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About Us
For close to 30 years, nearly 20 of them living in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Nat Yogachandra worked in marketing and management with Eastman Kodak Company headquartered in Rochester, New York. His extensive travels have taken him to countries around the world. They have given him intimate knowledge of customs and work ethics while providing him with strong cross-cultural management experiences in dealing with various cultures. Nat has lead cross-cultural project teams in many parts of the globe and has successfully built business and generated increases in market share and revenue. Nat is the President of Global Arts Group Limited; he founded and now serves as Chairman of Project Book Angels of Rochester, New York. He has published several articles and papers on brand management, marketing and social issues in publications in Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S. Nat is also the author of four books on Asian cultures and doing business with various cultural groups in Asia: The Dragon Arises; Mysticism, Money and Madness; The Return of the Dragon, and Beauty, Bureaucrats and Breaking the Silence. Nat has served as keynote speaker at many international conferences on Globalization Management Strategies in many countries around the world. Each year, he conducts several workshops and delivers lectures on cross-cultural business effectiveness to companies, colleges, institutes and private groups. Nat has been named a recipient of the Civic Award by the Greater Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce, for his work in advancing better international understanding and participation. He is also the recipient of the prestigious Kodak Burnham Award -- a lifetime achievement award given for excellence and innovation by Eastman Kodak Company. Nat is active with the Rotary International and is a Paul Harris Fellow. He is a participant of the Biracial Partnership Program, an initiative by the Mayor of Rochester, New York. Nat is also leading a program, entitled "Embracing the Difference," on behalf of the Fairport School District in New York. This program takes families of different ethnic backgrounds and pairs them off together for a year, giving them a chance -family to family- to learn about another culture.
Jerry Klos enjoyed a successful and diverse career for 33 years with the Eastman Kodak Company. He managed a broad array of international and domestic operations in the Consumer Business Unit. His postings included management positions in marketing, new product development, sales and product business management. Jerry has traveled extensively in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, managing cross-cultural teams and growing new business. He also, lived and worked in Europe for many years where he started up a new business for Kodak.His talents include:
He has been a speaker at several PDMA (Product Development Management Association) conferences; guest lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology and Niagara University's School of Business, and Strategic Round-table participant for the Advertising Council of Rochester.
Born in San Luis Obispo, California, Kathleen C. Francis received her BA in news-editorial journalism from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Kathy has many years of experience working for advertising agencies and public relations firms as a writer. During the past decade, she has worked with small and large corporations helping them with speechwriting, presentations and other writing assignments. She has edited corporate newsletters and marketing books.Kathy is a poet who, in workshops and readings, enjoys bringing her love of the written word to people of all ages. In the late 80s and early 90s, she co-owned a poetry publishing company that brought out three books and a poetry magazine featuring Rochester-area poets. KC, as she is known in poetry circles, frequently reads poems at local coffeehouses and poetry venues. Her poems have been published in regional literary and nature magazines. She recently co-authored a 104-page, hardcover, fine art book Music for the Eyes that offers insight into the creative process of photographer and poet.
With experience marketing in Asia, Europe and Latin America as well as the U.S and Canada, Rory Gumina has a proven ability to create and cultivate international markets and businesses. He holds a BS in Computational Mathematics and an MBA in Marketing. In his 25 years of marketing and general management assignments with Eastman Kodak Company, he dealt primarily with new, growth-oriented businesses. Rory has a talent for proactively identifying and resolving problems in launching products, developing markets and channels, creating partnerships, improving financial results, and starting and focusing businesses. He helps businesses concentrate on growing their revenue, building their brands, and expanding their product lines. His specific strengths include:
Ed Hoppe lived overseas for more than 20 years and traveled to more than 90 countries while rising to vice president of Eastman Kodak Company and vice chairman of its Greater Asia Region in 1999. He not only led Kodak efforts to reopen Eastern European markets after the fall of the Berlin Wall but he also helped negotiate contracts for Kodak's first two manufacturing plants in China. Other areas of expertise include India, Russia, the Middle East and Africa. Hoppe lived and worked in all of Kodak's international regions during 38 years with the company. He had direct responsibility for Kodak operations with sales in excess of one billion dollars. He worked extensively with distributors in various parts of the world and conducted significant negotiations with governmental leaders in several countries including the emerging nations of Asia. Currently he is chairman of the board of HPAL, previously called Hermes Precisa Pty. Ltd., headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Essentially a business process outsourcing company with sales of approximately US$120 million, HPAL is owned in part (51 percent) by Kodak. The public company is traded on the Australian Stock Exchange.
For 25 years, Dr. Zeigler has worked in most areas of product globalization. In his most recent assignment, he served as Sr. Director, Globalization, at Nortel where his group provided the infrastructure for, and managed the internationalization and localization of the Clarify CRM products. Prior to Nortel, Val was Manager of Globalisation at Xerox where he managed the Globalisation Engineering Operations Group that provided globalisation services to, and guided product development teams in the creation of products for, the worldwide market. He led the effort to define a Globalisation Coherence Technical Strategy for the corporation; he took part in the core team that developed the Globalisation Sub-Process, a product development process by which Xerox develops all its products. Prior to Xerox, he worked in various aspects of software internationalization as architect, research scientist, and trainer at Eastman Kodak Company. At Computer Consoles, he was a Sr. Systems Engineer working on various speech technologies and natural languages' processing capabilities. A long-time student of African-American languages and linguistics, Chinese language processing, sociolinguistics, and computational linguistics, Val received his M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Rochester and his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Buffalo. Though he has lived in Puerto Rico and in Ghana, West Africa, Val has spent most of his life in the greater Rochester, NY area. He has worked for years on the Executive Committee of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Greater Rochester Commission. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Institute of Ethical Leadership.
Ashfaq has more than 23 years of international experience in business planning, project management, new product development, and business development. His professional experience includes work at Eastman Kodak Company (USA), Enraf Nonius USA (Delft, the Netherlands), and Tata Iron & Steel Company (India). He has made extensive business trips overseas to Western European countries, the Middle East, Japan, South Africa, and India. At Eastman Kodak Company, Ashfaq led programs in commercialization effectiveness; software process improvement based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM); product internationalization and localization, and organizational excellence (including metrics for organizational success measures, divisional core competence development, customer satisfaction, and software tools development for product commercialization.) He brought a large and complex organization - four diverse product platforms and about 650 people - to CMM Level 2 maturity. Ashfaq is experienced in "Day-in-the-Life" based customer business process analyses and in applying the results for new business development. He also created a Voice of the Customer process for market- and customer-driven product development. A champion of internationalization and localization, Ashfaq launched several products in European and Middle Eastern countries. His passion for acquiring knowledge of various cultures and people coupled with his extensive travels give him firsthand experience in cross-cultural communications and achieving business effectiveness.
John is an expert in strategic business planning for new product development across various cultures. He lived many years in Japan where he successfully negotiated joint ventures and closed deals. He holds four patents, all associated with the photographic materials manufacturing process, from his years with Kodak Research Laboratories. As a manager, he had worldwide P&L responsibility for a business with $5 billion in sales.His key strengths include:
While working in Tokyo for Kodak, he helped manage a strategic alliance partnership with Japanese manufacturers and suppliers. His work focused on Kodak business in Japan and global relations with members of Japan's photo industry. He managed and restructured business in the face of declining market conditions. He established a joint venture sales company with Mitsubishi Paper Mills. He also managed global relationships with various Japanese industry participants including Noritsu, Fujifilm, Konica, Minolta, and Mitsubishi.
John's background includes annual research projects as a volunteer for Earthwatch in the rainforests of Costa Rica, documentation of Anasazi rock art in Utah, herbivore censusing in South Africa, and dendrological surveys of conifers in Mexico for the Museum of Natural Science in Budapest, Hungary. He has traveled extensively to 38 countries in his quest to experience different cultures.The award-winning designer and photographer started an advertising agency in upstate New York with a writer/friend in 1982. The agency grew to 70 people with a roster of blue-chip clients such as Xerox, Kodak, and Ray-Ban Sunglasses. Specializing in collateral material for regional business-to-business accounts, the agency realized capitalized billings of $28 million before John sold the business to his partner in 1992. Previously, he worked at a large creative printing firm, a boutique ad agency, and a commercial art studio, gaining experience in visual communications, photography, illustration, printing, packaging, display design, and pre-press production.Today, he works as a creative consultant, location photographer and designer. He has three exhibitions of his photography scheduled in Argentina during 2004. A coffee-table book featuring his photos of Nantucket sold 10,000 copies.
Vahe has more than 35 years of experience in managing, marketing and sales operations associated with retail and wholesale distribution in the Middle East. He also knows how to attract and retain government business. Born in the Middle East, Vahe has extensive experience living and working in Middle Eastern countries. In addition to knowledge of Arabic/Islamic and Middle Eastern markets, he has broadened his base to include global marketing. He has interacted with businesses in many regions of the world. He has worked closely with wholesale and retail distributors in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates in training and recruiting staff for their operations.Vahe conducted several workshops on management development, retail sales, and marketing programs for country managers and marketing staff in many countries of the Middle East. A veteran of Middle Eastern affairs, Vahe speaks fluent Arabic.
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 KEY- Zen International P.O. Box 261, Fairport, New York 14450, U.S.A. Phone: 1.585.385.4208, Fax: 1.585.385.4208 e-mail: info@KEYZenInternational.com Our Website: www.KEYZenInternational.com Site Design and Management by International Internet Consultants |
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NAT YOGACHANDRA
President. Member of the Board
JERRY KLOS
Chief Operating Officer and General Manager
Kathy Francis
Rory Gumina
Ed Hoppe
Dr. Val Ziegler
Dr. Ashfaq Syed
John Babbitt
John Buck
Vahe Zeitounsian