Team Overview

Management:

Leo Russell, CEO & President - Pride Technologies

Leo Russell founded Pride Technologies in 1983. Pride focused on providing IT services to financial institutions. Over the next 10 years, Pride became one of the largest minority-owned IT providers in the country with 25 branches and over 1,000 people nationwide. In 1997, Pride sold its distribution business to MicroAge of Tempe, Arizona.

Pride then began to focus exclusively on providing IT services to Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies. Pride targeted a full range of IT services from help desk solutions to high-level placements within large corporate accounts. In 1999, Pride launched an advanced IT solutions practice, which encompassed sophisticated project management and contract CIO assignments.

In 2000, Leo was named the CIO and Executive Vice President of Young & Rubicam, one of the largest publicly traded advertising firms in the world. In this position, Mr. Russell was responsible for all decisions regarding the company's information technology strategy as well as software and hardware standards. From 2001 to 2003, Leo Russell acted as a Managing Director of Lehman Brothers in the Venture Capital group. This group was responsible for the evaluation and management of a large portfolio of technical companies. Leo Russell served on several boards and acted as principal in a number of investments made by Lehman Brothers Private Equity Group.

Leo Russell received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and a Bachelor of Sciences in Accounting from Claremont Men's College. Leo Russell also attended the OPM Program and is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School .

Michael B. Krieger, Managing Director - Pride Technologies

As a managing director of Pride Technologies, Michael Krieger provides clients with the benefit of his expertise in business process refinement and performance consulting. His expertise as a trained facilitator and service consultant has benefited many companies with their approaches to Project Management, Networking, Help Desk, Procurement, and End User service delivery models.

Mr. Krieger entered the IT industry in 1988 as a service sales consultant with Pomeroy Resources, Inc. In 1994, Mr. Krieger joined SARCOM, Inc. as a district sales specialist to assist in the growth of service sales and account acquisition. In 1995, Mr. Krieger was promoted to Sales Manager for the organization and in 1997 was promoted to District Manager. In 2003, Mr. Krieger was appointed Regional Vice President for the southern region of SARCOM, Inc.

Prior to beginning his professional sales consulting career Mr. Krieger attended the University of Cincinnati. Mr. Krieger is a trained facilitator for process workshops in the IBM J.A.D. methodology. He has developed his skills as a sales professional in Miller Heiman's Strategic and Conceptual methodologies and maintains several sales certifications with leading manufacturers in the IT industry.

Chris Philpott, Managing Director - Pride Technologies

In 2004, Pride Technologies asked Chris to join the management team as a Managing Director of the Midwest Sales where he leads client engagement activities including Cardinal Health, Limited Brands, Lexis Nexis, Catholic Healthcare Partners, Simon Property Group, Ohio Casualty Group, and American Financial Group.

Prior to joining Pride, Chris had spent 16 years in the technology industry with success as both a sales executive and operations executive. Upon completion of his Bachelors of Business Administration and his Masters of Business Administration from the University of Cincinnati, Chris spent two years as a Sales and Marketing Director in the commercial photographic industry. Then, in 1989, Chris took an opportunity to enter the microcomputer industry as a sales-representative with a national reseller. In 1993, Chris was recruited by ENTEX to become the Sales Manager for Cincinnati and Lexington and after being honored as the National Sales Manager of the Year Chris was promoted to General Manager. In late 1998, Chris was promoted to Senior Vice President of the Corporate Account Center with ENTEX. After the business was acquired by CompuCom, Chris returned to the field and was named Regional Vice President of Sales for the Central Region.

In 2000, Chris established his own company in the networking infrastructure industry and successfully operated that for 3 years, during which time he became certified as a Cisco Certified Sales Expert as well as a Cisco Certified Network Administrator.