EXECUTIVE BIOS

 

Robert Alpert

CEO & Co-Founder

Mr. Alpert has executed more than fifty industrial start-ups and has completed a variety of successful business acquisitions, including several special situations involving the acquisition of undervalued assests. Mr. Alpert has developed a unique expertise in project development, project finance, and consolidation. His acquisitions included the tubular steel division assests of Babcock & Wilcox located in three states, including 6 million square feet of manufacturing facilities, the purchase of the entire aircraft and engine spare parts inventory from the bankruptcy estate of Eastern Air Lines, Inc., oil services equipment, raw materials and manufacturing equipment. He was an original founder of Tubular Corporation of America, Inc., Interlock Technologies Corporation, Aviation Sales Corporation (an aviation parts distributor and maintenance, repair and overhaul company) and Republic Wate Services, Inc., which became Auto Nation and Republic Industries. As part of his merchant banking activities, he has been a principal and/or investor in other diverse, publicly owned enterprises including: PalEx (which became IFCO Systems), USA Waste (which became Waste Management) and other investments.

In 1997, Mr. Alpert acquired the assests of Kinestics.com and invested the assests in Land 'N' Sea Corportation, where he was the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Land 'N' Sea Corporation developed the leading integrated marine channel for business-to-business, e-commerce and consuer marketing in the $23 billion recreational boating industry. Land 'N' Sea gre to become the largest source for marine parts and accessories and the industry's leading digital network for the cost-effective exchange of information, products and services and was acquired by Brunswick Corporation, the largest boat manufacturing and marine propulsion group in the world, in 2004. 

Since 2005, as a result of his multi-industry background, he has elected to invest time and capital to mentor a handful of high growth companies either individually or in conjunction with other private equity investors.

  

Scott Hines

Chairman & Co-Founder

Mr. Hines has over 20 years of experience in technology leadership, primarily serving the retail and manufacturing industries. He joins CopiaMobile from Vcommerce where he served as both Chief Operating Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. Mr. Hines led Vcommerce's development, client implementation and customer service initiatives.

Prior to Vcommerce, Mr. Hines was Senior Vice President of Global Store Systems & Chief Technology Officer at JDA Software, Inc. Mr. Hines' responsibilities at JDA included developing JDA's In-Store Systems and setting the technology direction for JDA's suite of products and advancing new technology ventures. In this role, Mr. Hines was responsible for setting the technology direction for systems used to manage inventory and optimize revenue for JDA's retail customers who collectively generate more than $500 billion in annual sales. While at JDA, Mr. Hines grew the product offering through both in-house product development as well as through managing over $100 million in acquisition activity.

Mr. Hines' success has earned him the 2002 Leader of the Year honors from AZsoft.net (now the Arizona Technology Council) as well as a two-time winner of a Microsoft Retail Application Developer (RAD) award and made him a regular on the retail speaking circuit. Previously, Mr. Hines was President of DataWorks, Inc. and Director of MIS for US Hosiery Corporation. Mr. Hines holds a BS in Molecular Biology from Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Peter Charness

President

Mr. Charness has over 20 years of experience in the domains of Retail/CPG and Technology, and as a recognized Industry Expert is published and a frequent speaker to the Industry. Mr. Charness joins CopiaMobile from Manthan Systems where as President and Global Product Head he successfully built the American's business unit and took Manthan in the America's from start up to mainstream. Mr. Charness led the sales, marketing, consulting, support and engineering organizations for this venture. Prior to Manthan Mr. Charness led a successful start up venture with Silkoaksolutions creating a new market offering to the Retail and CPG industry for merchandise planning and analytics and securing the first marquis customers. Mr. Charness also served as Senior Vice President of Marketing and Chief Product Officer for JDA Software where he was responsible for driving revenue through the worldwide branding and lead generation activities, and working personally with many of the leading Retailers and CPG companies worldwide. At JDA Mr. Charness also managed the portfolio strategy and design of over 60 different products utilized by leading Retailer and CPG organizations. This portfolio included some of the best recognized brand names in the industry, such as Arthur, Intactix, and E3. Mr. Charness supported the acquisition of 9 companies while with JDA and led the integration of those products and businesses into the JDA Portfolio. Prior to joining JDA, Mr. Charness served as General Manager of Comshare Retail, where he had full P&L responsibility of the Retail Business unit which generated over 300 customers worldwide. As VP Logistics and Technology for a leading multinational retailer, Mr. Charness led a wide number of process and technology projects that created novel and state of the art business capabilities. Mr. Charness holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario.

 

Michael Chadwick

Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer

Mr. Chadwick has over 15 years of technology and business management experience, primarily focused on hyper growth and scalable enterprises. Mr. Chadwick joins CopiaMobile from GoDaddy.com, where he served as their Vice President of Technology and was the CTO of the technology business unit. Mr. Chadwick was responsible for the development of GoDaddy's core Internet presence products and GoDaddy's global IT operations. Mr. Chadwick led the development of GoDaddy's PKI product, which grew to over 25% market share over the course of four years and now is the #2 Certificate Authority in the world. Mr. Chadwick was responsible for building and growing GoDaddy's web hosting technology and business to #1 in the world. Under his technology leadership GoDaddy launched over 20 new products and scaled these products to millions of users and billions of requests per month. While leading GoDaddy's IT operations, Mr. Chadwick guided the company to a year over year reduction in IT budget. He did this while scaling and growing the business at a rapid rate internationally.

Prior to GoDaddy, Mr. Chadwick led the development of NCS Pearson's Internet initiatives, with a focus on web-based administrations and eLearning for school districts throughout the nation. In addition, he has written factory automation software for Motorola.

Mr. Chadwick holds a B.S. in Computer Science, with minors in Math and Psychology from the University of Arizona. He has two issued patents and over twenty patents pending.

 

Larry Negrich

Vice President, Marketing

Larry Negrich has over 20 years of experience in marketing leadership, partner development, and strategic consulting experience with industry-focused, enterprise solutions companies including Microsoft, Avnet, JDA Software, Retek/Oracle Retail, and EDS.

Mr. Negrich joins CopiaMobile from Avnet Technology Solutions, an $8.19 billion (USD) operating group of Avnet, Inc. where he led the retail strategic consulting practice. Mr. Negrich joined Avnet Technology Solutions as a member of the core team responsible for bringing to market the newly launched RetailPath initiative that drove industry-focused solution sales through the distribution channel.

Prior to Avnet, Mr. Negrich led Microsoft's retail mid-market ERP (Dynamics) marketing as the Business Solutions Industry Manager for Distribution & Retail. In this role, Mr. Negrich was responsible for partner and marketing strategies to drive acceptance of Microsoft ERP and CRM solutions in the North American distribution and retail markets. 

Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Negrich led marketing teams at profitable, industry-focused enterprise software companies including JDA Software, Retek, and EDS' automotive retail group. Mr. Negrich began his professional career as an application developer for the Barros Research Institute.

Mr. Negrich received his undergraduate degree in Journalism with a specialization in Computer Engineering from Michigan State University.