Our management team was responsible for planning, funding,and establishment of jatropha farming and biodiesel operations in West Africa. Abundant Biofuels’ management team is refocusing its efforts to profitably develop the rest of the world, beginning with the Western Hemisphere.

The team’s proven profitable approach will bring sustainable economic development to the target regions, paying a living wage to some of the poorest people in the world. Recognizing the differences among the target countries, we created a new entity Abundant Biofuels to adapt our business strategies to the particular circumstances in each of the various target countries.

Abundant Biofuels principals have many years of corporate experience from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

Perhaps most important is their bias for action. This project is not a lab experiment, it’s a dynamic environment that requires fast, well-devised execution of plans and changes to them, and this team is more than up to the task.

 

Charles V. Fishel

Chairman

Dr. Charles V. Fishel was the founding CEO and director of Gold Star Biodiesel. He serves on the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausaane Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (Environmental Impacts Working Group and Social Impacts Working Group)

He is the chairman of Hoffman Row Group, Inc., a consulting firm that works with emerging technologies and international entrepreneurial ventures. He serves as a director on the boards of several public and private for-profit companies, including the Brownfield Foundation, Inc., a charitable, non-profit corporation dedicated to land recycling for the good of the community and the environment.

Fishel is a managing director of the Restoration Capital Fund, which aligns capital, technology and redevelopment principles in ways that create value for investors, support communities and are sustainable to the environment. Other recent consulting projects have involved strategic business planning, corporate finance, acquisition and merger and international technology transfer.

Dr. Fishel has held senior management, finance and legal roles with Fortune 100 multi-national organizations (Intel, Teledyne, Carnation Company, Peter Kiewit Sons and Williams) as well as start-up companies. His industry experience includes technology (electronics, biotechnology and nanotechnology), insurance, construction, mining, publishing, broadcasting, food processing, energy, manufacturing, public utility, and consulting about technology evaluation and commercialization.

As a consultant, Fishel has worked with hundreds of small, emerging companies. Representative clients have included high-tech companies (computer hardware/software, robotics, Internet, printed circuit boards, microwave, equipment manufacturing, etc.), retailing, healthcare, and banking, as well as development agencies and not-for-profit organizations (United Nations Development Programme, Bank Pembangunan Malaysia and the Northern California Manufacturing Technology Center).

After leaving Intel in 1980, Dr. Fishel created ImaginAction, Inc., the first “shared management” consulting firm in the Silicon Valley, where he and his colleagues provided entrepreneurial companies with part-time management – an “incubator without walls.” In 1985, ImaginAction merged with the Utah Innovation Center at the University of Utah to form Genexus. As president, Fishel worked with universities and community organizations in the United States and overseas to develop innovation centers (“business incubators”) to enable commercialization of laboratory-developed technology. Genexus developed innovation centers in cooperation with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and at universities in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts and New York.

In 1986, Dr. Fishel became executive director of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Research Institute where he planned for and initiated development of Commonwealth Bioventures, the first biotech-focused innovation center/venture capital fund.

Dr. Fishel is a distinguished executive lecturer at California State University, Monterey Bay, senior lecturer at San Jose State University and visiting professor at Naval Postgraduate School. Before joining Hoffman Row Group, he was director of the Center for International Business Planning, and senior lecturer in global business strategy and industrial competition at Monterey Institute of International Studies. Other teaching experience has included Santa Clara University and University of California, Berkeley. His teaching emphases are global business strategy, entrepreneurship, global dimensions of business, international industrial competition, technology transfer, technology management and law.

He is the author of Global Business Strategies (CyclopsMedia: 2004). Dr. Fishel has been recognized by Marquis' Who's Who in Finance and Industry and Academic Keys’ Who’s Who in Business Education.

 

James S. Love

VP International Operations

Jim Love was the founding vice president of Gold Star Financial LLC. He is chairman of Fire Management Systems Inc., EcoZap Inc., and AIHsw Inc. He has served as past director of EuroBusiness Group, PLC (London), VCS AB, Vastra Frolunda (Sweden), Master of Mixes (Kansas), Fresco Plastics LLC (Carmel, California.), and Diasco, Ferney Voltaire (France).

Love’s business background encompasses more than 30 years of experience in marketing, sales, finance, funding, operations, and management involving all phases of technology commercialization for privately-held companies including a number of startups. He has managed companies through all phases of development including concept, development, commercial growth, and maturity.

Some career highlights include:

• Pacific Agricultural Services: Vice President for the nation’s largest specialty crop developer who pioneered the development of pistachios, kiwi fruit, and jojoba (largest developer in the United States).

• Diasco (France) and Institute for Business Consultations (Geneva): Served as managing director for Diasco and as finance director IBC where he created, implemented and controlled a worldwide financial analysis and operational audit system for 25 operating companies of a multi-national with annual sales of more than $250 million.

• Asset Management Inc. (Tulsa, Okla.): Developed and executed national institutional sales program for this investment banking firm.

• World Business Advisory, Ltd. (Carmel, Calif.): Controlled the coordination and direction of legal, financial and insurance services relating to corporate and individual taxation.

• Merus – Established and funded the company, which was the nation’s first autologous blood bank.

• Alert: Developed and executed national investment marketing and sales for the nation’s largest alarm monitoring company, raising more than $150 million and resulting in a buy-out by the nation’s largest alarm company, ADT.

• Global Apparel Network: Designed the business plan, raised $10 million in capital, established the European headquarters and implemented initial proof of concept sales this U.S.-based software start-up in the international fashion business.

• Designed business plans, raised required capital, developed marketing strategy, and implemented the sales and service divisions for four start up companies:

• EcoZap, Inc. – Bio-technology company in the field of pest control utilizing patented technology developed at University of South Hampton in London.

• Fresco Plastics, LLC – Company with a patented technology for molecular imaging of plastics resulting in non-distortion thermoforming.

• American International Homes SW Inc. – Company with a patented frameless, insulated building panel system.

• Fire Management Systems Inc. – An industry leader that manufactures and distributes flame-retardant chemicals and coatings worldwide.

Love received his BSc, cum laude, in interpersonal organizational communication from Ohio University and his MBA in international business from Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management (“Thunderbird”). During the Vietnam War, he enlisted and served as Lieutenant, USN, in San Miguel, The Philippines, and was decorated with the Air Medal.

Allan L. Abbott

VP Technology

Mr. Abbott was the founding President of Gold Star Biofuels Technology LLC. He is an experienced executive in all aspects of corporate operations. His particular expertise is in sales and marketing with broadband involvement in engineering, manufacturing, and finance functions.

In the past, he has led high technology companies ranging from a successful computer peripheral start-up to a corporate restructure and turn-around (e.g., Microdisplay Corporation, Chisholm, Spectra Logic Corporation). Earlier experience was with large, established multinational companies (e.g., Pertec, CalComp, GenRad).

Mr. Abbott earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and has lectured at Stanford and Phoenix Universities.

Bruce Ian Keith

Director, Dominican Republic, Haiti

Mr. Keith has extensive experience in multiple cultures, having lived in Latin America, the U.S. and Canada and worked and traveled extensively internationally.

He was the Founder and Managing Partner of Pendulum, a financial services firm in Mexico. The firm started as an investment and business consultancy and evolved to include a large focus on distressed assets from 1999 to 2006. He oversaw all business, investment and operations. By the time of his departure from Pendulum in 2006, he had managed over US$ 1.5 billion of assets, performed over 20 portfolio or bank reviews in six Latin American countries, and led or advised on the investment of over US$ 300 million. Mr. Keith also worked with investment and business development in other projects in Mexico, helped to build several companies, and worked with several micro-credit initiatives.

From 1994 to 1999, he was with the Bank of Nova Scotia’s Latin American section managing credit and investments and consequently was posted to Banco Inverlat in Mexico City.

With Inverlat, he held several Director-level positions focused on restructuring specific business or service areas including Retail Banking, Deposits, Credit, Collections, and Customer Service. In Deposits, for the time under Mr. Keith’s leadership, the bank led the market in percentage deposit growth. As Director of Retail Collections he was part of a team that a) established the bank’s collections units as the best in Mexico and b) launched the first private distressed asset sale in the region. As Director of Customer Service, Mr. Keith set the platform that has ranked the bank near or at the top in customer service for the past 7 years in Mexico.

Mr. Keith is married with two daughters. He is fluent in Spanish, has lived in Latin America for an accumulated 20 years and is a U.S. citizen. He has a BA with Honours in International Relations from Queen’s University in Canada and an MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, USA.

Carroll I. Buck, CMA

Chief Financial Officer

Carroll Buck was the founding CFO of Gold Star Biodiesel.

His first business experience was for Maine’s second largest electric utility Bangor Hydro Electric Company in various capacities from Assistant Division Manager through the Vice President level. He was responsible for power line construction, billing, alternative energy supply, and conservation efforts representing the Company in court and before the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

Mr. Carroll served as a Board Member of the Electric Council of New England and was one of ten executives Statewide selected to debate in any forum on nuclear power during three separate initiatives to shut down Maine’s only nuclear reactor.

He was president of his own construction company, arranging financing and construction for housing, apartments and condominium projects. During this period, he developed a method of equity sharing of ownership interest for individual homeowners.

Carroll was a management consultant for a decade providing strategic management and cost evaluation and control services to over 40 firms in 10 industries. Engagements varied in duration and complexity from a court cost analysis to full representation of a water or electric utility in a rate case before the Public Utilities Commission. During his consulting period he began to teach as an adjunct professor in accounting and operations courses.

Carroll accepted a full time position at the University of Nevada – Reno as an Assistant Professor of Accounting in 1997 and remained there until he accepted a full time Lecturer position in Accounting and Finance at San Jose State in 2001. His primary teaching responsibilities are Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, and Cost Accounting at the undergraduate level. At the Graduate level his courses include Accounting, Control Issues, and Management Consulting. The consulting course uses real clients and students are expected to deal with the challenges facing a business in a real time context.

Carroll started his career as a submarine qualified sonar technician aboard the USS Finback SSN670. After leaving the service he continued his education and received an MBA from the University of Maine. He is a Certified Management Accountant.

Professor Buck is a Board Member of the Institute of Management Accountants Palo Alto Chapter and Faculty Advisor to the IMA student chapter at SJSU.

Rene Q. Lacsina, PhD

Senior Agronomist

Dr. Lacsina is a results-oriented international agricultural development specialist with demonstrated expertise in sustainable agriculture in tropical, subtropical, temperate and arid land production systems. He is a Certified Professional Agronomist (CPAg), and a member of the American Registry of Certified Professionals in Agronomy, Crops and Soils. His proven strengths include research and agribusiness project conceptualization, planning, development, implementation, management and people development in domestic and developing country settings.

Projects have included technology transfer, agribusiness strategies, research and international agriculture development focused specifically on hands-on, field level as well as formal classroom settings. He has proven to be unusually sensitive to people at all economic and socio-cultural levels both domestically and in developing countries.

As a scientist at the world-renown International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), actively participated in various research projects that led to the development, transfer and adoption of appropriate rice production technology that fueled the so-called “GREEN REVOLUTION” in Asia. As a result, yield of rice doubled and quadrupled in chronically food deficient countries of South and Southeast Asia which led to self-sufficiency in rice, a major staple of these regions.

As Associate Professor at Virginia State University on assignment with USAID-funded Nepal Agricultural Research and Production Project (ARPP), Dr. Lacsina developed and implemented various formal classroom training programs for station-based scientists responsible for designing and conducting on-station and on-farm research trials and computer applications in agricultural research. He provided technical assistance in strengthening the Kingdom’s agricultural research capabilities in line with Nepal’s Basic Need Program. This involved manpower training and development, overhauling existing programs, facilities and infrastructure.

As Senior Agronomist / Manager of Agricultural Technology for a US Fortune 500 corporation, provided key technical expertise on agronomic, soil and pest management aspects of on-going and potential agricultural development projects in the US and developing countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Professional employment has included Dalgety Produce, Inc., Virginia State University, Ball Corporation, International Rice Research Institute, and Iowa State University.

He received his PhD and MSc in agronomy (crop production and physiology) from Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, USA (1980), and his BA in agronomy from the University of the Philippines. Dr. Lacsina is a member of the American Society of Agronomy, American Society for Horticultural Science, Weed Science Society of America, Council on Agricultural Science and Technology, and Gamma Sigma Delta (Honor Society of Agriculture).

Keith D. Hall

Director, Guyana

Mr. Hall is a former Marine Corps Captain and served during the Vietnam War as a Senior Air Defense Officer using the latest technology in automated and data-linked air defense systems, both air, land and sea based. Mr. Hall then served in the Marine Corps Reserve until 1982 as a company commander of Marine Infantry.

In 1980 Mr. Hall graduated from California State University, Chico with his M.A. in History and immediately went to work for the State Department as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO). In this capacity Mr. Hall served on sensitive assignments in support of United States national objectives in over 25 countries throughout the world. Many of these assignments involved coordination of humanitarian relief and disaster assistance. In 1986 he returned to California law enforcement and retired in 1997 after having served in various capacities within that profession.

Mr. Hall has served as a Project Director for training programs under the auspices of the U.S. State Department and U.S. Justice Dept. as well as a Project Director in private industry for the mining sector in Latin America. Currently Mr. Hall teaches for three Universities in their distance learning programs within the disciplines of History, Criminal Justice, Intelligence and International Terrorism. Mr. Hall has been interviewed on 20/20, 60 minutes and had several TV specials regarding his expertise and experiences in combating international terrorism.

Mr. Hall has held a life long interest and study in emerging technologies dealing with water purification, alternative energy and environmental issues.