Ilan Friedman

Executive Profile

Ilan is an entrepreneur who built a successful mechanism for bringing breakthrough innovation to market.  He primarily focuses on Israel as the source of innovative solutions in the areas of Life Sciences, Communications, Environmental Sustainability, and Software, and supports their entry into the North American market. 

Ilan was born in the United States, but raised in Israel.  He spent several years living and working in both environments, and has thus acquired a deep understanding of both cultures, and forms of business conduct.  He also speaks both American English and Hebrew with no accents.

While living in the United States, Ilan acquired two academic degrees, worked with two multinational communication companies, and spent almost five years as an executive with a leading bi-national trade organization focused on the Israeli market.  He established Ncompas International Market Development, LLC in 2004 when he relocated to Israel, and after five years continued to run the company out of his Atlanta office.  The company offering is unique in that it optimally combines three elements:

1. Cultural duality

2. Experience in providing Israeli companies with business development services

3. Technological depth and expertise

Ilan has built a reputation for working with persistence and diligence to bring together Israeli scientists and entrepreneurs with prospective partners and clients in the United States and Canada, for providing insight and consultation, conducting in-depth research, and creating powerful networks of professional relationships based on trust and quality work.  After reviewing hundreds of technologies in various disciplines he’s excelled at quickly understanding technologies and then positioning them appropriately within a framework of a market-entry strategy.

Ilan completed Undergraduate studies in Finance and International Business at the Ohio State University, and Graduate studies in International Business at Georgia State University.  He currently resides in Atlanta, GA.

Sivan Tafla

Executive Profile

Sivan is a New Media entrepreneur who invented a new and innovative advertizing concept and ad platform for video consumption. She established advertising activity of that company, and managed product management and international strategic relationships.

Sivan established a new video content service, and led Israeli and international market development activities for Israeli companies in this area. She has extensive international marketing and product strategy experience in Media and digital advertising.

Sivan founded, and was the CEO of a pioneering company in the digital advertising industry, and also handled fund-raising and international market development for the company.

Prior to that, she worked as a Financial Analyst with a leading Israeli financial services provider, and provided fund-raising support, business planning, financial structuring and more, for young technology startups.

Maury Margol is the Co-Founder and President of the Wireless Technology Forum. He and his Co-Founder, Steve Bachman, launched the non-for-profit organization in November of 2003. Under his leadership and vision, the organization has grown from six bi-monthly events to over twenty-one events a year with an all-volunteer board. It is now the fastest growing Atlanta Technology Non-for-profit with over 640 members and more than 6500 on the mailing list. The organization has also expanded beyond its original Wireless education and Professional networking programming to include Special Interest Group (SIG) events covering Wireless Application and Mobile Media (WAMM), IPTV, and Near Distance Wireless supported by Association Sponsors: AT&T, Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Symbian, Devry Institute, and American InterContinental University.

Besides his leadership on the Wireless Technology Forum, Margol has held various positions including his most recent position as Sr. Director Client Services, at Nielsen Mobile, a division of Nielsen. Margol was recruited by Nielsen Mobile to lead the AT&T Mobility Client Services position to stabilize client relationships, identify new business opportunities within AT&T, and expand Nielsen's reach beyond the traditional research environment to P&L owners within key divisions of AT&T

Previously Margol was Director, Business Development, at Macquarium Intelligent Communications.  Brought into Macquarium in order leverage his large technology network (over 1400 in LinkedIn) and build a Mobile and Wireless practice.

Margol, prior to joining Macquarium, was Senior Sales Director, North America Sales, Comverse Americas in charge of managing the Atlanta branch office and selling into the new AT&T, BellSouth, SBC, and Cingular. His responsibilities included consultative selling of Next Generation messaging products, development of key contracts and licenses, and business development strategies in the cutting edge area of RingBack Tones, IMS, and converged integrated messaging.

Margol was previously Director, Wi-Fi Strategy and Product Marketing for all domestic consumer, small business, and large business retail and carrier customer markets at BellSouth. His responsibilities included development of key business deployment strategies in the groundbreaking area of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Alliances, Wi-Fi technologies, and vendor selection.

Prior to his role as the BellSouth internal Wi-Fi evangelist and champion, Margol was Director, Corporate Alliances and Strategy for BellSouth Business Systems where he managed a $750 million dollar Cisco go-to-market alliance. This partnership provided Telephony, Internet services, and professional services to mid-size and large Enterprise customers. He managed business strategy and alliance development, product development and management, and marketing communications.

Maury’s executive-level experience spans multiple industries. Before returning to BellSouth in April 2001, Maury served as vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Sevista Technologies where he was responsible for developing and executing the startup e-mail marketing company’s name change, re-branding, marketing strategy, and first channel strategy, as well as signing its initial strategic partnerships.

Prior to joining Sevista, Maury spent several years with BellSouth. He served as Senior Manager of Portal Services for BellSouth e-Business, developing BellSouth Small Business’ first Internet commerce site PurchaseWise.com. Previously, Maury began his BellSouth career at BellSouth Long Distance as Senior Manager, Market Research where he directed and managed marketing research, strategic market planning, segmentation, and competitive analysis.

Before joining BellSouth, Maury founded and managed several successful companies. As founder of Auto Franchise, Inc, he developed and implemented a prototype franchise start-up business plan. Previously, Maury founded a CRM marketing and event planning consulting company for Small Businesses and was a principal in a Furniture Retail chain with revenues in excess of $30 million.

After completing two years as a software designer and programmer for IBM, Maury was selected to participate in IBM’s Marketing Executive program, and then served six years as an IBM Marketing Representative.

Maury has a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Information Systems from the J. Mack Robinson School of Business at Georgia State University.

Professor Mickey Scheinowitz, PhD, FACSM

Executive Profile

Department of Biomedical Engineering & Neufeld Cardiac Research Institute, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
Spent 2 years at the National Institute of Health during his post-doc fellowship program, Bethesda, MD, and 2 additional years in Washington Hospital Center, Washington DC during his sabbatical from Tel-Aviv University.

Previously, Committee Member of the Israeli Ministry of Health: Healthy People 2020 Initiative; Member of the National Council for Health Promotion, Israel Ministry of Health; Member of the National Council for the Prevention and Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases, Israel Ministry of Health; Chairman of The Israeli Group for Heart Research, Subsection of the International Society for Heart Research.

Prof. Scheinowitz has published more than 60 manuscripts in peered professional and scientific journals, presented over 100 abstracts in different meetings worldwide, and he was invited to dozens of conferences as invited speaker. During his academic career he had supervised over 50 graduate and doctorate students. Mickey also has vast experience with the industry specifically with the medical device companies.