City Section
Joel Yeghen
Apogee Accelerator Group was conceived by Stephen Lairmore and Joel Yeghen, who is a New York entrepreneur and strategic sales executive with expertise in new business and strategic partnership development. In his formative years, he's always had one goal in mind—to create a company and software platforms that would one day change how people would interact with each other, either personally or from a business commerce perspective. After achieving that goal with the help of Stephen Lairmore, he decided to take the knowledge he amassed over the 9 companies he built from the ground up and work with other successful entrepreneurs to help make their dreams come true while making a difference in the rapidly changing Millennial World. Joel's talents drove his successes and education in other professional endeavors; he has worked at Sterling Info Systems, LexisNexis, Verifications, Inc. and YCS, all in New York City where he served as Area Vice President of Sales and Business Development. He has proven expertise in managing client relationships, product development, strategic alliances, cross-functional teams, and leading new product launches/ implementations. In addition, he has consulted and created some of the most complex solutions and deals in the Private Investment Sector and Human Capital sector for many fortune 500 companies. Partners include EMC Corporation, Wal-Mart, British Petroleum, State Street Bank, Target, Publics Group, BMC Software, Microsoft, Ceridian, Federated Department Stores, and Cannon. Joel received his BA from Rutgers University with a major in sociology and a minor in business. Joel is the son of Joseph N.Yeghen, who was one of the pioneers in the late 70's of the EDI Standard (Electronic Data Interchange), for the wholesale and mass retail verticals. Joel grew up surrounded by technology enthusiasts and entrepreneurs alike.
Stephen Lairmore
Managing Principal - Co-Founder
Stephen is the Founder of the Apogee Accelerator Group, along with Joel Yeghen, he is a seasoned, thoughtful, decisive entrepreneur and operating corporate finance executive with over 38 years' experience in the investment industry. He has spent the past 23 years in the private equity and venture capital consulting business. As an accomplished private equity investment professional, he has assisted on over 50 private equity transactions. Lairmore has extensive relationships with over 300 strategic venture capital and private equity firms in the United States, Europe and Asia. He is a hands-on, goal-oriented executive with diversified experience in marketing, business development, strategic planning, turnarounds, finance and operations. He is an innovative business strategist, highly motivated, detail-oriented, concise, and well organized. Engagements have ranged from $1 to $85 million spanning early to late stage equity, debt and mergers & acquisitions. Past clients have included BCBG, Joan & David, Love Culture, Smashbox, Krystal Enterprises, Partita Tequila, ProSoft, Reunion.com. Prior to acting as a private equity consultant, Lairmore successfully founded, capitalized, operated and sold two securities brokerage firms with over 100 employees - Newport Asset Management and Opex International. Mr. Lairmore made regular appearances on FNN (Financial News Network), seen in over 40 million homes, as an analyst and forecaster in the late 80's. Mr. Lairmore holds a BS from the MERU Research University of Seelisberg, Switzerland. He resides in California and France with his wife, a French national, and two sons. We always are working inside our offices, within shouting distance of channel partners and entrepreneurs alike.
Garry N. Lowenthal
Garry Lowenthal is the EVP/CFO and co-founder of FISION Corporation (OTCQB: FSSN), a global, distributed and fully automated marketing technology company delivered in a Software-as-a-Service platform to enterprise customers. Fision has strong market traction with 65,000+ users in 27 counties. Previously, Mr. Lowenthal was EVP/CFO for a global data storage company and Viper Motorcycle Company, which he brought public through an IPO, while increasing its market capitalization by $83M in its first year.
Mr. Lowenthal began his career as a Big 4 Executive Consultant with Deloitte-Touché and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he directed the M&A (Post-Merger Integrations) and Corporate Recovery Practice. Major clients included Pillsbury, Gillette, Ford Motor (Japan), General Electric, Boeing, Motorola, Northwest Airlines (now Delta Airlines), Walt Disney Company, Honeywell, and PepsiCo (worldwide). Mr. Lowenthal was also the founder and President of a global Consumer Products company - Kids Choice® Consumer Products, with brand equity in 28 countries, which he successfully sold to a Fortune 200 Company.
Garry holds a BSB in Accounting and a Master's in Business Taxation and Finance from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and also serves on its National Alumni Advisory Board. Garry is also a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and serves on its national scholarship committee. Mr. Lowenthal is the past Chairman of the Financial Executive International's Committee on Finance and Information Technology, and also served on its national Board of Directors, Executive Committee and is a past President of its Twin Cities Chapter. Financial Executives International ("FEI") is the leading professional association for CFO's with 10,000 members throughout 74 chapters across the U.S. and Canada with offices in New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
Garry is an amateur magician and an avid scuba diver (PADI Divemaster, Ice, Wreck, Search & Recovery and Master Diver). Mr. Lowenthal also serves as District Chairman for the Boy Scouts of America, serves on the Jewish Committee on Scouting, Order of the Arrow, Wood Badge Staff and Chairs the Eagle Scouts Board of Review for the local council. Garry has also served on the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology serving under two U. S. President's. Mr. Lowenthal has also served as an Expert Witness to the United States Senate Committee on Finance and also the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs.
Steve Kimball
Steve has more than 25 years of HR and Talent Acquisition experience in the tech and life sciences industry. He is a global leader with extensive experience building strong recruiting teams and leveraging best of class HR systems. Steve started his recruiting experience in the agency world and built a startup company into an Inc. 500 fastest growth company with a team of more than 75 recruiters. He then moved to EMC , a Fortune 200 company, where he held a variety of global HR leadership positions and had extensive experience with mergers and acquisitions. Currently Steve leads Talent Acquisition globally for PerkinElmer.
Steve has been married for 24 years, has a 12 year old son and is very active as a committee member in the Boys Scouts. He has completed 16 Ironman, including the Ironman World Championship in Kona and more than 50 marathons.
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