Chairman of the Board

Bill is noted for his quality approach and in 1990 was honored by Frontier with its President's Award for Quality Leadership. Bill served on the Aspen Institute's Committee on bringing the information network to rural America.
Bill ran Frontier's competitive businesses in the mid-1980's; growing the companies three-fold under his leadership. In this capacity, Bill was responsible for the preparation, sales, implementation and maintenance of telecommunications voice and data networks to business customers. Customers included State of New York, Niagara Mohawk, IBM, Eastman Kodak and Xerox. More recently, Bill was Vice President of Frontier's Residential and Small Business Markets.
Bill received his BA degree from St. John Fisher University.

President of the Board

John Kittrell is Regional Manager of the Upstate New York Region for Cisco Systems, Inc. This involves sales and support for the Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo areas. He has managed the Region since 1996.

Prior to Cisco, Mr. Kittrell held various sales positions with Sun Microsystems, Inc., including District Manager of the Xerox and Eastman Kodak sales teams and Global Account Manager for Kodak District. He also worked for Computer Consoles, Inc. (now Northern Telecom), and Sykes Datatronics.

Mr. Kittrell holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Connecticut, with a Major in Marketing. He and his wife, Joy, reside in Pittsford, New York, with their three children.

Vice President of the Board

Treasurer of the Board

Founded in 1985, Optimation Technology provides design services for firms manufacturing products in many vertical industries including chemicals, bio and pharmaceuticals, food, glass, paper, automotive, water and wastewater. Services include process engineering, electrical and instrumentation engineering, automation software and manufacturing execution systems. The firm is in an aggressive growth through acquisition mode and has recently acquired Klug Systems, Omnia Technology, and an equity position with Quantum Automation. Acquisitions of other firms, including Dumont Associates in New England, are in progress.

Secretary of the Board

Rodney A. Brown is a Founding Director and President of PharmaNova Inc. a drug development company focused on Women’s Health prescription products and specialty injectables. He is also the founder and Principal of PharmaNova Consulting, from which he consults and provides training for the pharmaceutical industry in research-driven Project Management (rPM^©), discovery based Information & Knowledge Management and, in collaboration with Dr. Stephen H Curry, the theory and practice of Pharmacokinetics in Drug Discovery and Preclinical Development. He established and directed project management in both discovery and development in 3 US organizations and the Discovery Project Office as the hub of Research Coordination and Knowledge Management at Astra Arcus USA and AstraZeneca (Neuroscience) R&D Boston.  His industry experience spans pharmaceutical R&D. As a pharmacologist and head of cardiovascular research at Fisons Pharmaceuticals, UK, he led numerous discovery projects and NCEs from concept to clinic. A seasoned Project Management Professional experienced in multiple therapeutic areas, Rodney has managed international development projects through to NDA in UK, Europe & North America.    In a career devoted to drug discovery and development he is passionate about enabling scientists and organizations realize the fullest potential of their discovery projects and has pioneered project management concepts in drug discovery to accelerate the achievement of clinical Proof of Principle.  Author and inventor of numerous papers and patents, Rodney trained in the UK (University of London).  He is an appointed officer to the Board of the Pharmaceutical SIG of the PMI (US) and member of the HTBC BioCluster.

Jim Campbell

James A. Campbell graduated from Bucknell University and the University of Rochester, where he earned a B.S. in physics and an M.S. and Ph. D in electrical engineering, respectively. He co-founded Viewpoint Systems, Inc. in 1993. The company has twice in the past five years been named one of Rochester’s “Top 100 Companies”.

He is active in the local business community as a member of the Rochester Business Alliance as well as serving on boards for the Rochester High Tech Business Council, the Rochester Institute of Technology Industrial Advisory Board for Computer Engineering, and the Executive Council for the Control and Information Systems Integrator Association (CSIA).

Viewpoint Systems is a Select Integrator in the Alliance Program of National Instruments, a member of the PXI Systems Alliance, and a Registered Member of CSIA, one of fewer than 75 companies in the United States to have earned that distinction.

The company specializes in custom computer software and systems for measurement and control applications for manufacturing, engineering, and research and development, delivering solutions for product development, manufacturing test, and data management.

J. Monteith Estes

J. Montieth Estes is a partner at Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel, LLP.  He concentrates his practice in Business and Corporate and Intellectual Property matters from the Firm's Rochester, NY office.  From 1969 through 1980, Mr. Estes was a partner in the firm of Harris, Beach and Wilcox. He concentrated his practice in Corporate, Environmental and Technology Law. 
In 1980, he became the Chief Operating Officer of Scientific Calculations, Inc. of Victor, New York and built that Company into a worldwide vendor of CAD/CAM systems for printed circuit design and integrated circuit design. The Company was sold to Harris Corporation in 1988.
In 1988, Mr. Estes was recruited to become the CEO of Optical Imaging Systems, Inc.[OIS]. OIS was a flat panel display manufacturer and developer of liquid crystal displays for military, avionics, and commercial applications. OIS was publicly held and traded on the NASDAQ Exchange. The Company was sold to Guardian Glass of Southfield, Michigan.  

Upon returning to the practice of law in October, 2000 through December 2004, Mr. Estes joined the firm of Boylan, Brown, Code, Vigdor & Wilson. In January, 2005 he joined Jaeckle Fleischmann & Mugel, LLP.   He concentrates his practice in emerging technology companies. He was elected to the Board of Directors of High Technology of Rochester. He was also selected to be a member of the Upstate Alliance for Innovation, a consortium of the University of Rochester, RIT, and the University of Buffalo, along with the City of Rochester and the City of Buffalo, seeking to commercialize existing University based technology in the form of new technology start-ups in Western New York. Mr. Estes is active in guiding, developing and funding high tech start-ups throughout Western New York. 

In June of 2001, Mr. Estes was elected to the Board of Directors of the High Tech Business Council. The Council is composed of the CEO’s of over 200 Rochester based technology companies. It has established formal clusters of these companies in the fields of telecommunications, biotechnology, photonics/optics, and information technology.

In 2002, Mr. Estes was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Science and Technology Law Center of the Albany Law School.  He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Smart Start Venture Forum held each October in Albany.

Mr. Estes is a founder and a member of the Board of Directors of the Upstate Venture Association of New York [UVANY] which counts as its members all the Upstate venture capital firms and many venture capital firms from Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Cleveland that invest in Upstate New York.

Mr. Estes holds both Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and a Law Degree from the Harvard Law School. He is a member of the Monroe County and New York State Bar Associations.

Hub Director
Northeast Biomanufacturing Center and Collaborative

Marjorie Hunter chose law after a research-intense undergraduate program with the hope of being able to bring an understanding of science to the application of law-- originally environmental law, and later, patent law. She began her career as a patent attorney for Amoco's research organization. She wrote and prosecuted patents on immune diagnostics, DNA hybridization diagnostics, recombinant proteins and plant genetic engineering. In an effort to get closer to commercialization, she moved to Baxter International (then Baxter Travenol) as a patent attorney supporting life sciences technologies including radio-labeled immunodiagnositcs, blood substitutes, blood fractionation and recombinant blood factors. After ten years as a patent attorney for these two Fortune 500 companies, she was intrigued with the development of a new office of technology transfer at the NIH, and took a position there in which she applied her legal skills to research findings in several major laboratories at NCI, as well as in resolving complex legal and patent issues including interferences and license drafting.

After her NIH experience, Marjorie transferred to the CDC, where she established a licensing operation followed by a patent prosecution team. She became Director of the office and expanded the team and scope of technology transfer as well as the number of tools now utilized by the CDC and parts of the PHS. From the federal sector, she came to the university sector where the laws and regulations favor more flexibility in deal structure to enable more efficient technology transfer and development. We were lucky enough to recruit her as Director of our new Technology Transfer office from the University of Utah in March, 2001.

Guy Johnson

Professor and Director,
Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure
Rochester Institute of Technology

Guy Johnson is currently a Professor and the Executive Director of the Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Science. This center is organized to include fifteen laboratories focused on computing infrastructure, informatics and interaction. The mission is to create, deploy, and apply cyberinfrastructure in ways that empower scientific and engineering research and allied education. 

Prof. Johnson has served as a faculty member at RIT since 1974. Over time he has served in the departments of Computer Science, Information Technology, Manufacturing Technology, and Manufacturing and Mechanical Engineering Technology where he taught both undergraduate and graduate courses. In addition, he has most recently served as the Acting Dean of the College of Applied Science and Technology.

During the years 1999-2004 Prof. Johnson served as the Director of the National Technology Training Center at RIT. This Center was the first National Training Center for the Project Lead The Way curriculum that focused on bringing pre-engineering education to the middle and high school systems. During the summer, 300-500 secondary school teachers were trained in the pre-engineering curriculum at RIT and 15 affiliate universities were added to the training sites. This 6 course curriculum is now offered at over 1400 sites across the nation and has resulted in significant retention improvements of engineering students in colleges.

 Prof. Johnson has been a consultant to industries including IBM, Xerox, and Kodak. His primary professional expertise is in the application of information technology in meeting corporate needs. Guy Johnson is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and Syracuse University.

Brian Pitre

Dockside has increased in size each year and becomes progressively more profitable. In July 1998, Smartdog.org, the local high-tech recruitment Web site developed by Dockside, was named one of the world's top fifty Internet sites in the second annual CIO Web Business magazine's prestigious 50/50 Awards. Later, in December of that year, Dockside won the Rochester Business Journal's "Best of the Web 1998" Award for the Smartdog Web site. In May of 1999, Dockside was sited by Advertising Age magazine as a case study for online catalogs, recognizing the Transcat Internet Catalog developed by Dockside.

In the fall of 2001 Dockside launched a new Application Service Provider application known as "SMART Internet Marketing" a complete suite of eMarketing tools that includes eMail Newsletters, Surveys, Sweepstakes, and Link Tracker. (www.smartinternetmarketng.com)

Since 1998, Brian has written a monthly column as "The Business Advisor" for Computer Link Magazine (www.computerlinkmag.com), a Rochester publication.

Brian is a 30-year veteran of the computer and information technology industry with solid accomplishments in a variety of high tech marketing and management positions with computer companies such as Data General, Prime, and Wang. He has also held senior management positions as National Sales Manager for Scientific Calculations, a CAD/CAM company, and Vice President Sales and Marketing for Microlytics/Selectronics a Xerox venture company.

Nelson Rivera

Nelson Rivera,
Chief Information Officer
Director of Information Services
County of Monroe, NY

From 1995 to 2003, Mr. Rivera was a project engineer for Xerox Corporation's Supplies Delivery Unit primarily working in machine vision & imaging systems design, development, implementation and management.  He was hired as Chief Information Officer and Director of the Department of Information Services of Monroe County by County Executive Maggie Brooks in January 2004.  His responsibilities include the development of information management strategies and policies, as well as the design, implementation and support of computer based technology solutions throughout Monroe County government.  Mr. Rivera is also responsible for business analysis of current and proposed systems and applications, hardware and software architectures, cyber security, voice and data communications, budget preparation and personnel management.

Mr. Rivera was born and raised in Rochester, New York and graduated from Northstar Christian Academy.  He attended Clarkson University where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering, and then went on to attain a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology.  

Mr. Rivera resides in Greece, NY with his wife Sarah and two children, daughter Isabelle (5 yrs old) and son Noah (2 yrs old).

 James has managed various training programs in the private sector, including Xerox and Delphi (formerly Rochester Products). He has directed an alternative school for young adults, supervised programs at a detention center and was president of a local not-for-profit agency. He has also held human resource management positions at General Motors and Xerox.

 James has B.S. (Political Science) and M.P.A. degrees from the State University of New York at Brockport. James serves on the Rochester/Monroe County Workforce Investment Board (WIB), Monroe County School-Business Partnership, Rochester Institute of Technology International Advisory for Multi-Disciplinary Studies and several Rochester City School District advisory committees.

 James has devoted his career to improving the human potential of both adults and youth who are beginning their career journeys.