voice and data services to businesses in the Western United States. Mr. Lee also served as Chief Technology Officer of TelePacific and was one of the original employees since the founding of the Company.

Before joining TelePacific Mr. Lee founded DigitalVelocity™, a provider of wide area enterprise communications solutions, where he developed the network methodology, marketing, operational plans, and assembled a technical and management team to fully develop and deploy the service. DigitalVelocity™ was successfully launched in Los Angeles in 1998 and was merged with TelePacific in January 1999. Previously, Mr. Lee was a principal at CERFnet, one of the original commercial ISP's in 1994. CERFnet was acquired by TCG, which was later acquired by AT&T. Subsequent to this acquisition, Mr. Lee served as National Director of Internet Sales for AT&T CERFnet. Mr. Lee also managed large-scale deployments of these systems for several Fortune 2000 corporations.
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Amit Rikhy - Mr. Rikhy brings over 15 years of domestic and international experience in corporate finance, strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and business development in both venture-funded start-ups and large companies. Most recently, Mr. Rikhy was the Chief Financial Officer at Ardent Communications. In that position he lead the financial and strategic restructuring of the Company, enabling the Company to dramatically improve its balance sheet, increase revenues and reduce costs, renegotiate its debt and contracts, and substantially increase the financial health of the company as it transitioned from provider of broadband access to hotels into a strong, growing national access and value added services provider.

Prior to Ardent, Mr. Rikhy was the acting CFO and Vice President of Corporate Development for TelePacific Communications where he was responsible for all aspects of the finance department, including financial development activities, reporting, budgeting, and analysis. In this position, Mr. Rikhy successfully organized resources and capabilities across functional areas and business units to develop TelePacific's business plan and executed on the plan. These actions resulted in an improvement in revenue, reduction in expenses, restructuring of the company debt, and an improved capital expenditure and expansion model.

Mr. Rikhy also brings to Fortus a vast wealth of experience in many of the issues facing today's companies. He has extensive funding, turn-around, restructuring and mergers and acquisitions experience gained in a number of senior management positions prior to TelePacific. Mr. Rikhy has been responsible for the development and acquisition of international real estate interests in deals valued at approximately $1 billion, providing Mr. Rikhy with extensive contacts within the financial and investment capital industry. During his career he has also honed his expertise in contract negotiations, complex transaction structuring, due diligence and business modeling.

 

Peter Benedict - Mr. Benedict is a 10 + year marketing veteran in the IT, telecommunications and wide area networking service provider and equipment vendor space with an expertise in turn around and rebranding efforts.

Most recently Mr. Benedict was the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Investor Relations at Ardent Communications where he was responsible for marketing communications, public relations, investor relations and product marketing. At Ardent Mr. Benedict was a key player in redirecting Company to a new enterprise-focused business model and communicating this corporate shift to customers, investment community, media, analysts, shareholders and employees.

Prior to Ardent Mr. Benedict was the Senior Director of Product Marketing and Media Relations at Tachion Networks and was responsible for the huge traction the company found with service providers, the press/analyst community and Wall Street. Before Ardent Mr. Benedict was with Alcatel USA where he was instrumental in the acquisitions and roll up of Xylan, Packet Engines, Assured Access and Internet Devices where he oversaw the marketing campaign and rebranding effort in combining the product sets of all four companies into a coherent product line of converged voice/data solutions focusing on providing data and voice platforms to enterprises throughout the worlds. He was also responsible for all public relations activities regarding Xylan Corporation's enterprise switch/router product.

Mr. Benedict also brings extensive LAN experience, having run the marketing and public relations efforts for a number of vendors of LAN integration technologies, including CCC Group (videoconferencing and server management), Sony Electronics Business and Professional Products Group, and IBM Global Systems.

Peter Benedict brings a wealth of experience in developing and executing comprehensive public relations and marketing programs with a variety of established and startup communications companies. He has proven experience running media and analyst relations, having launched and promoted a wide variety of service provider data solutions including IP telephony, multi-service access, ATM/frame relay, Internet access management, VPN policy management and dial/broadband remote access services.

 

Fortus Management Partners
800 Wilshire Blvd.
Suite 1500
Los Angeles, CA
90017

888-759-5772
info@fortus.net