NC SUSTAINABLE ENTREPRENEURS
R. Bradley Lienhart is a visionary executive with extensive expertise managing large corporate organizations and leading a number of emerging businesses from early stage concept through strategic planning, fund raising, organizational development, and product commercialization.
Brad is a effective communicator with significant international commercial management, business development and sales and marketing experience. Personal drivers include honesty, doing things right the first time, continuous improvement, matching accountability with responsibility, and teamwork motivation.
Bill Warner is the founder and Managing Partner of Paladin and Associates, a firm that helps executives create successful businesses by providing a broad array of executive services. He is also Chairman of the Triangle Accredited Capital Forum, an angel investor network that reaches throughout the southeast. Bill has more than thirty-eight years of experience in the computer industry, with the last twenty years as a CEO and general manager responsible for computer software and hardware businesses.
Bill most recently served as President and CEO of LiveWire Logic, a customer relationship management company in the service and support market. Previously, he was Executive Vice President of Products and Services at Dialogic, an Intel Company, and a $400M computer telephony company headquartered in
Elaine C. Rideout has 25 years of experience in conceiving new ideas and moving them from abstract R&D to concrete execution and routinization. She is a social entrepreneur who has created 2 public entities (including working from inception legislation to implementation of a new Federal Agency, The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board). Her public policy experience includes work in pollution credits, computerized ride-sharing for commuters, energy conservation, recycling, and sustainable rural economic development. She has initiated 5 nonprofits and supported the creation of dozens more. She is a business entrepreneur who has created three startups (with a fourth underway) and supported the development of many more.
Rideout has raised over $100 million in support of her nonprofit and business ventures. In addition to business skills that run the gamut from startup to sales to CEO/executive management, Rideout is a former journalist with hundreds of published credits. Her academic credentials include undergraduate and Masters degrees from The University of Michigan and scholarly expertise in entrepreneurship. Rideout is a graduate of the NCSU HiTEC entrepreneurship program and a Kauffman Fellow in Entrepreneurship. She is Ph.D. ABD at
Neal Hill is an experienced leader in sustainability issues (economic, environmental, and social) at the corporate management and governance levels. Possesses demonstrated expertise across all business functions. Excels at instilling sustainable business principles into the organizational culture. Characterized as "a leader who is passionate about organizational responsibilities to all stakeholders, including shareholder expectations, and, as a synthesizer/catalyst, who possess exceptional skills in putting the pieces together."
Hill has been CEO of six companies (one public, five private), guiding both turn-around and start-up organizations through merger or acquisition events. He has been on the Board of Directors of eight companies, holding chairman, president and treasurer positions. Admitted to WHO'S WHO ENVIRONMENTAL REGISTRY. His most recent business endeavor is the development of an organization with expertise in renewable energy and agricultural infrastructure development.
Joan Keston has twenty years of experience with mature as well as entrepreneurial companies, domestically and internationally, coupled with an executive managerial and legal background. Her sole focus in in international corporate development, with a strategic and operational focus in transactional and project development, and management. She has a deep understanding of the business culture and issues involved in doing business in developing countries. Joan is the Managing Principal at Keston and Associates, Ltd. and a Partner at Paladin and Associates, Inc.
Joan lived and worked in Europe and Latin America, was part owner of a Brazilian trade company, has worked in a business development capacity involving Europe, Latin America, North Africa and China. With a privately held finance compnay, Joan served in an entrepreneurial capacity in the U.S. and Europe, directing the marketing strategy, structuring and negotiating project financings and leveraged leasing transactions primarily in the computer and equipment industries, and was the lead attorney for the equipment acquisition portfolio of a large public railroad and in the transactions of the finance company mentioned above. Recently served as the Chief Legal Officer of a public software company where she was responsible for several acquisitions.
