Mark Montgomery is founder and CEO of Kyield. Mark has 30 years of business experience as an entrepreneur, business consultant and inventor. Mark operated a pioneering technology lab and incubator for ten years that specialized in knowledge systems, which resulted in two leading networks; one serving small business and another serving global thought leaders. He has since become deeply involved in many facets of organizational and enterprise architecture, software programming, and computing standards. In 2002 Mark founded Initium Venture Capital; an early stage venture firm that engaged in multi-disciplinary technology commercialization. Mark is the inventor of the Kyield system and holds the key AI patent that was issued by the USPTO on 8/23/2011. He can be reached at markm@kyield.com .
Former Advisory Board
Dr. Robert E. Neilson was until 2010 the Knowledge Management Advisor to the Army’s Chief Knowledge Officer and Chief Information Officer. His chief duties include crafting strategies and programs to fulfill the Army’s vision of transforming to a knowledge-based force. He is the primary author of the Army Knowledge Management Principles. Formerly, he was the Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO), department chair and a professor at the Information Resources Management College, National Defense University. He has taught and lectured both in the U.S. and internationally including the Argentine War College, NATO Defense College, Italian Institute for Defense Studies, and in Asia and Australia. He has been a consultant with Computer Associates, DigitalNet, BAE, and federal agencies regarding knowledge management (KM) and scenario planning and has been a featured speaker at CIO and KM conferences domestically and internationally.
He holds a B.A. degree in US Government from Norwich University, an MPA from the University of Georgia, and a doctorate in Public Administration from the University of Southern California. He holds an honorary degree from the Argentine War College and is a graduate of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National Defense University. His publications include books and articles including "Collaborative Technologies and Organizational Learning" (Idea Group Publishing) and "Sun Tzu and Information Warfare" (NDU Press). His latest article, "Narrating the Vision: Scenarios in Action" appeared as the cover story in Futurist magazine. Rob was named to the Federal 100 in 2010.
Franz Dill’s academic background is in astrophysics and mathematics, with degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Florida. He worked developing tank battle simulations in the 1970s for the Pentagon, where he won a Defense Department scholarship for information Technology. For thirty years he worked for the Procter & Gamble Company. At P&G he reported to the CIO as part of an information technology research organization which scouted and vetted emergent technology use. He won global awards in the application of modeling to enterprise supply chains.
He acted as a chief scientist for analytics and as a consulting emergent technologist. As part of the artificial intelligence team Franz delivered a number of high value applications in manufacturing, R&D and marketing. One of these applications was the first use of AI to interact directly with the package goods consumer and is still in use today. Another of his AI knowledge applications was in use for twenty years, saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars. He brought in the first application of agent-based simulation models for marketing.
He founded P&G’s groundbreaking contextual innovation centers, now with over sixteen global locations, working with nearly every major retailer worldwide and dozens of technology and systems vendors. There he managed and developed advanced retail technologies for merchandising.
Franz established the company’s Web 2.0 capabilities, writing the most widely read blog in the company. He designed and helped implement Procter’s early work in knowledge management. He was a member of Procter’s Cognitive Council, addressing non-conscious reactions to marketing and merchandising messages.
Franz retired in March of 2008 and is now a consultant in marketing, retail innovation, HR, knowledge management and other areas.He has worked with a number of startups and advanced technology companies.
Russell Borland has more than 17 years of experience in product development, technical writing and management in software with Microsoft where he was engaged with Word, Office, Exchange, and Outlook, among others. Since retiring from Microsoft in 1997, Dr. Borland has served as a partner with Mr. Montgomery in the incubator, and is a special limited partner with Initium Venture Capital. Russell received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington. He has authored over a dozen books on enterprise, productivity, and communications software.
Deborah McGuinness currently holds an endowed chair in the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She was formerly co-director and senior research scientist of the Knowledge Systems - Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (KSL) at Stanford University. She has been working in knowledge representation and reasoning environments for ontology creation and maintenance for over 20 years, including as AI researcher at Bell Labs and a consultant to General Motors, Vertical Net, Cisco, Cerebra (previously Network Inference), Sandpiper Software, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. She is the co-editor of the W3C Recommendation Ontology Markup Language (OWL) and co-author of the predecessor languages: the DARPA agent markup language (DAML+OIL), OIL, and CLASSIC. She leads the Stanford Explanation and Ontology Evolution Environment efforts. Deborah received her Ph.D. in Knowledge Representation from Rutgers University. She has published over 100 papers and has authored granted patents in knowledge based systems, ontology environments, configuration, and search technology.
Garrett Lindemann was the Life Science Analyst for Initium Venture Capital and a long-term consultant to pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies. Previously, Dr. Lindemann has managed and led research teams and performed technology assessment for the Chief Technology Office of Roche Diagnostics. Additionally, he was the Executive Vice President of Research and Development for a start-up Pharmaceutical Company with responsibility for molecule and drug development (pre-clinical and clinical) and patent portfolio management. Garrett received his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas).