Board team
Charlie Fote - Chairman of the board
Fotec http://www.fotecgroup.com/ CEO Charlie Fote retired as Chairman and CEO of First Data in 2005 after 30 years in various ascending roles at the global electronic payments company. While CEO at First Data, he was responsible for the overall strategy and operations of the Fortune 250 company, including its primary business areas:
▪ Payment Services: Western Union Financial Services, Orlandi Valuta and ValueLin
▪ Merchant Services: First Data Merchant and Debit Services, the STAR Network, Primary Payment Systems, TeleCash
▪ Card Issuing Services: First Data Resources, First Data Healthcare and First Data Hellas
Fote joined First Data, then owned by American Express, in 1975. During his tenure, he served in an assortment of roles, helping to grow First Data from a $1.2 billion U.S. spinoff to a more than $10 billion global payments powerhouse. He founded MoneyGram in the late 1980s. Under Fote’s leadership, First Data merged with First Financial Management, owner of a bankrupt Western Union in 1995, and grew Western Union into a $4 billion business unit. Prior to joining First Data, Fote was Vice President of Operations for Framingham Trust. He attended Central Connecticut State University.
Fote has served on numerous boards of directors over the years. He currently is Chairman of the Board of Accretive Technologies Inc. and serves on the board of Payfone. Additionally, he is a board member for the President’s Club at Colorado State University, and is head of the Travis Hukill Foundation, as well as the Fote family foundation. He also serves on the board of Project C.U.R.E., a nonprofit, humanitarian relief organization that delivers donated medical supplies, equipment and services to medical professionals and the patients under their care in developing countries. Fote also has been an active member of The Business Council, a voluntary association of national business leaders exchanging ideas to generate greater understanding of major public policy issues and to create consensus for solutions.
Nabil Abu El Ata (Founder) - Chief Executive Officer
In addition to his role as a key strategist on Fotec’s management team, Dr. Abu el Ata is the founder of Accretive Technologies, Inc, a corporation specializing in the prediction and mitigation of business and technology risks, throughput, service and cost optimization, and technological investment consulting.
To say Dr. Abu el Ata has a passion for mathematics, science and technology would be understatement. Having published two books, 15 scientific papers, and over 300 technical and management reports, he has proven his ability to absorb, process and opine on a wide variety of technological subject matter.
Dr. Abu el Ata’s educational accomplishments include doctorate (Ph.D. and D.Sc. from France) and bachelor’s degrees in Mathematics and a master’s degree in Physical Sciences –from Cambridge University UK.
He is a valued former Doctorate Fellow of the European Space Organization; the former Data Processing Director and Advisor to the CEO of the French Atomic Energy Authority; a Former Chief Technology Officer for First Data Corporation; and the founder of EuroExpert SA.
Dr. Abu El Ata is also a member of the advisory board that created the European Strategic Program for Research in IT; a member of the Steering Committee for European Programs: Pyramid, Europicon and Itaqua; a member of the advisory board of French Employment Organization, of French Ministry of Finance, of French Postal Services, of one of largest French banks (Credit Agricole) and of Auchan Retail; an External Professor for a number of universities in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States; and Laureate of Computer World Honors 2008.
Charlie O’Rourke - Strategic Business & Technology Executive Consultant
Charlie O’Rourke is a highly motivated business technology leader widely recognized as a catalyst to driving strategic business improvement and efficiency through creation and deployment of unique technical solutions to varied business challenges. A 35-year veteran of First Data Corporation, a global leader in electronic commerce and financial services, he possesses the communications skills to establish vision, the management capability to motivate multifunctional teams, and the operating experience to deliver impressive results.
Charlie completed his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Physics at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. He began his professional career in 1964 at IBM Corporation, where he specialized in on-line and real-time systems design and development. He collaborated with many IBM customers, particularly those in the finance and manufacturing industries, to develop and implement business application software. Having attained the position of Senior Systems Engineer, he left IBM in 1970 to form his own company. His company provided on-line computer processing services to financial institutions.
First Data Corporation (FDC) recruited Charlie in 1972. Over the next decades, he assumed increasingly responsible and more challenging leadership roles, leveraging technology expertise balanced by unique business management acumen to promote understanding, design, installation and adoption of technologies to advance both corporate and customer business growth and expansion initiatives. He provided both technical and business consultative services to many senior executives and managers of First Data’s business units.
Charlie founded and was acting Chair of the FDC Business & Technology Security Council, which addressed enterprise-wide business and technology security issues (encryption, authentication, authorization, key management and recovery), and developed policies for electronic commerce and information security for external commercial use and internal deployment. Most recently, as Senior Vice President, Charlie served as special advisor to the Chairman & CEO and COO on efforts to create entrepreneurial units within First Data and to tie technology and product development to business goals and objectives.
Merritt Lutz - Advisory Director
Merritt M. Lutz is an Advisory Director of Morgan Stanley. In this role, he is responsible for the development and oversight of Morgan Stanley Information Technology’s (MSIT) strategic investments, the Firm's global vendor risk assessment practice, and MSIT joint ventures. He joined Morgan Stanley & Co. in 1994 as a Managing Director in charge of the global Application Programming Group with responsibility for the development and maintenance of the Firm’s strategic worldwide software-based technology initiatives. In addition, while at the Firm, he managed the development and launch of its early Internet strategy, initiated Morgan Stanley’s offsite software development joint ventures, and built the Firm’s client technology initiatives.
Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Mr. Lutz was President of Candle Corporation, then one of the world’s largest privately held software companies, and now a unit of IBM. Previously, he was Managing Partner of PDi, a software industry partnering and consulting firm. Prior, Mr. Lutz was Group Vice President for Informatics General Corporation (NYSE), which is now a part of CA
Mr. Lutz is presently a Board Director for three private companies – Accretive Technologies, ThruPoint Inc. and SendMail Inc. (Chairman). He previously has been a Director of three additional private companies and three public companies including SPSS, which was acquired by IBM in 2009.
Mr. Lutz is the Chairman of the Board of the NYC Devereux Foundation which helps autistic and other mentally disabled individuals. He serves on Michigan State University’s College of Music National Leadership Council. Lutz is the Chairman of American Friends of the Russian St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a Board member for MSU’s Center for Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Finance and a regular guest lecturer at the Eli Broad College of Business. He is a former Director of the Information Technology Association of America and the NASD Industry Advisory Committee,
Mr. Lutz attended Michigan State University where he earned both a Bachelors and a Masters degree. He and his wife reside in New York City.
Maurice Perks - Board Technology Adviser
Maurice J. Perks joined IBM in 1968 as a Systems Engineer. His career with IBM spanned over 44 years. Over those years, Maurice has specialized in the design of IT systems for large organisations. In a world that needs and demands fast and reliable IT systems, he has significantly contributed to meeting this challenge. He is a world authority on the developments of IT systems in a range of industry sectors, and particularly the financial sector. He has worked with clients across Europe and the United States.
Maurice is noted for his methodological approach which helps to understand and assess complexity of IT systems, and for taking that knowledge to design and modify them. He is currently working on how the complexity of modern IT systems can be understood, and is bringing new ways of combining the triangle of business knowledge, IT knowledge and mathematics to this challenge. He is constantly seeking new ways of avoiding the increasing complexity that IT systems are externalizing to business change. He is a great believer in the increased use of modelling and simulation to help tame the growing challenges that business and IT change pose to the sound progress of IT usage. His ability to understand real-world IT system design was recognised by IBM in 2002, when Maurice became the first IBM Fellow to be appointed from within the IBM Services Division. Since 1963, only just over 200 people have been named IBM Fellows, and around 75 are still working today.
He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor of IT Integration at the University of York. His sustained work on complex IT system design and his assessment of emerging IT technologies has been recognised by the Aston University, UK by the award of a Doctor of Science degree. He lives in Hampshire, UK and Nice, France.