Our Team

Alan Larson, Co-Founder & C.E.O.

Alan grew up on a dairy farm in northern Iowa at a time when the Milky Way still blazed in the midnight sky. He began his work career at the age of four carrying mash to the hen house. Since then, he has garnered over fifteen years of senior management experience beginning at the age of twenty-six when he took over the corporate controller duties of Hubbard Milling Company, a $225 million diversified agricultural company. Alan has held the top financial and operational management positions in two very successful startups, Citrix Systems, Inc. and HBS International. He has done volunteer work and served on local boards for organizations such as the Salvation Army, the United Way, the Nature Conservancy, and the United Methodist Church. He is a Bush Leadership Fellow, holds a B.S. from Minnesota State University and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.

Ken Tam, Co-Founder & President

Born in Hong Kong, Ken moved to California at the age of eight, and immediately began his entrepreneurial career with his own paper route. In his mid-twenties, Ken spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ken has twenty years of operating and financial background, building and managing fast-growth companies and startups. He held the positions of C.O.O. and C.F.O. at New Life Bakery, and was a member of the management team at Fresh Express, helping transform a commodities vegetable company into the leader of fresh cut salads. Ken started the German subsidiary of Orchid Technology, creating a distribution system that tripled German sales. A father of two children, Ken speaks five languages. He received his B.S. from University of California, Davis and his M.B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ever since he can remember, Dan has been around computers, building his first ones from parts. It only took one semester of college for Dan to realize he had already learned more than they could teach him and so he launched into what has already been a highly successful career. Dan has extensive development experience including serving as the Chief Technical Officer of Secure Resolutions, where he was responsible for the development and integration of Resolution AntiVirus, a Web-based security program. Prior to that, Dan held high-level development positions at McAfee and Contour Software. He is an expert in multiple programming languages and systems. Dan holds seven U.S. patents for products he developed and has filed for nearly twenty additional patents.

Dione is a true California girl who grew up thinking that Silicon Valley was just like any other place. When she finally ventured east of Interstate 5, she decided there was a lot more of the world to see, traveling through over three dozen countries, and living and working in both Europe and the Pacific Rim. Dione leverages 15 years of experience developing and implementing marketing, communications and partner development programs. She has helped emerging and established organizations generate market awareness and increase sales. While at Sun Microsystems, she held positions in channel development, worldwide field communications, and international sales operations. Prior to Sun, Dione obtained telephone industry experience working for Pacific Bell. A mother of two children, Dione volunteers at her local school and provides pro-bono marketing and communications support to several non-profit organizations. Dione is especially interested in the issue of personal safety, having personally been involved in search efforts for a missing relative. Dione holds a B.A. degree in Economics and Communications and an M.B.A. degree, both from Stanford University.

Playing in his Florida backyard where an alligator lived in the canal helped Ken get comfortable with tenuous situations at an early age. Since then, Ken has been quick to embrace tough situations, including living in a Louisiana hotel for six months while working for FEMA to provide aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Ken has 17 years of experience in strategy, marketing, and consulting and has served in senior leadership roles in several companies. He served as the founding President of a charitable foundation serving a family of global charities, and as the founding CEO of an internet travel company. He has worked for Bain & Company, then as an independent consultant, assisting Fortune 50 clients in developing growth strategies and designing new products. Ken holds a B.S. from the University of Florida and an M.B.A. with honors from the University of Chicago.

Being smuggled into a Greenwich Village house party by his older brother where he sat next to Simon & Garfunkel, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan as they jammed was a foreshadowing of what was to come. Marty would later be shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the biggest rock stars in the world while his company provided personal protection services for them. Marty has more than thirty-three years experience in the personal security field, and is an expert in cutting-edge security systems. A former member of the Jersey City Police Department, he spent twenty-five years at United Parcel Service, where he was responsible for all levels of security, including positions as lead director of Workplace Threat Response Team, and Loss Prevention area manager. For the past five years, Marty has been C.E.O. of The International Protection & Investigation Agency, Inc., where he provides security services for a variety of corporate and celebrity clients. Marty is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a certified bodyguard, licensed private detective, certified fraud examiner, and is certified in Homeland Security-Level III. He holds a B.S. from Nyack College and an M.B.A. and doctorate in management from the University of Phoenix.