The Redzone Leadership Team

Richard is a founding member of Redzone. Following Redzone’s acquisition by QAD Inc., a Thoma Bravo portfolio company, Richard assumed the role of President, and is currently Founding Member & Operating Advisor. He is responsible for the continued growth of the Redzone Community, the Redzone teams, and the company culture that enables the remarkable productivity results that Redzone is known for.

Richard’s entire career has been dedicated to helping manufacturers unlock the human potential of the frontline workforce, utilizing technologies and behavioral coaching to capitalize on this enormous multi-billion-dollar opportunity. For nearly 20 years, Richard’s focus on this sector has taken him through 1,300+ CPG manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe, partnering with owners and executives in some of the world’s foremost manufacturers. This real-world experience provides Richard with a rich contextual understanding of the market, the technology landscape and solutions required to accelerate Redzone’s position as the leader in the space.

Prior to his current role and previous role of CEO, Richard led the commercial team at Redzone as Chief Revenue Officer, building an innovative go-to-market team from scratch that has resulted in continuous customer growth, almost zero customer churn, off-the-chart customer advocacy and a high-performance culture dedicated to helping customers improve. Richard led the unique, viral go-to-market strategy that grew the company from zero customers in 2013 to the market leader it is today.

Prior to Redzone, in 2004, Richard relocated from the UK to Miami, FL, to launch MVI Technology in the North American market. Leading a successful period of growth and expansion in the market for MVI, Richard was part of the leadership team that sold MVI to CDC Software (NASDAQ). Following a number of years integrating MVI into CDC Software, Richard returned to his entrepreneurial roots, joining Mark and Jon to launch the Redzone business. Richard holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Science from the University of Birmingham, UK, and is the proud father of three young children.

Jon’s 25 year career in manufacturing has always been rooted in teamwork and continuous improvement.  Having graduated with an engineering degree he led frontline teams supplying Toyota and Tier 1 automotive across the UK. This early leadership led to a foundational understanding of how teams can make or break performance in manufacturing settings. As a supplier to Toyota he was immersed in the method and application of the Toyota Production System which set him on a lifelong path of continuous improvement & ultimately the support of frontline workers.

His move into technology came about when he joined MVI Technology and, before long, was asked to join the new North American Leadership Team to launch MVI’s US business. Following a period of rapid growth, and the subsequent sale to CDC Software, he led the integration of MVI Technology products into the CDC suite of solutions; holding the position of VP of Professional Services.  In this role he was part of the acquisition and integration team for Activplant expanding the CDC footprint into automotive and discrete manufacturing.  In 2011, his passion for continuous improvement led him back to consulting where he founded Ignite Solutions LLC. At Ignite he leveraged his manufacturing experience to develop a unique model to deliver rapid ROI continuous improvement consulting services.

Jon then joined Redzone as a founding member; seeing a unique opportunity for him and his team to integrate the CI methods he had pioneered at Ignite with the embryonic Redzone technology to change the industry for the better. Technology cannot solve business problems on its own, it requires the teamwork and collaboration of the frontline, who and when presented with variations or the unexpected, should have the ability to make decisions in real time without leadership intervention. As COO at Redzone, Jon created a technology product that fosters those adaptive teams.  By using social collaboration connected to real time plant data, everyday problems are solved and plant performance accelerates. Leading the software engineering at Redzone, Jon’s engineering teams have built a product that is now used by 100,000’s of frontline workers every day.

Jon is now Founding Member & Operating Advisor. Based in Florida, Jon is a certified engineer with a B.Eng. Manufacturing Engineering and Business Studies degree from The University of Warwick, England.

In his position as Senior Vice President, Lawrence leads Redzone’s global sales team. With over 20 years in the technology sector, he combines his hands-on experience in manufacturing operations and continuous improvement to support leaders of manufacturing companies, big and small, across all sectors in achieving their strategic goals of growth, productivity, and culture change. Lawrence’s team of subject matter expert sales professionals guide companies through their Redzone evaluation and are dedicated to helping organizations engage and develop their frontline workforce.

Lawrence was a founding member of the Redzone leadership team in 2013, helping the company grow year on year. Prior to Redzone, Lawrence was Program Director at Ignite Solutions, spearheading change management and lean manufacturing initiatives for food and beverage processors. He held various sales and project management roles with CDC Corp from 2006-2011 and started his career as a Consultant at Management Performance Limited, a UK-based boutique Continuous Improvement Consultancy.

Lawrence holds a Bachelors degree in Business & Operations Management from Bournemouth University, England.

Zack is responsible for the entire customer experience at QAD Redzone, including the coaching, implementation and support — but most importantly, the results. His team has a mission to be people-focused above anything else.

Having joined QAD Redzone via Ignite Solutions, Zack was part of the early Redzone team, focusing on building out the coaching organization and providing clear, sustainable, bottom-line results to each Redzone customer. He and his team strive for a culture of excellence by leveraging a customer-first and “white-gloved” approach, whether the task is supporting a technical challenge, coaching operators to win the day, validating software workflows, steering plant leaders to be data-driven, or celebrating shop floor results at a town hall supported by executive leadership.

Prior to QAD Redzone, Zack was Vice President of Operations for Ignite Solutions from 2011-2013, where he embraced a new love for the Food & Beverage industry through developing and deploying CI and lean manufacturing principles. From 2008-2011, Zack expanded his operations leadership skills with the frontline by working with Lockheed Martin in production operations, assembling the C-130 as well as subcomponents for the GMLRS, Arrowhead and Hellfire systems. He is forever grateful for those teams, their patience and collaboration, and the teamwork they shared. Earlier in his career he worked for Porsche Cars North America and Ford Motor Company. Zack holds both a bachelors and masters in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Ken leads both product management and solutions consulting for Redzone. As SVP Product, Marketing, and Solutions, his team delivers enhancements to current products while researching and designing the ‘next big thing’ to drive factory productivity increases. The Redzone solutions consultant team helps factories envision and design their digital production system to meet the operational goals for productivity, compliance, maintenance and culture.  Ken’s leadership brings out the deep understanding his team has for the challenges in the industry and expertly map solutions to the need of every plant in the Redzone community.

Ken joined Redzone in 2016 as a Continuous Improvement Coach, implementing Redzone in food processing facilities across North America. He transitioned to solutions consulting to bring his continuous improvement experience to bear to make frontline teams’ jobs easier and provide them with the knowledge and skills to improve safety, quality, and productivity on every shift.

Ken’s professional career has been dedicated to recognizing the importance of frontline workers across America and how their contributions win the day for manufacturers. During his 20 years prior to Redzone, he held roles in manufacturing operations leadership and lean transformation. He was a content contributor and instructor for Villanova University’s Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt and Lean Belt certification programs.

Ken holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of South Florida and an M.B.A. from the University of Florida.

Ron is both a strategic and hands on technology leader with 20+ years of Engineering, DevOps, Operations and Sales experience possessing a B.A in International Business with a minor in Computer Science as well as a Master of International Business from Saint Louis University.

Prior to QAD Redzone, Ron was early-on at several start-ups including IntraISP, a SaaS based billing platform for telecommunications companies, where he held leadership roles in software engineering and cloud operations. At IntraISP, Ron helped engineer and scale their SaaS based platform processing over 85 million in monthly credit card transactions and servicing over 2.5 million customers globally. After being sold to Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX), a world leader in telecommunications billing platforms, Ron continued serving as Director of Operations. Later, moving to Silicon Valley, Ron worked for Onlive, a cloud-based gaming provider as the Senior Director of Solutions Engineering where he led Sales Engineering assisting in the eventual sale to Sony (NYSE: SONY) in 2015.

Ron joined QAD Redzone’s senior leadership team in 2021 leading Product Engineering. As Senior Vice President of Product Engineering, Ron brings his passion for customers, technology, and culture to the product our customers have grown to know and love. If Ron could be summed up, he is curious and entrepreneurial at heart finding passion in building and iterating teams, technology, and products.

As Vice President of Sales, Global Accounts, Brad oversees the Large Enterprise Global Sales team who work with QAD Redzone’s largest and most strategic accounts across the globe. Brad’s team of subject matter expert sales professionals guide companies through their QAD Redzone evaluation and are dedicated to helping the world’s largest organizations engage and develop their frontline workforce.

Prior to joining QAD Redzone, Brad held several technology sales leadership roles, managing complex, enterprise-wide, high-value contracts across numerous organizations and markets.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Colorado State University. He resides in the DFW area and is a proud father of two beautiful daughters.

As Vice President of Sales, National Accounts, William leads the Large Enterprise National Sales team who work with QAD Redzone’s national and multi-national accounts. William’s team of trusted sales professionals and manufacturing industry experts work closely with companies to successfully evaluate and deploy QAD Redzone to ensure increased productivity and employee engagement across their organizations.

Prior to joining QAD Redzone, William held several executive and sales leadership roles in the Healthcare, Application Development, and Sales Enablement technology industries. 

William holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Marketing from Clemson University. 

As VP Accounting, Americas, Zaida joined QAD Redzone in 2020 and leads finance and accounting initiatives. She brings over 25 years of experience working at both privately held and publicly traded companies. She has specialized in helping disruptive, technology-based organizations with all aspects of finance and accounting as well as change management and process improvement. Her career has focused on innovative, growth-oriented software companies in various industries (healthcare, education, telecommunications, and transportation).

During her tenure as VP of Accounting & Corporate Controller at Modernizing Medicine, she led the accounting team through the transition from growth-stage to mature operations. While scaling financial operations in a hyper-growth SaaS environment, she was involved in mergers and acquisitions as well as multiple investment funding rounds with various PE firms.

Zaida started her career in Audit Assurance at Deloitte. She is an active, certified public accountant and holds a Master’s of Accounting from the University of Florida.

As Vice President of Sales, Medium Enterprise, Osvaldo leads a team of trusted sales professionals that span North America, LATAM, and the EMEA regions, guiding community members through their QAD Redzone evaluation, and ultimately impacting their frontline workforce.

With over a decade of experience in the technology sector, he combines his computer programming background with hands-on manufacturing and continuous improvement experience to support manufacturers through digital transformations, culture change, and outsized productivity uplifts.

Osvaldo joined QAD Redzone in 2019 as an Account Executive, where he guided companies through the Redzone evaluation. Prior to QAD Redzone, Osvaldo held a sales leadership role at Keyence Corp, focusing on optimizing manufacturing processes through the implementation of automation, safety, and sensing instrumentation.

Osvaldo holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Computer Information Systems from the University of Central Missouri.

Erik is a dynamic leader spearheading the security initiatives at QAD Redzone, where he’s been pivotal in establishing a robust and advanced enterprise-grade security program. His rapid and strategic development of this program showcases his expertise and underscores his role as Deputy CISO overseeing global security across QAD.

Starting his journey at Redzone as a Field Engineer, Erik demonstrated exceptional skills in enhancing application support and implementation with his deep understanding of integration, automation, infrastructure and networking. His career trajectory saw him excel as a Platform Team Lead and then as Operations Director, where he set new benchmarks in efficiency and effectiveness.

In 2019, Erik took a leap in fortifying Redzone’s security landscape. He introduced new partners and a skilled team that resulted in a SOC 2 Type II certification for QAD Redzone. He matured the security program with formal goverance and risk policies, company-wide training initiatives, bug bounty programs, and cutting-edge tooling.

Before joining QAD Redzone, Erik had a career spanning over a decade in the automation and systems integration sector, primarily focusing on Food and Beverage manufacturers. His standout achievements included developing a product that simplified food processing using the ISA-88 standard. This feat not only won his company the Integrator of the Year award but also earned them two SCADA design awards.

Erik’s journey is marked by relentless innovation, a deep commitment to security, and a knack for transforming challenges into opportunities, making him a cornerstone in QAD Redzone’s continuous evolution towards security excellence.

As Vice President of Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) at QAD Redzone, Drew is responsible for internal and external reporting, forecasting, and strategic planning focusing on scalable growth.

Drew brings with him over a decade of expertise in the financial technology sector. Prior to QAD Redzone, Drew’s primary focus was with private equity firms, fund administrators and family offices within the alternative investment solutions space. 

Drew holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Miami, Herbert Business School and a Bachelor of Business Administration from Elon University, Martha & Spencer Love School of Business.

As VP of People for Redzone, Margo leads the Human Resources team and is responsible for driving and maintaining an exceptional employee experience.

Prior to joining Redzone, Margo spent nearly a decade in the aviation industry and also worked for several high-growth tech start-ups across financial and consumer technology. Throughout her career, she has been focused on values-driven cultures and empowering frontline teams.

Margo holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in social-organizational psychology from Columbia University. 

Eric has overall responsibility for the deployment of the Redzone Production System modules for all Medium-Enterprise customers.

With over 32 years of experience in the Food & Beverage industry, Eric has held a variety of operational leadership roles that have included Engineering, Maintenance, Production and Continuous Improvement responsibilities.  Over that period of time, Eric has been involved with plant startups, led new product launches and overseen major capital projects.  Eric started his career with PepsiCo Foods and spent 18 years at various Quaker Oats and Frito-Lay facilities around the country before taking on site leadership responsibilities with several Food Ingredient companies in the Chicagoland area, which is where he currently resides. 

Eric earned his undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and an MBA from William Woods University.

As the VP of Solutions, Jon leads the talented Solutions team at QAD Redzone. This group of former plant leaders and continuous improvement (CI) professionals across a wide variety of industries, helps factories envision, design, and successfully implement QAD Redzone and their digital factory to meet the operational goals for productivity, compliance, maintenance, and culture.

Jon joined QAD Redzone in 2019 as a CI coach prior to moving into the Solutions organization shortly thereafter. Prior to Redzone, Jon has spent the majority of his time in leadership functions ranging from shift leader to plant management in the Tier 1 auto world as well as a nuclear power generation station. Early in his career, he was introduced to the Toyota Production System, where he became enamored with short interval measurements, huddles, and believing the operator was the source of solutions if only they were asked their opinion. This started his journey along the Lean Transformation path that is consistent with his entire team.

Jon holds a Bachelors Degree in Biotechnology from Brock University, as well as Organization Leadership and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt from University of Western Ontario. Outside of work, Jon’s passion is to continuously work on his golf game to one day achieve scratch golf handicap.

Michael leads the QAD Redzone Customer Experience team which consists of Customer Success Coaching, Enterprise Success Partners, and the Application Support Team. In addition, Michael oversees the release management process. Under his leadership, his team’s primary goal is to ensure continued success throughout a customer’s entire Redzone journey.

Since joining QAD Redzone in 2018, Michael has worked with customers to guide how they utilize Redzone to improve communication, collaboration, and problem solving within their organizations in order to meet operational and business objectives.

Before joining QAD Redzone, Michael spent over 11 years working in operations and engineering in various roles with Fortune 500 companies in a number of industries, including consumer packaged goods and food and beverage.

Michael holds a Master of Science in Supply Chain Analytics as well as a Bachelor of Science in Economics, both from Oregon State University.

As Senior Legal Counsel for QAD Redzone, Mario leads the Legal Department and brings over 20 years of experience to the role. He is a versatile attorney with extensive law firm and in-house experience. Mario is an experienced negotiator across a wide variety of contracts and skilled at assessing legal risk while implementing practical business solutions. He has worked extensively in both the software industry and the food and beverage industry.

Mario has an undergraduate degree in Government from Cornell University, after which he worked as an accountant for a global bank while studying for an MBA in Finance and Accounting. He earned his final credits for the MBA while also pursuing a law degree, both at New York University, completing both degrees within one year of each other. Mario is a member of the bar associations of both New York and Texas.

Mark leads coaching operations for global customers, which includes implementation and coaching of QAD Redzone, alignment with leadership on organizational goals, and digital enablement of management operating systems and continuous improvement programs deployed across global networks.

Since joining QAD Redzone in 2017, Mark has worked with customers to guide how they utilize Redzone to improve communication, collaboration, and problem solving within their organizations to achieve operational and business objectives.

Prior to joining QAD Redzone, Mark spent over 15 years working in operations, continuous improvement, finance, and quality assurance, with Fortune 500 companies in automotive, medical device, consumer packaged goods, and food and beverage industries.

Mark holds an Executive MBA from Benedictine College and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Northern Iowa.