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James P. Masciarelli
CEO
Jim is an entrepreneur, experienced CEO, author, thought leader and top management advisor on strategy, organizational effectiveness, and business development. Jim has consulted to hundreds of companies on building their management teams and enhancing competitiveness. His clients have included Fortune 2000 companies such as Eastman Kodak, IBM, Cisco Systems, Compaq, Citrix Systems, Lotus Development, Millipore Corporation, and VeriSign. Prior to founding PowerSkills Solutions, Jim founded Archer Development, a global executive development and advisory firm, and co-founded Fenwick Partners, a national retained executive search firm. Under his leadership as CEO, Fenwick had 40+ quarters of profitable growth. He is a keynote speaker and frequent guest lecturer at MIT, Harvard Business School and Babson College, and Advisory Board Member of the National Association of Corporate Directors/New England. Jim has
a BA in Psychology from Holy Cross and an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business, Babson College.
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Executive Advisory Board
John Gillis
John Gillis, co-founder of Virtusa, holds responsibility for the High Technology Business Unit, focusing on services to leading enterprise software companies. Prior to joining Virtusa, John was a founder, Executive Vice President, and Chief Operating Officer of INSCI Corporation, a leading supplier of digital document repositories and integrated output management products and services. As a key member of the management team, John helped take the company public in 1994.
Prior to INSCI, Mr. Gillis spent more than 20 years in the information processing industry at IBM, EXXON, and Data General. John has become a recognized expert in the design and implementations of strategies to help emerging companies bring their ideas into action in the marketplace through effective relationship development and direct and channel sales management.
John holds a degree in Economics and has attended classes at New York State University at Stony Brook, New York University, and Nassau Community College. He is an advisor to several companies and a frequent speaker at industry seminars.
Lucinda Linde
Lucinda invests in and consults to early stage information technology companies. While at First Light Capital, she invested in Nellymoser, Incipient, KESI, Strong Numbers (now part of Intuit's "It's Deductible" product) and HubX (acquired by SynXis).
She was an angel investor in Visualization Technologies Inc. (acquired by GE Medical Systems), Viveca (acquired by Open Pages) and Collego (acquired by MRO Systems) and Softrax (profitable company). Lucinda co-authored an in-depth study on angel investors, VSS Project: Report on Angel Investors, for Ken Morse of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center and Professor Howard Stevenson at HBS.
Previously, Lucinda helped build a management consulting firm focused on the telecommunications industry, COBA Boston, now Adventis. Start-up experience includes operations and marketing positions at Molten Metal Technology and Ceramics Process Systems. Both were venture-backed companies that went public. She holds an SB and an SM in Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Mark Scherfling
Mark is the former VP of Engineering of PowerSkills where he took our vision and turned it into a commercial product. He continues to serve as an advisor on Product and Technology direction. Mark is a pioneer in the field of delivering software as a service via the Internet. As Director of Engineering for Xevo Corporation, he oversaw the re-architecture effort to transform a multi-tenant ASP solution for the enterprise. He also worked at GTW Internetworking, where he provided project management, service design, and technical leadership to the Engineering team; Motorola Codex, where he managed the Computer Environment Group; and at GTE Laboratories, as Supervisor of Unix and Communications Support. Mark is a Microsoft Certified Professional, and holds a Masters of Computer Science degree from Northern Illinois University.
Hal Shear
Hal founded Research Investment Advisors, Ltd. in 1982 to assist individuals of significant net worth. He has headed its corporate governance practice, now known as Board Assets since 1991. Hal has served on more than 12 boards, and currently serves as an independent director of two privately-held companies.
He regularly advises governmental authorities, CEOs and boards of directors on corporate governance matters including strategy, director recruitment, composition, selection, and board, committee and director evaluation, and serves as an outsourced advisor to help process and analyze completed assessment forms. He is a senior advisor to the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), and a member of its international faculty. He is a regular guest lecturer in the Babson College MBA Entrepreneurial Program, an Overseer of the Museum of Science, serves on the Corporate Resource Committee of The Boston Club, and an advisor to The Commonwealth Institute's Women's Emerging Entrepreneur's Program.
He speaks at many conferences and presents seminars addressing The Board & Strategy, The Effective Entrepreneurial Company Board and Conflict in the Boardroom. He was a Commissioner on NACD Blue Ribbon Commissions which published reports on the Role of the Board in Corporate Strategy (2000) and Board Evaluation: Improving Director Effectiveness (2001.)
John Sims, Jr.
John is the Executive Relations Manager for Bentley College with operational objectives to build and maintain a visiting executive program, launch and maintain alumni-based advisory groups, to enhance Bentley’s strategic initiatives, and develop and maintain an effective alumni program for the McCallum Graduate School of Business. Since joining Bentley College in 1991 John has also held the positions of Assistant Dean at McCallum, and Director of the Graduate Center for Career Services.
He has over twenty years of experience in the private sector with high technology companies such as General Electric, UNC Venture Capital Company, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Crown Zellerbach, and Data General winning several awards for outstanding sales and, implementation of complex systems, and for business development results in global markets.
John is also CEO and founder of AJS Consulting Company LLC, D/B/A Strategic Venture Advisors, (SVA), an advisory network of senior managers, entrepreneurs and academics, that offer advisory services to private, non-profit, and start-up companies in various stages of development.
He sits on four non-profit boards, Harvard Business School Association of Boston (HBSAB), American Association of University Women (AAUW), Asian Sisters Participating in Reaching Excellence, and National Society of Hispanic MBA (NSHMBA) Corporate Advisory Board, Chairman of two advisory boards for privately held companies, an Internet entertainment technology firm, and an Internet Portal for high end Latino Markets. John holds an MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business, and a B.S., in Education from Miami University, in Oxford Ohio. |
