The BrightZone^sm Management Team

Charlie Guy

Executive Director & Founder

Personal Education

B.A., Sociology, Duke University

M.Ed., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Classroom Teaching Experience: 1st Grade

Public Sector Volunteer Experience in Tampa, FL

Past President of HARC Housing, Inc. (Housing opportunities for the retarded.)

Partner of the Learning Lab Student Incentive Project for the Florida Aquarium

Past Chairman of the Board of the Lee Davis Neighborhood Development Corp. (Tampa's first inner city economic development corporation.)

Alternative Vice Chairman, Tampa Enterprise Community-Based Partnership (An inner city community based group that developed and was awarded a Federal Enterprise Zone designation for the City of Tampa.)

Private Sector Experience: traditional business

Prior to becoming involved in e-commerce, Charlie was involved in the financial services and employee benefits industry not only at the national level working in the home office of a large national insurance company, but also in local and regional level firms. Charlie specialized in developing and managing both national and regional marketing systems utilizing affinity group strategies integrated with non-profit organizations including professional and trade associations for the delivery of products and services.

Private Sector Experience: e-commerce business

Charlie was recruited by Acquisition Ventures, Inc., an incubator of venture-backed technology companies to serve as CEO in managing the development of an Internet start-up firm. AVC's founder was one of the founders of Inktomi one of 1998's largest IPO technology issues. Charlie developed the business plan, identified acquisitions, negotiated with potential Internet content providers and partners, and recruited management personnel for an employee-leasing firm (Professional Employee Organization) that was to formally partner with a subsidiary of Zurich Financial Services Group.

At the close of this assignment, Charlie began to then focus his management efforts in the digital learning technologies sector. As the Florida Regional Manager for one of country s first 1.1.e-Learning firms (NetSchools, Inc., later acquired by Plato Learning, Inc.), the following were some of his key contributions:

Played key role in the establishment by the state legislature of the Florida's Digital Divide Council via his and the company's support of the bill's originator, a democrat member in a Republican controlled house.

Identified for the company an opportunity that led to a $1,000,000 investment by Enterasys Networks in NetSchools, Inc.

Assisted an existing school client in securing a $250,000 Bell South Foundation grant by convincing Hewlett Packard to become a grant partner through a donation of 50 HP iPaqs. This client then used a portion of these funds to purchase $150,000 of HP student laptops

Positioned the company to deploy and test its software solution as a participant in a Florida Learning Alliance pilot project (a 33 rural school district group).

As a result of Charlie's political activities in a partnership he created with Sun Microsystems and Apple Computer to motivate the Florida State Department of Education to establish a state sponsored enterprise education portal, another emerging education technology firm recruited Charlie to function in a consulting role as the acting president. His duties included redefining the business model for this California based publicly traded company that had developed with its technology partner, SAIC, (www.saic.com), one of the country's first XML based Learning Content Management System (LCMS) designed specifically for the K-20 education market. Charlie conducted with the SAIC technology staff an assessment of all the firm's technologies and prepared the future development plan for the key components.

Charlie positioned the company's LCMS in presentations to various state departments of education and other large communities of learners for its deployment as a virtual book depository for storing and delivering digital learning resources (eContent). Key technology partnerships were to be established in a number of best-use case pilot programs with key educational institutions and organizations. He was then appointed Chief Executive Officer and to the Board of Directors in order to immediately develop and implement a strategy to re-capitalize the company and establish the financial stability required to convert the company to an operating format.

Charlie's activities also included working with industry leadership groups in developing a standardized approach for the XML tagging of educational digital learning resources (eContent) in order to create a national system of interoperability. These activities were focused upon the integration of this digital learning resources system with the immerging school improvement and assessment systems as they relate to empowering schools systems to meet their No Child Left Behind responsibilities and obligations.

When this firm failed to secure its next round of funding resulting in its demise, Charlie then initiated the creation of the BrightZone Institute, Inc.