Board Members

Rob Patten is co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Northridge. Mr. Patten is responsible for working with the Northridge leadership team to bring high-value collaboration services and solutions to Northridge clients. After co-founding Northridge in 1999, Mr. Patten led the effort to further fund the company and successfully raised angel financing as well as convertible debt. Mr. Patten has been integral in driving industry-leading Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) at Northridge and the company continues to build on its leadership position as the premier collaboration consulting firm in the United States.

In 2008, Mr. Patten was ranked #6 in Catalyst Magazine's Top 25 Atlanta Entrepreneurs listing. Under his leadership, Northridge has been honored with a Pacesetter Award for being in the top 50 fastest-growing private companies in Atlanta and was ranked 86th in the Inc 500 National I.T. Services Index. Rob is on the Board of Directors at Goodwill of North Georgia and is a past Advisory Board member of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.

Prior to co-founding Northridge, Mr. Patten held key positions with American Card Technology, MCI Telecommunications, and Wang Laboratories. Mr. Patten's professional background includes a strong mix of business management, strategic consulting, and technology development. Rob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.

Jeremey Zela is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Northridge. Mr. Zela focuses his attention on consulting delivery, operational efficiency, solution methodology, and related best practices. Jeremey is focused on delivering high-quality solutions for clients with maximum levels of productivity and efficiency in order to yield strong profitability for Northridge.

Mr. Zela has provided leadership for Northridge in both technology and operational disciplines over his 12 year tenure. As COO, Mr. Zela was instrumental in the creation of the company's True North Methodology which is the delivery methodology leveraged for all Northridge engagements.

In his former role as Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Zela led the development of the firm's robust Microsoft.NET class library, designed and built the LIQUID Digital Marketing Platform, and deployed development processes and tools leveraging Microsoft Team Foundation Server.

Mr. Zela has over seventeen years of professional technology experience including consulting, technical architecture, systems engineering, and software engineering. Prior to Northridge, Jeremey has held senior technology roles with several leading firms including IBM, MCI Telecommunications, and Wang Laboratories.

Mr. Hallett is a seasoned operator of and advisor to technology growth companies. He is currently the Executive Chairman of Cloud Sherpas, a leading global cloud services provider. He previously served as a Company Director, Advisor and Interim Executive Vice President for mindSHIFT Technologies (recently acquired by Best Buy), a leading provider of utility-based IT infrastructure services. In that role, Mr. Hallett helped raise two rounds of venture capital, was instrumental in recruiting a long-term CEO, and spearheaded three accretive competitor acquisitions.

Previously, he was Division President of AppNet, Inc., a publicly traded technology services company that was acquired in 2000 by CommerceOne (NASDAQ: CMRC) in a two billion dollar transaction. Prior to that, Mr. Hallett was a founder and the CEO of NMP, Inc., a business consulting and IT services provider that demonstrated industry leading metrics for revenue growth and profitability. Prior to founding NMP, Inc, Mr. Hallett was a senior consultant with Andersen Consulting. Mr. Hallett holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University.

At Northridge, Mr. Hallett works closely with senior management to improve efficiency and innovation across all business functions.

Matt Newton is presently the Vice Chairman for Tristar Investors, Inc. where he heads strategic development and the M&A activities for the premier ground lease aggregator in the U.S. cell tower industry. In 2005, Matt was a founding investor in Tristar.

Prior to joining Tristar in 2010, Matt was a Partner with Columbia Capital, a venture capital firm based in Alexandria, Virginia. During his nearly 15 years with Columbia Capital, Matt helped grow the business from a small partnership with less than $100 million in assets under management, to a global leader in telecommunications investing with nearly $3 billion under management. Matt led numerous successful investments on behalf of Columbia in the emerging areas of IT outsourcing, web hosting, cloud computing, and mobile communications. Among his successes were formative-stage investments in Adjoined Consulting, Affinity Internet, Mindshift Technologies, and WCS Wireless. In addition, Matt created and led the firm’s wireless infrastructure practice which included notable investments in Optasite, Extenet Systems, and Tristar Investors.

Matt is presently an investor and Director of several emerging Internet-based ventures and has been involved with Northridge since 2007. Matt presently resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Michael Kardash is the founder and CEO of Integral Business Counsel. Mr. Kardash has extensive experience as both an attorney and entrepreneur. Throughout his career as a law firm attorney and in-house counsel, Mr. Kardash has represented both public and private companies and their investors on a wide variety of matters including mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt financings, business entity selection and formation, customer and vendor contracts, employment matters, regulatory compliance, corporate governance, litigation management and other general corporate matters.

Prior to starting IBC, Mr. Kardash co-founded a start-up entity that eventually became Westec Intelligent Surveillance, Inc., the national leader in remote monitoring of video surveillance systems. From the company’s inception, Mr. Kardash was a member of its senior management team and a trusted Board advisor. As EVP, General Counsel and Secretary, Mr. Kardash personally performed due diligence, negotiated, documented and closed five acquisitions that were key to Westec’s aggressive growth strategy. He also negotiated and closed more than $100 million in complex equity and bank financings required to fund acquisitions and operations.

Before co-founding Westec in 2003, Mr. Kardash was Vice President, Legal, for TeleCorp PCS, Inc., a publicly traded wireless communications company with more than 1 million subscribers and $1 billion in annual revenue. He was a key member of TeleCorp’s senior management team, negotiating and closing several multi-billion dollar acquisitions and related financing transactions, culminating with the sale of TeleCorp to AT&T Wireless for $5.7 billion in 2002. Mr. Kardash also managed a staff of 6 in-house legal personnel in the performance of day-to-day legal functions for TeleCorp.

Prior to joining TeleCorp in 2001, Mr. Kardash spent five years in private practice, most recently with Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky & Popeo, P.C., an Am Law 100 firm. Mr. Kardash’s private practice was well timed with the transactional surge of the dot-com and telecom booms. He represented a host of technology and telecom clients ranging from start-up companies to multi-billion dollar public companies in a large number of transactions including acquisitions, equity and debt financings, entity formation, contract negotiations, regulatory matters and a variety of general corporate matters.

Mr. Kardash graduated cum laude from the University of South Carolina with a degree in International Studies and Business Administration, and from the UNC School of Law at Chapel Hill. Mr. Kardash is a member of the District of Columbia Bar and the State Bar of Tennessee.

Cliff Chapman is a professional investor, entrepreneur and business executive. Cliff co-founded Syncarpha Management LLC in January 2009 to capitalize on the tremendous investment opportunities in the alternative energy sector. Previously, he was head of investment banking for Broadband Capital, a boutique investment bank. He directed all aspects of deal sourcing, banking, structuring and due diligence for transactions, raising in excess of $1,000,000,000 over three years.

Prior to that, Mr. Chapman was CEO of mindSHIFT Technologies, a managed services provider focused on IT outsourcing for SMEs. He led a turnaround during which the company completed two capital raises and three acquisitions—and became one of the leading players in the utility computing business with a $120,000,000+ revenue run-rate.  mindSHIFT was acquired by Best Buy in late 2011 for $167 million.

From 1998 to 2000, Mr. Chapman was senior executive for AppNet, a publicly traded internet professional services company, where he led the integration of 12 acquired companies. Before that, he was COO of NMP, an internet business consulting company that he co-founded and sold to AppNet. Mr. Chapman grew NMP from a staff of five to more than 200 over the five year period that saw revenues increase from $100,000 to over $30,000,000.

He also worked at Booz Allen & Hamilton and Andersen Consulting. He received an MBA with Honors from Columbia Business School and a BS in Computer Engineering from Lehigh University.

Brian McGowan is a serial entrepreneur who has founded, co-founded, or managed over a dozen ventures. He is currently managing partner at Greycliff Advisors where he invests in and counsels companies in software, financial services, real estate, greentech, mobile, and new media. An experienced leader, he has delivered enduring improvement to core industry processes by developing systems for driving new business opportunities, improving revenues, and increasing profitability.

Prior to forming Greycliff in 2008, McGowan was CEO of Peracon, an institutional real estate asset trading platform. Under his leadership, the company facilitated over $300 billion (USD) in aggregate investment transactions totaling over 50% of all institutional-grade property sales each year in the United States. Earlier in his career, he was a commercial real estate broker in Washington DC, specializing in property leasing and investment sales. During that time, he provided transaction advisory services to over 5 million square feet of commercial property throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. In addition, McGowan has been CEO or partner in a series of professional services and information technology companies.