Advisory Team
Steve Amos, Founder and President. Steve has 30 years of international and US marketing and advertising experience, Steve founded 4empowerment with a vision to make a positive difference in the lives of individuals, the community, and the environment. He conceived and developed Cyberways & Waterways®, an online education program integrating classroom studies, hands on field activities and the Internet. Steve developed partnerships with school districts to obtain $5.0 million in grants by the Texas Department of Education. He was included as a "Shapers of the Future" in the August/September 2002 edition of "Converge", an educational technology publication.
Prior to starting 4empowerment, Steve was the vice president of interactive marketing and an account director for GSD&M (Omnicon) advertising agency responsible for clients including Lennox Industries, Pennzoil, CellularOne (Chicago & Washington DC), Southwestern Bell Cellular (Dallas) and Texas Tourism. He has managed annual budgets exceeding $20 million and consistently developed effective advertising and marketing programs for clients resulting in increased sales and market share, and his work has been recognized with over 70 advertising and marketing awards. Steve's background includes advertising account management with Lintas:New York and international marketing positions with Textron.
He has an M.B.A. from Wake Forest University and a BA from Florida State University. Steve is involved with the LBJ Library Future Forum, active in local community organizations and is an avid scuba diver.
Bruce Brooks founded, grew, managed, and sold three successful technology-based companies. He has over 25 years of experience implementing commercial software and data management systems, as well as 20 years of business and management experience.
Currently Bruce owns Commercial Institute, the largest online continuing education service for licensed commercial and residential real estate agents. His technical knowledge is a reflection of the changes that have occurred over the past quarter-century in hardware, operating systems, languages, application models, and data management—from low-level assembly and embedded systems, mainframe, desktop, and client-server applications, to cutting edge web applications.
Bruce provides technical leadership to 4empowerment and support in business strategy.
He has filed a provisional patent application for a new method of deriving an internal rate of return, which will render the old interpolation-based method obsolete. Bruce is a graduate of the University of Texas–Austin.
Quenton Russell Dokken, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes wise utilization and conservation of the Gulf of Mexico and its wealth of resources. He was a former Associate Director of the Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi Center for Coastal Studies and Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Gulf of Mexico Regional Marine Research Program. Prior to these positions, Dr. Dokken was the Executive Director of the Texas State Aquarium.
As a marine scientist, Dr. Dokken has an extensive publication record relating to the study of the ecosystems and fauna of the Gulf of Mexico. As Executive Director of the Gulf of Mexico Regional Marine Research Program, he lead his professional peers in the development of marine research priorities for the Gulf of Mexico in the face of declining research dollars. He is the founder and coordinator of the Flower Garden Ocean Research Program, which integrates the efforts of institutional science and the offshore oil and gas industry to expand opportunities for marine research in the most cost effective manner.
Since 1999, Dr. Dokken has been involved with 4empowerment, and the Cyberways and Waterways® program, providing guidance and expertise in education, scientific issues and assisting in teacher professional development programs. He played a unique role in helping organize the "Rivers to Ocean" webcast with BP and Texas Parks and Wildlife. Quenton served as the guest scientist interacting with students in real-time, through satellite and Internet technology, at a depth of 77 feet, under an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico.
Quenton assists 4empowerment with practical field, academic and corporate insights and direction.
Dr. Dokken earned his B.S degree from Texas A&M University, his M.S. in Biology at Corpus Christi State University and his Doctorate in Wildlife and Fisheries Science from Texas A&M University.
Martha Gimbut is the principle of Gimbut and Associates, a business strategy and management- consulting firm. She has been a senior executive with over 24 years of diverse experience in sales, marketing, development, strategic planning, and services for information technology and high-tech start up companies.
She spent 22 years with IBM Corporation holding positions in sales, product development and support, marketing, strategic planning, finance and services. During her tenure at IBM, she launched IBM's entry into the OEM business for SW resulting in first year revenues of 300% of plan. In addition, she created and launched the customer support model for PC software and launched IBM's entry into the fee product support business, including establishing the appropriate market price and working with IBM developers, IBM sales, business partners and customers to ensure high customer satisfaction during and after the transition to fee support. Ms. Gimbut was the Vice President, Sales Technical Support, IBM Software Group for Europe, Middle East and Africa where she designed and launched the geographic technical support model for Europe, which included IBM and business partner channels. In the positions, she dramatically improved productivity, CRM results and customer and business partner satisfaction with IBM technical support.
In 2000, Ms. Gimbut established Gimbut and Associates and has worked with start-ups on their business strategy, management system, product, pricing and funding plans. In addition, she has conducted the Cyberways and Waterways® Technology Integration in Education grant evaluation and assessment in 2000 for the Texas Education Agency.
Ms Gimbut supports 4empowerment in strategy development and ongoing program management enhancements.
Martha has a B.S., Systems Analysis with honors from Miami University. She attended the University of Chicago M.B.A. program while she lived in Chicago.
William Nix is the Chief Executive Officer of Signature Entertainment and its affiliated parent company, Lone Star Entertainment Ventures. He is an Intellectual Property, Entertainment, Media, Sports and Corporate attorney.
He was Co-Chair of BakerBotts L.L.P. Entertainment, Media and Sports Law Practice Group, where he represented clients, as both a transactional and litigation attorney, in a broad spectrum of industries. Formerly, SVP for NBA Properties, Mr. Nix headed the team that launched NBA.com and helped to build it into a primary revenue-generator for the league. Prior to that, for ten years of his sixteen-year tenure at the Motion Picture Association of America, he headed the movie and television industry’s global IP Group that protects their copyrights and trademarks against piracy and counterfeiting. Mr. Nix resides in Los Angeles and maintains an office in Austin. He has advised Internet and software businesses as a strategist for many years.
He is a lifetime voting-member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, having served for several years on its Documentary Feature Film Award Nominating Committee, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and is serving as a Judge for its 2009 College Television Awards, the International Documentary Association, serving as a Member of its 2008 Feature Nominating Jury, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, and the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, the New York New Media Association , and New York Women in Film and Television. He is also on the Boards of Directors of the Austin Film Festival, Project GRAD USA and the Peter Pan Children’s Fund.
Current Signature/Lone Star initiatives include the development and implementation of high-tech, digital high school campuses to address high rates of drop-out failure and the leveraging curricula fueled by multiple layers of convergent industries including film, television, music, gaming, software, and publishing; engaging kids through real-world learning applications.
Mr. Nix is slated to teach at UCLA during 2009 and was an adjunct professor of sports law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University in New York City. Mr. Nix is conversant in French and Spanish. His education includes: Columbia University School of Law, Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law Program; LL.M., Trade Regulation, New York University School of Law; J.D., Hofstra University School of Law; Dean’s Distinguished Service Award; Senior Editor, Moot Court Board of Editors; M.A., History/Teaching, Antioch College; and A.B., English and American literature, Georgetown University
Will provides 4empowerment with expertise in innovative education initiatives, new digital media applications, licensee, commercialization, and business management.
Mary Schenck-Ross has been sparking curiosity in learners and enabling them to learn in their own way through toys, games and software for over 30 years. She started her career during the early days of Sesame Street after attending SMU in Dallas and Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles.
The software development firm she founded, Looking Glass Software, produced award-winning software for Disney, Sesame Street, Mister Rogers, Bantam Books, and Mc Graw-Hill. Mary led product development for The Learning Company (the largest educational software publisher for 15 years) in its heyday delivering product systems, which contributed to their 10x revenue valuation.
Her design firm, Schenck Design Associates, serviced Fortune 500 companies such as Dr Pepper, Belo Corporation, Texas Instruments and Centex. Her on-site work at Sesame Street helped launch their software division. Extensive consulting projects for companies such as Computer Curriculum Corporation, Kaleida (IBM-Apple) and Microsoft helped launch divisions and form the strategies for acquisitions.
Mary founded and raised the funds for Adaptive Learning Technology, Inc., a University of Texas Technology Incubator start-up. The company developed individualized educational online worlds and was acquired by Ignite! Learning. An unusual combination of product design experience, educational knowledge, marketing, and business development expertise allows her to identify market differentiators and conceptualize next generation product solution.
Mary advises 4empowerment on educational design issues and immersive activity development.
Betty Stapp, Ph.D. is a past-president of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology and past Director of the Liberal Arts and Science Academy of Austin. Before joining the Austin Independent School District, Dr. Stapp was the principal of the Arkansas School for Mathematics and Science where she was the academic administrator for the residential school for talented and gifted high school students.
She has developed curricula, planned facilities, served as grant specialist for the Dallas Independent School district and excelled in both school and administrative roles in both academic and specialized (health care) schools in small and large school districts across Texas. Dr. Stapp directed the first year of the Cyberways and Waterways® program for the Austin Independent School District and continues to provide professional expertise for the program.
Betty supports 4empowerment through practical insights into day-to-day classroom educator and administration needs and student impacts.
She has her B.S. in Medical Technology for North Texas State University, a Masters in Vocational Education from East Texas State University and earned her Doctorate in Adult and Continuing Education from Texas Women's University.
Claire Ellen Weinstein, Ph.D. is the Director of the Cognitive Learning Strategies Project and a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, University of Texas–Austin. She is an internationally renowned author and speaker on the subject of strategic learner, with over 125 professional publications and 200 presentations. Co-developer of the LASSI learning tests used in over 80% of US colleges and universities and translated into 30 languages.
Dr. Weinstein is on the editorial board of four major professional journals and was recently honored as a visiting professor at the University of Haifa in Israel and the Chinese National Academy of Science in Beijing. She received the outstanding contributions award from the International Association of Applied Psychology, division of educational, instructional and school psychology and was appointed to the Advisory Council for Education, Grammy Foundation (formerly the National Academy of Recoding Arts and Sciences Foundation). In 2001, Dr. Weinstein was elected as a Fellow of the American Council of Development Education Associations.
Dr. Weinstein lends her expertise in development of 4empowerment's education products and services and assisting in ongoing program evaluation and improvement support.
Yee-Ping Wu is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Knoa Corp in New York City. Ms. Wu raised investment money, and established M-Pen, Inc. (now Knoa Corp.) in 1987 to bring creative, innovative technology to the market.
Ms. Wu is noted for having grown M-Pen into a dynamic and profitable company and recognized as a pioneer in the Multimedia industry. M-Pen successfully launched numerous products including Time Warner's broadband Road Runner Incrediville, the top-selling "evergreen" Scholastic's The Magic School Bus™ CD-ROM series in conjunction with Microsoft Corporation and Scholastic Inc., producer of a 35-disk enhanced-CD music series, and developed fifteen-plus CD-ROM titles available in multiple languages and delivery platforms.
Ms. Wu built strategic alliances with many global partners including Fujitsu, Microsoft, Paramount, Sony and Time Warner. With Knoa Corp, Ms. Wu repositioned the Company for success in the enterprise market. Knoa's software helps enterprises accurately establish application and user performance metrics as well as deliver productivity solutions, on the live application and in real time, to target users.
Ping was one of 4empowerment's initial advisors and continues to lend her business, technology and education expertise in guiding the company's development.
Ms. Wu is a graduate of Juilliard and has been a concert pianist since childhood. Yee-Ping's many achievements and awards include the AWIB Entrepreneurial Achievement Award, Crain's Top 40 under 40, NYWA Star 2000 and Award for Excellence in Science and Technology from NY's Mayor Giuliani. Accomplishments have also been recognized in many publications, including Business Week, Wired and The New York Times.