Board of Directors
Richard Coles is the former Executive Vice President, Investments of Manulife Financial Corporation who held responsibility for "non traditional" asset portfolios. Prior to Manulife, Richard held a number of officer positions during his thirteen years at Canada Trust, and most recently served as Executive Vice President, Corporate & Commercial Financial Services. He is a member of the Board of Directors of VFC Inc., Elliott & Page Asset Management, Seamark Asset Management, Regional Power, Manulife Bank of Canada and NAL Oil & Gas Trust. Mr. Coles graduated with a BA in Physics from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA in Finance from York University.
John D. McNeil is the former chairman and CEO of Sun Life Assurance Company and has over 30 years experience in the insurance and diversified financial services industry. Throughout his impressive tenure at Sun Life he led the company through rapid growth, during a period of dynamic change in the financial services' sector. Under Mr. McNeil's leadership, assets grew at Sun Life from $49 billion in 1988 to more than five times that when he stepped down as chairman in April 1999. Mr. McNeil is also a director of a select number of Canadian organizations.
Daniel P. Meyer, Principal, joined CCP Equity Partners in 2001. Prior to joining CCP Equity Partners, Mr. Meyer spent four years as an equity research analyst specializing in Banks and Financial Technology with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods and Robertson Stephens. Mr. Meyer holds a BA degree in Economics from Clark University and an MBA from the Wallace E. Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
Steven F. Piaker, Managing Partner at CCP Equity Partners, specializes in financial services investments. Prior to joining CCP Equity Partners in 1994, Mr. Piaker was a senior vice president at Conseco where he was involved in forming the company's private equity funds. Prior to joining Conseco, Mr. Piaker was a vice president in GE Capital's Corporate Finance Group and prior to that, was with Chase Manhattan Corporation where he began his career. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Finetre Corporation, Mezz Cap, Intersections, Inc., PayCycle, Inc., and Princeton eCom. Mr. Piaker is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He earned a BA degree in Economics from the University of Rochester and holds an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.
Primary Technology Advisors
Neil Ackerman
Dr. Ackerman served in a variety of management positions at Cygnus, Inc from 1994-2005. He initially led the development efforts for a number of transdermal products, two of which were approved. He then led the R&D, clinical, regulatory and compliance functions for the Glucowatch Biographer, the first commercially available non-invasive glucose monitor. From 1990-1994 he was Vice President, Research and Development at Glycomed, leading its discovery efforts in cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases. From 1982-1990, he was Research Director, Cancer and Inflammatory Diseases with DuPont Pharmaceuticals. Prior to that time, he had research and management positions at Syntex Corporation and Pfizer, Inc. Dr. Ackerman received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in immunology at Stanford University.
Bill Franta
Dr. Franta has over 30 years experience in the technology arena, having conceived, authored, and executed a variety of business plans, and managed businesses with revenues ranging from $1M to $250M. His technical expertise encompasses optical systems, VoIP, wireless technologies, switching networks, storage, semiconductor technologies and network security solutions. Dr. Franta co-developed "Passport" for Nortel, an award winning ATM LAN enterprise switch. He has a Masters Degree in Mathematics, a Ph.D in Computer science and was formerly a Professor at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Franta has published four books, authored or co-authored four book chapters and over 140 technical papers.
John More
Mr. More has over 30 years experience in the technology space. He has actively participated in a wide range of companies from startups through to very mature large organizations. His experience encompasses factory automation and process control to financial services while his specific technical expertise is in architecture and software development for large complex n-tier implementations. Mr. More is currently the CTO and responsible for IPP of Americas information technology. Prior to joining IPP, Mr. More was the Divisional CIO at CheckFree Investment Services in Jersey City NJ where he led the technology modernization planning while managing the support and maintenance of a large distributed legacy ASP environment. Prior to CheckFree, Mr. More spent four years as a technical architect and business focused project manager with Computer Sciences Corporation and over seven years in financial services technology with Thomson Financial and Dow Jones managing the software development of WEB based products and high volume world wide quote distribution systems. Mr. More is originally from Canada and after moving to New York with Thomson Financial he now lives with his wife in Stewartsville NJ.
MMV Financial is dedicated to financing the next generation of technology and life sciences companies that are emerging in North America.