Management Directors and Advisory Board

Mr. Daniel Bland - CEO & Director

Mr. Bland is a seasoned entrepreneur who has firmly established himself as a 'hands-on' developer of premier and unique technologies.   Over the last thirty years he has been ahead of the technology curve by locating state-of-the-art technology, incubating it, developing it, housing it and commercializing it.  Through that process he has mastered the small cap market techniques which have allowed him to raise over $100,000,000 for his various ventures in both domestic and international venues.  His development and financing activities over the years have allowed him to build a network of like minded companies and individuals across the globe from Monaco to Moscow, from Vancouver to Bangalore.  His success in large part is due to his persistence and focus.  One project at a time, he totally immerses himself as an entrepreneurial CEO in the startup stage while selecting a management team to take the technology, the product and the company to the next level.  The skill set that he has developed over the life of his career is now being fully utilized through the creation of 5BARz International and its leading edge products within the most vibrant technology sector in modern times: the Wireless Industry.

Dr. Gil Amelio - Advisor

Dr. Gil Amelio, a senior industry executive, venture capitalist and a member of the Board of Directors of AT&T, has joined the Advisory Board of 5BARz International Inc., effective March 1, 2012.

Dr. Amelio's iconic career has transcended some of the most fundamental technology companies in the USA, including Chairman and CEO of Apple Computer and National Semiconductor in addition to senior executive positions with Rockwell International and Fairchild Semiconductor. He launched his career as a member of the technical staff at Bell Labs' legendary Murray Hill, NJ campus. Dr. Amelio received a bachelor's degree, master's degree, and Ph.D. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been awarded 16 patents and a seventeenth is pending. He is the co-author of three books, two of which were business best sellers.

Dr. Amelio has established a well-documented legacy of having identified and implemented key strategically important emerging technologies leading to significant increases in shareholder value at the companies he led. His broad base of experience, influence in the technology sector and insightful guidance to developing technology Companies is a significant asset to organizations with which he is or has been associated.

Mr. Marcelo Caputo - Advisor

Mr. Caputo is currently the CEO of Telefonica USA, Inc., the Telefonica Group's U.S. subsidiary based in Miami (FL). In addition to this role, Mr. Caputo is responsible for the Americas' arm of the Telefonica Multinational Solutions area which is focused on providing global telecommunications services to multinational corporations in the U.S. and Latin America.

Mr. Caputo's Professional Career developed as a systems engineer for Motorola Argentina in 1991 and he later joined Telefonica as an account manager in 1993; in the following years he propelled his career to Sales Manager, Sales Director, and Director of the Enterprise Communications Unit, where he integrated the new business unit to include Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Network Deployment, responsible for 80 percent of the company's income.

In 2002 he was promoted to Vice President, Global Customers Division, Telefonica International, in Madrid, Spain, with full sales and P&L responsibility in 20 countries, In his new position, he lead the Global Customers division for Telefonica Latin America, a segment he helped found, and substantially increased the number of clients in five years.

In 2007, Mr. Caputo joined Telefonica Mexico as Vice President, Enterprise Customers Division. In this position, he designed and built a new organization, processes, products, systems, and partners and launched a new convergent product portfolio.

Mr. George Lauro - Advisor

Mr. Lauro has 25 years of experience as a technology entrepreneur, operating executive, and venture capitalist. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of 17 public and private companies and has been Chairman of board-level Compensation, Budget and Audit Committees.

Mr. Lauro was Managing Director at Techfarm Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, and was a Wasserstein Perella Partner and head of West Coast VC operations. He led and syndicated 15 private equity financing rounds and LBO control deals. As a VC, he served as Interim CEO, raised over $100M equity financing for portfolio companies, and was involved in M&A transactions exceeding $1B in combined value. He was VP of Corporate Development at Acquicor , a publicly traded SPAC that acquired Jazz Semiconductor in 2007. At IBM, Mr. Lauro was Director of Rapid Commercialization and ran a team responsible for bringing advanced technology from IBM central research labs to market. He was Director of IBM's Wireless IC, Silicon Germanium (SiGe), and RF BICMOS Businesses. At Motorola, he conceived the world's first consumer handheld Global Positioning Product (Traxar GPS), invented new classes of RF transponders, and launched Motorola's businesses in these sectors. He began his career at MIT/Draper Laboratory designing inertial guidance systems for missiles and spacecraft. He led the development of spacecraft guidance systems at Astronautics Corporation. He attended Brown (BSEE), Wharton (MBA) and MIT (graduate studies in Aeronautical Engineering). He holds 23 patents in inertial guidance, avionics, wireless technologies, and GPS.

Mr. Finis Conner - Advisor

For his entire career Finis Conner has correctly identified and executed winning trends in the lightning fast technology industry.

Conner's experience in selling, designing and manufacturing hard disk drives played a major role in creating the multi-trillion dollar, global technology market that we know today. Mr. Conner has been pivotal in migrating computing from floor towers, desktops, laptops and now to your back pocket with smaller devices, higher capacity and lower costs.

Mr. Conner's career was launched when he co-founded Shugart Associates in 1973, where they produced and sold 8" floppy and hard (HDD) disc drives. The company was sold to Xerox Corporation in 1977.

Conner's never ending focus on "new market trends" and what "customers need" has served him well since then.

In 1979, Conner recognized the trend to smaller computers and conceived the original 5 1/4", 5MB Winchester disc drive which led to co-founding Seagate Technology. Many computer manufactures at the time didn't see the need for that much memory but Conner sought out and later sold Steve Job at Apple Computer, 95% of his first years production. Today Seagate is the largest drive company in the world with a $12 Billion market capitalization, 50,000 employees and shipping over 50,000,000 drives per quarter.

In 1986, Conner saw the eventual migration of computers to even smaller and smaller form factors and developed the 31/2" hard drive. There was little interest at Seagate to develop this drive at the time, so Mr. Conner set out to start yet another company.

Conner found an eager partner in Compaq Computer who invested $35,000,000 in the new Conner Peripherals and became the launch customer for the 3 1/2" Winchester Drive.

Conner Peripherals was an instant success and became the fastest-growing company in U.S. history with Conner leading the growth of the company to $1.4 billion in sales in only its 4th year and $2.7 billion in its 10th year, when he engineered the sale of the company to his former company and then rival, Seagate.

Mr. Conner had developed top management teams throughout his career in multiple disciplines including, sales, marketing, manufacturing and distribution. Under Conner, both Seagate and Conner Peripherals built World Class ISO 9001 high tech manufacturing facilities around the globe, including, California, Singapore, China, Vietnam, Ireland, Scotland and Italy.

Over his career, his companies were responsible for creating in excess of 160,000 high quality, high paying technology jobs.

Visionary student of market trends, and a leader in developing market beating companies with unmatched financial performance, Finis Conner has been an unparalleled leader in the Storage market and key player in the development of the worldwide computer market.

James Fraley - Vice President of Business Development

Mr. Fraley is an accomplished executive with more than twenty years experience in the technology sector.  He has extensive engineering experience designing and deploying wireless solutions in multi platform environments, and has spent many years in business development for major industry leaders such as Samsung Telecommunications America, SONY Wireless Telecommunications Company (WTC), Oki Telecommunications and Qualcomm.  His expertise includes mission critical projects, technical sales, strategic road maps and operations leadership at executive levels, as well as extensive experience internationally in key global markets, including Asia (China, Japan & Korea).  Mr. Fraley was a major contributor to the rapid commercialization of wireless and location based technology advancements, which included incorporating CDMA, GPS and WLAN into consumer electronics and enterprise solutions.  He launched the first Android based OS phone to pass Verizon ODI (Verizon Open Development Initiative) requirements. A founding member of the CDMA Certification Forum (Qualcomm), Mr. Fraley was pivotal in establishing standard practices and policies for CDMA wireless devices globally, and set forth global CDMA product commercialization guidelines.

Mr. Fraley earned a BS, Computer Science & Electrical Engineering from Lake Superior State University, MI. 

Orlando Cueter - Vice President

Mr. Cueter is an Industrial Engineer, and holds a Masters degree in Economics from Georgetown University. He has 20 years of business experience, starting with the United Nations in Santiago Chile – Industry Division. Since then Mr. Cueter has been involved in corporate finance for a diverse number of global businesses. He is a partner of ITC Invoice to Cash in Toronto and co-owner of Tre Angoli Winery out of Manila, Philippines.

Mark Geoghegan - Corporate Finance

Mark Geoghegan, through his wholly owned consulting companies, provides financial services, business development services, and the establishment of strategic partnerships for client companies. Through these activities Mr. Geoghegan has been instrumental in bringing more than $100 million dollars into those developing companies and has played a key role in the successful development of their business to become thriving enterprises. Mr. Geoghegan holds an honors bachelor of commerce degree and a bachelor of administration degree from the University of Ottawa. He commenced his career with Price Waterhouse, where he became a Chartered Accountant, and has worked with emerging companies for the past thirty years. Mr. Geoghegan is a detail-oriented businessman, who brings his discipline to client Companies, believing that a focus on detail is the secret to ensuring the success of promising emerging companies.

Jason Kumpf - Marketing Specialist

Mr. Kumpf is an entrepreneur holding a dual degree in accounting and finance Emory University, University of Florida and Deree College. The majority of his business career has been spent in the sales and marketing sectors. Jason worked directly with the CEO of a major telecom company, and helped them to plan and execute strategies to grow from a non profitable company to a major corporation with some 9 million customers and over $1 billion dollars in revenue.

Mabel Lage - Accounting and Finance

Ms. Lage is an electrical engineer, holds an MBA and is currently completing her CPA. Ms. Lage is experienced in attending to the financial reporting for publicly traded Companies, and is adept in the management of corporate administrative matters. Her background has been in the medical technology sector, focused on the Latin America marketplace.