Board of Directors
Laird Q. Cagan
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Mr. Cagan has served as a director of the company since February 21, 2011. He is an investor in the company who has served as a director and officer of several publicly traded companies. He also has twenty years of experience in investing in and building high growth technology companies, as well as five years in the investment banking industry. He is a co-founder and Managing Director of Cagan McAfee Capital Partners, LLC (“CMCP”) a private investment firm and merchant bank he founded in 1990. During the 1990’s, he invested in and helped build fifteen high tech companies with over $500 million of equity capital invested in those companies. Since 2000, CMCP has founded, funded, and taken public ten companies in a variety of industries including energy, alternative energy, healthcare, information technologies, and environmental. CMCP portfolio companies have raised over $600 million of equity capital, and over $2 billion of capital has been invested in those companies or their projects. Mr. Cagan previously worked for two of the largest investment banks in the world, Goldman, Sachs & Co., and Drexel Burnham Lambert. In all, he was involved in over thirty transactions valued at more than $15 billion, bankruptcy work-out transactions of more than $2 billion, and a variety of equity, high-yield bond, and senior debt financings. Mr. Cagan was the founding Chairman of Evolution Petroleum Corporation (AMEX: EPM), a company he founded to develop mature oil and gas fields with advanced technologies. He is a director of Calpian, Inc. (CLPI.OB) and Career College Holding Co., Chairman of Global Carbon Group, and a former director of AE BioFuels, Inc., (AEBF.PK) and Camac Energy, Inc. (AMEX: CAK) Mr. Cagan is licensed with FINRA under Series 24, 7, and 63, and is currently a registered representative and Managing Director of Colorado Financial Services Corporation (“CSFC”), a FINRA-licensed Broker-Dealer. CFSC is not affiliated with CMCP.
Mr. Cagan attended M.I.T. and received a BS, MS and MBA from Stanford University. He is a graduate of the UCLA Director’s Training Program. He is the founding Chairman of the SF Bay chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization. He is a former member of the Stanford University Athletic Board and is a member of the Olympic Club, the oldest athletic club in America.
Johnny R. Thomas
Chief Executive Officer and President
Dr. Thomas has served as a director and officer of several publicly traded companies. He has founded and invested in several public offerings in the following sectors including, environmental, agriculture, biotechnology, energy and high technology. In spearheading a mergers and acquisition program, he grew the company from $29,000 in revenues to more than $350 million by acquiring 34 companies in approximately four years and increased the market valuation of the company to $1.2 billion. Dr. Thomas received the “Entrepreneur of the Year” award from Ernst & Young, LLP/NASDAQ in 1998 for the Southern Nevada/Riverside, California area. Dr. Thomas received a B.S. degree in Agronomy from New Mexico State University, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Genetics/Plant Breeding from Oregon State University.