MEET OUR TEAM
GRAHAM NYE, ACCA
Chairman (Non-Executive)
Graham Nye is a dual British and Brazilian citizen, born on April 30, 1960, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Studies and Accounting from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He is a Chartered Accountant, a member of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.
From 1982 to 2013 he worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers - PwC, where he served as a partner in the financial services assurance and transaction support practices for 17 years, of which 15 years were in Sao Paulo, Brazil. During his career at PwC, he also worked and was a resident in Budapest (Hungary), Lisbon (Portugal), London (England) and Aberdeen (Scotland).
From 2014 to 2015, Mr. Nye was appointed as a member of the Audit Committee of Banco Santander (Brasil) SA as the nominated financial specialist for US and Brazilian SEC purposes. Mr. Nye has volunteered as a member of the Board of Britcham Brasil- British Chamber of Commerce, and as a volunteer Chairman, Treasurer, and Trustee of the Fundação Anglo Brasileira de Educação e Cultura (maintainer of Saint Paul´s School, São Paulo).
Mr. Nye has also served as a volunteer Chairman and Trustee of the Board of Fundação Britanica de Beneficência, a charitable foundation.
Mr. Nye lives in Naples, Florida with his family.
KATE CONNOLLY
Chief Executive Officer & Founder
An experienced Staffing Agency Director, and Clinical Nurse Leader (CNL), and Registered Nurse (RN) specializing in CMS guidelines, staff management, compliance, and KPI utilization and implementation. Ms. Connolly is a former Emergency Department (ED) Trauma Team Lead RN, a US Army soldier, and an Air Traffic Controller with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Ms. Connolly has an extensive background in business leadership and management, healthcare, entrepreneurship, military service, and aviation. During her career, Ms. Connolly has worked for the FAA, Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), Texas Health Resources (THR), and the United States Army.
Ms. Connolly is a University of Mississippi graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Nursing and holds a master’s degree in Clinical Nurse Leadership from the University of South Alabama. Ms. Connolly has extensive experience working as an Emergency Room Trauma RN and Trauma Team Lead. She was also amongst the brave group of nurses that volunteered to care for the incoming Ebola patients treated at Texas Health Resources Presbyterian Hospital ED, in Dallas, Texas in October 2014.
Ms. Connolly currently serves as Director of Healthcare Staffing and Billing Services at Noble Healthcare in Houston, Texas.
Ms. Connolly is a former US Army soldier with 8 years of active duty service as an Air Traffic Controller/ Controller in Charge. She was honorably discharged in 2007 and went on to work for the FAA, as well as work as a military contractor for KRB in the Republic of Kuwait, before starting her healthcare career.
In her roles as a financial advisor and investor, Ms. Connolly has participated in transactions across the capital structure in companies, involving instruments in debt, equity, and other special situations.
Ms. Connolly is a QLA and QLA HARDCORE mentee.
Ms. Connolly lives with her family in Dallas, Texas.
MITCHELL FERGUSON
Chief Operations Officer
EVP of Acquisitions and Strategic Expansion-TWG
Mitch Ferguson is a leader and entrepreneur who is active in both the business and philanthropic communities. Mitch has owned and operated a healthcare and life science recruiting practice since 2002 and in 2014 added data protection, privacy, and national security to his business lines. Mitch takes a partnership approach with his clients and focuses on solving the business problems at hand when sourcing and placing talent. He has placed corporate CFO’s, Hospital CEO’s, Director of Research and Development, and literally all line and staff levels with hospitals and pharmaceutical manufactures.
Mitch is a 22-year Air Force veteran. He was a recognized expert and leader in two career fields spending his first 14 years in intelligence with key operational and leadership assignments at unit and Headquarters level; his last eight years of duty were in the Department of the Judge Advocate General as a paralegal and law office manager/superintendent with assignments at both the Wing and Number Air Force level.
Community matters and in 2011 Mitch was a founding Officer and Director of the Board of Fisher House Wisconsin. He continues to serve on the Board Governance and Development Committee and leads the compliance efforts. Additionally, Mitch has and continues to support the community through committee leadership positions with the American Lung Association and the American Heart Association helping all three organizations to raise more than 10 million dollars to support their missions in the last decade. Mitch is married to Linda Newberry-Ferguson and they have four grown children they raised together and seven grandchildren.
DAVID BELL
Chief Risk Officer
Mr. Bell is a Staffing and PEO industry executive leader recognized for implementing large-scale change management initiatives in multi-site, employee intensive environments. Mr. Bell has significant expertise in M&A, turnaround, rapid growth and realignment situations for Staffing and PEO Companies of $10M to $2B in size. He is also recognized for possessing a deep business acumen as well as understanding of operations which positively impact the profitability and performance of Fortune 500 and middle market companies. Mr. Bell excels in Enterprise Risk Management (ERM), Human Capital Management (HCM), workers’ compensation, safety management and organizational development. His skill set also includes effectively addressing the competing needs of several stakeholders including Shareholders, Senior and Field Management and Associates in environments with several hundred revenue generating Clients.
Mr. Bell is consistently tapped to enhance enterprise value by addressing corporate infrastructure issues to drive down costs, improve return on assets, manage risks and develop processes to create best practices in Risk, HR and Administration functions. In addition, Mr. Bell has sourced, negotiated, implemented and managed many enterprise software and payroll system conversions as well as Broker, vendor, insurance carrier, and health benefit plan conversions.
Mr. Bell has served as a CRO, CCO, COO, CHRO among other executive roles for many Staffing and PEOs during the turnaround or scaling processes. Some of these roles were served within Kelly Services, ABM Industries, Vincam (precursor to ADP TotalSource) as well as many other $100 to $1B revenue sized Staffing and PEOs. Mr. Bell has over 25 years of executive experience in the Staffing and PEO industries.
ROGER W. BURNS CPA/MBA
Chief Financial Officer
Entrepreneurial CFO and Partner to Entrepreneurs. Roger is an “outside of the box thinker” concerning the operations side and understands the support necessary from the financial side of the house to be able to take risks without shutting down creativity. In most privately held firms, the original owners were risk-takers. It is possible to pass that culture down to subsequent generations of leaders, but not if the accounting and reward systems punish risk-taking and reward “managing to the system”. The philosophy that Roger brings to the Management Team is to be an asset to the entrepreneurial-type firm. The goal with any ERP system is to learn from operations and thus make future performance better. Roger has 35 years’ experience in running project-based accounting systems, which if used correctly, can be tremendous learning tools. An accounting system that merely looks backward is not helpful to operations. Secondly, Roger believes a firm’s performance improves exponentially when the managers and employees feel like they are learning, and understand, the business premise, not just the product or service being sold. Therefore he approaches the CFO role as a mentor and a teacher. Finally, his perspective is long-term. Emotional energy is lost, and difficult to regain, when short term hiccups are allowed to derail long-term plans.
And of course, Roger understands all of the nuances of running companies, not just as the CFO, but as a member of the Management Team. He was the company face to the bankers, the CPA firms, the insurance industry, and key vendors. He also knew his way around Human Resources, benefits, compensation and what makes people tick and be productive!
On the personal side, Roger is active in many things. He still competes in men’s leagues in Ice Hockey and Soccer, as well as yoga & hitting the gym 1-3 times per week. He coached both of his kids’ soccer teams from the time they were 5 to the time they went onto other sports. Roger also sings in the church choir, dedicating time to rehearsals on Wednesday nights and performing most Sunday mornings. He’s also assisted with Boy Scout activities with Robby, the most notable of which was an 11-day High Adventure experience in Minnesota and Canada called Northern Tier.
And in a rare move for an engineer/CFO, Roger ran for the Texas State House of Representatives in the primary in 2012.
MATTHEW ROMANO
Chief Technology Officer (CTO) , Global IT & Security Executive
Chief Technologist & Information Security Officer, excelling in the building and leading of global organizations while undertaking technology and organizational transformation: IT modernizations, transitioning environments, organizational culture change, delivering of business-enabling revenue, and cost-saving technologies. Matt is currently CTO and Partner of Aberfoyle Associates and has more than 20 years of experience in Information Technology and CyberSecurity in the Insurance, Financial and Telecommunications sectors for Fortune 100 & 200 companies.
In 2020 so far, he has been interviewed eight times on Radio and TV regarding various CyberSecurity topics concerning both the private and public sectors. He has also spoken about what the public can do to protect itself from hackers. While recently living abroad in Malaysia (for AIG – a Fortune 200 company), he recently turned around a small failing engineering center by applying this philosophy and solid engineering practices. That center previously could not deliver 20% of its global IT workload, but now handles 85% of the global workload and does so with high customer satisfaction ratings. Last year implemented his design for new World-Class in-sourced operations which not only leveraged cutting edge technology but saved $5.2 million in the annual IT operational spend while proactively stabilizing the firm’s unified communications infrastructure.
Chief IT Architect for AIG’s many divestitures during 2008-2010: delivered $25 billion in total divestitures impacting IT & Cybersecurity at 91+ locations. Utilizing AI/Machine Learning, Mr. Romano’s was able to save 55,000+ labor hours annually by automating repeatable IT tasks and Insurance workstreams. He is a graduate of the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Electrical Engineering technology and is a Professional Certified Coach through Federation University Australia.
SHANOOP KOTHARI
VP of Finance (Advisory)
In addition to to his role as the VP of Finance for The Wedda Group, Shanoop Kothari has served as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer of NuZee Inc (Nasdaq: NUZE). Prior to joining NuZee, Mr. Kothari served as Managing Director at B. Riley FBR, Inc. (“FBR”) since 2014 and has been involved in providing a wide range of financial services to FBR’s oil and gas clients. Before joining FBR, Mr. Kothari worked in the oil & gas industry as the CFO of a private refinery that was a joint venture with a small private equity firm and HollyFrontier, at Credit Suisse in energy investment banking, in finance for a publicly traded software company as well as in public accounting with Price Waterhouse.
Mr. Kothari has 20+ years of accounting, finance and capital markets experience within organizations ranging from a handful of employees to multi-national organizations with tens of thousands of employees. Mr. Kothari holds a BA (Honors) in Accounting from Southern Methodist University and an MBA (High Honors) from Rice University. Mr. Kothari is also a licensed CPA / CIA and possesses Series 7 / 24 / 63 licenses. Mr. Kothari is also a license realtor in Texas and has over 12 years of real estate investing.
KRYVES SEAN LAURENT EDU
Chief Digital Officer
A distinguished multimedia professional renowned for his exceptional ability to create groundbreaking marketing campaigns that range from still images to motion pictures. Sean's storytelling style is focused on bringing his clients' objectives and vision to life, transforming them into stunning visual masterpieces that inspire brand loyalty and trust.
He is also an expert at bridging the gap between the marketing and creative aspects of the industry, living by his personal mantra of "from pre to post". He is actively involved in every stage of the process, from strategic planning to delivering the final product with immaculate attention to detail.
Sean’s work is characterized by excellent PR and exceptional returns for his clients. He specializes in branding identity, digital PR campaigns, guerilla marketing, social media strategy, and creative directing for disruptive marketing, among others. With a wealth of experience working with startups to corporate companies and diverse industries, Sean is always pushing the boundaries of digital marketing.
Sean's services guarantees access to a top-tier professional who has the skills and expertise to deliver results that exceed expectations. With Sean on board, you can be assured that your marketing campaigns will be handled with the utmost attention to detail, creative flair, and strategic focus.
HAZEL PANTIA- BAUTISTA
VP of Recruiting, Training & Compliance
Hazel has been an integral member of The Wedda Group since its founding. Initially, Hazel served as TWG’s Head of Communications & Recruitment. In the years since, Hazel has quickly climbed the ranks to VP of Recruiting, Training & Compliance for The Wedda Group, and affiliate firms Total Care Staffing, and MedTrekkerr-Staffing & Recruiting.
Hazel specializes in coordinating the recruitment, credentialing, and compliance efforts for mass activations of healthcare providers for communicable disease mobilization nationwide.
ARGIE KILLORAN, RN, CTM
VP of Business Development
Argie is a Registered Nurse, Care Transition Manager, and a top-ranked healthcare recruiter recognized for contributions to record-setting sales figures, territory expansion and new account development. Proven ability to lead sales teams to achieve multimillion-dollar revenue gains. Offer an in-depth understanding of the sales cycle process and remain focused on customer satisfaction throughout all stages. Experienced, “fearless” cold-caller and expert presenter, negotiator and closer.
Argie lives in Dallas, Texas with her family.