About Us › Management Team

Jeff Freeman, Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Freeman is a successful entrepreneur whose 25 years of experience creating and distributing point-of-purchase (P.O.P.) displays for consumer product goods companies and retailers led him to found SoundTag in 2007. As founder and CEO of Freeman-Hays, a custom design P.O.P. manufacturing company, he spent a decade working closely with many of the nation's leading brands and chains. Mr. Freeman got the idea for SoundTag when he saw how shipment logjams delayed urgently-needed products from reaching the sales floor -- and how much they cost his customers. He is a graduate of the University of Miami, where he earned a BA degree.

Tom Dwan, Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Dwan brings more than 30 years of management experience to SoundTag, spanning operations, program management, and product development in computerized test equipment and short-range radio frequency communication devices. Before joining SoundTag, he held positions at RCA and GE in defense electronics, as well as start-up ventures in wireless communications and enterprise software. Mr. Dwan holds a BSEE degree from Norwich University, a MSEE degree from Cornell University, and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.

Richard J. Valentine, Chief Marketing/Sales Consultant
An entrepreneur known for his ability to identify new ideas that fill highly profitable niches, Mr. Valentine is founder and head of The MBA Group of Companies. The MBA Group has owned, operated, built, and sold businesses in such diverse industries as health insurance, retail automotive services, advanced technology, corporate investigative services, real estate, oil and gas, commercial aviation, and kart racing. Among his many successes, Mr. Valentine built the New England Jiffy Lube area franchise into a 30-store, $35 million business before selling the Master Area Development franchise to Pennzoil at an unprecedented 18 times earnings ratio. Other successes in The MBA Group history include: United Plans, a third-party administrator of health insurance plans that was sold to a subsidiary of Dun & Bradstreet; LCF Associates, a high-technology white-collar crime investigations firm, which was sold to SPX Corporation; and a partnership with software developer ArrayWorks, which has developed a software architecture to automate virtually any business process. Mr. Valentine's most recent ventures include F1 Air, a private aviation firm, F1 Boston, a 106,000 square foot conference, dining, and racing center in Braintree, Massachusetts; F1 Outdoors, an event and kart racing facility in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts; and New Jersey Motorsports Park, a 500-acre motorsports and lifestyle complex in Millville, NJ. Mr. Valentine holds a BA degree from Suffolk University

Patrick Gallagher, Chief Financial Adviser
Mr. Gallagher is Chief Operating Officer of The MBA Group of Companies, and Executive Vice President of Massachusetts Business Association, the original foundation of The MBA Group. He has been instrumental in building the Association into the leading voice for small business in Massachusetts, representing more than 40,000 companies across the state and providing health insurance to a large percentage of the state's small businesses. In 2002 Mass Business Association is now a member of the National Financial Partners companies and later merged with Northeast Business Trust. Mr. Gallagher's financial acumen was also a key in building Lube 495, the MBA Group's Jiffy Lube area franchise, United Plans, LCF Associates, and other members of The MBA Group of Companies. Prior to joining MBA in 1984, Mr. Gallagher spent 17 years in the banking industry. He is a member of the Board of Directors of The Federal Savings Bank and Beacon Fiduciary Advisors, Inc., a private money-management firm

Rich Redemske, Electrical Engineer
Mr. Redemske holds both M.S. and B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT and has four years of experience in RFID electronics and entrepreneurship. Mr. Redemske completed his graduate work at the MIT AutoID Labs creating new tagging systems for Wal-Mart and other companies using the EPC RFID tracking system being adopted by the retail industry. For the past two years, Mr. Redemske has been the primary firmware engineer at TagSense, Inc. and has designed and contributed to numerous RFID consulting projects, including RFID payment cards systems for MasterCard, security sensors for the US Postal Service, and most recently, compact UHF reader modules for the cell phone industry.

Leonard G Schmidt, Supply Chain Manager
Mr. Schmidt brings over 25 years of experience in Supply Chain Management to SoundTag, including work in new product inception, component and product sourcing, packaging, international logistics, purchasing, and shop floor management with Polaroid and Stanley Bostitch.

Susan Hill, Trade Show Market Consultant
Susan Hill is the Founder and former President of Hill & Partners, Inc. (www.hillpartners.com) a full service trade show and event marketing firm opened in 1995. H & P provides clients turn-key three dimensional marketing solutions for trade shows and events, both domestically and internationally. Prior to starting Hill & Parners, Hill was with a large, international trade show company for seventeen years, primarily in sales and new business development roles.

In 2001, Hill & Partners, Inc. was named to the first Commonwealth Institute/Babson College list of the top 100 Women Led Businesses. They were again named in 2002 and 2003; Boston Business Journals' 25 Largest Minority/Women Owned Businesses list and have been the recipients of the Cognex Corporation's Vendor of the Year Award for several years running.

Susan is a member of several industry associations including IEA, (International Exhibitors Association), the EDPA (Exhibit Designers & Producers Association), HCEA (Health Care Exhibitors Assoication) and The Commonwealth Institute's CEO Forum. After graduating from Emerson College with a BS in Communications, Susan went on to do graduate work at both Suffolk and Harvard Universities.

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