GridApp Board Members
William Clifford
William Clifford is the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Aperture Technologies, Inc., a data center management software firm. He previously served as president and CEO of Gartner Group, Inc., a leading provider of research and analysis on the global IT industry, where he was responsible for growing annual revenues from $175 million in 1993 to $780 million in 1999. Under his leadership, Gartner's product line expanded from a single research-based service to include eCommerce research, consulting, events, benchmarking and market data products and services. Additionally, he was instrumental in globalizing Gartner's research impact by establishing technology research operations in Australia, Asia and South America.
Before joining Gartner, Clifford served as Corporate Vice President of information systems development at Automatic Data Processing (ADP). Prior to ADP, he was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Applied Data Research (ADR), Inc., the world's first independent software company and a leading systems software and relational database management organization. He also served as National Practice Director for Applied Technology Consulting at Arthur Young & Co. Mr. Clifford began his career at IBM Corp. in sales and marketing.
Charles Crockett
Charles Crockett is a founding Partner of Ascend Venture Partners, a private investment management firm based in New York City. Prior to the formation of Ascend, Mr. Crockett was a Director of The Beacon Group, a New York-based private investment and advisory firm that manages more than $2.0 billion in private equity capital. Mr. Crockett was the first Associate hired by The Beacon Group and spent six years evaluating, structuring and monitoring investments in a variety of industries.
Prior to the formation of The Beacon Group, Mr. Crockett spent approximately three years at Goldman Sachs in the Structured Finance Group with experience in independent power financings, leveraged lease financings, partnership financings, project financings and private placements. Mr. Crockett currently serves as a director of AEP Networks Inc. Mr. Crockett is also presently a member of the Stanford Law School Board of Visitors and the State Bar of California, and is a director of the New York Software Industry Association (NYSIA) and the LEAD Program in Business.
Mr. Crockett received a Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School and a Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Robert Gardos
Robert Gardos is the President and founder of GridApp Systems. Over the past nine years, Mr. Gardos has held numerous senior management positions in technology-driven organizations. He has a wealth of experience developing efficient and cost-effective technology solutions to meet the demands of customers.
Mr. Gardos was formerly the Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of Register.com (RCOM), an Internet organization specializing in domain name registration. Mr. Gardos joined RCOM as the ninth employee in June 1998 and helped grow the company to a publicly traded and profitable entity, increasing annual revenues from $1 million to $125 million. He maintained full control of all aspects of technology operations and was integrally involved with the overall strategic planning of the company. This was highlighted by a successful and relentless lobbying effort to shift the business' focus from Web hosting to domain name registration, a decision that was critical to Register.com's success. Mr. Gardos authored RCOM's response to the original request for proposal put out by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) , which served to deregulate the domain name industry. Based on this application, the company was selected out of more than 100 applicants to compete against Network Solutions, the existing domain name registration monopoly. Robert Gardos pioneered a new standard in the domain industry, shifting name management to the customer through an easy to use Web–based application. This served to improve consumer satisfaction and reduce maintenance costs, an approach that was subsequently adopted by the entire industry.
Scott Murphy
Currently Director at Advantage Capital, Scott Murphy is an experienced venture capitalist and entrepreneur whose background includes public service. At Advantage Capital, where he has worked since 2001, his primary responsibilities include sourcing and closing investments in New York and managing Advantage’s New York portfolio.
Prior to Advantage, Mr. Murphy founded three different Internet-related businesses: Small World Sports, a pioneer in providing fantasy sports games that was sold to Vulcan Ventures/The Sporting News and is now the engine that runs both Fox Sports and The Sporting News fantasy games; Baazee.com, the leading online auction site in India, that was sold to eBay; and a web consultancy that was sold to IXL, which went public and later merged with Scient.
Mr. Murphy earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, graduating Magna Cum Laude. He has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
John Stevenson
John Stevenson is president of JG Stevenson Association, LLC, an IT strategy consulting company. Until February 2006, he served as vice president and CIO of Sharp Electronics Corporation, where he oversaw the implementation and management of IT Systems and Services for the Americas Group. In addition to lowering Sharp’s IT costs and updating its systems architecture, he was responsible for extending the corporation’s IT Services to 11 entities located throughout North and South America.
Before joining Sharp Electronics in 2003, Mr. Stevenson served as vice president and CIO for Avaya Inc. where he managed the transition of the company’s IT assets during its spin-off from Lucent, Inc. Prior to Avaya, Stevenson held executive IT positions for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Lennox International, the Dr Pepper/Seven-Up Corporation and Princeton Packaging.
Mr. Stevenson served the US Navy as a Flight Officer and Division Officer and went on to serve as Commander in the US Navy Reserves until he retired in 1993. He earned an MS in Systems Management from the University of Southern California and a BS in Systems Analysis from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.