RENO, Nev., Feb. 11, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Encompass Holdings, Inc. (Pink Sheets:ECMH), www.encompassholdings.com, announced today the appointment of Joseph Berardi, CEO of Quadrant Data Systems, as its VP of Operations and Business Development and Acquisitions.
Joseph P. Berardi has over 25 years of broad based experience in technology development and corporate management. With an educational background in engineering and corporate finance, Mr. Berardi began his career in the early eighties where he held positions as Chief Engineer for a television production/post-production company, Broadcast Systems Engineer for Panasonic Broadcast Systems and as Director of Engineering for South Bay Film and Video in Los Angeles.
In 1992, as the industry began the transition into the digital era, Mr. Berardi formed his own consulting firm that specialized in upgrading television production and broadcast facilities. During this time he was involved in the design and installation of numerous television facilities in the U.S., Mexico, Central America, Korea, and Turkey.
In 1994 his firm was contracted full time by the Salinas Group, a multi-billion dollar financial conglomerate in Mexico. As Director of Television Operations and Planning, Mr. Berardi led a project management team in the roll-out of TV Azteca's all digital international satellite distribution system and state-of-the-art terrestrial broadcast network consisting of over 320 owned and operated stations nationwide. Mr. Berardi also played a key role in the group's multiple acquisitions of foreign broadcast operations throughout Central and South America.
During his 12-year tenure with the organization, Mr. Berardi held a number of executive management positions including 5 years in R&D where he was primarily responsible for developing new business models around emerging technologies. Mr. Berardi returned to the U.S. in 2003 as CTO and Director of Operations and Engineering for Azteca America, Inc. where he organized and led a team to design and build the national network's flagship station and network headquarters in Los Angeles.
Concurrently with his work with the Salinas Group, Mr. Berardi founded Geoline Communications in 1996 as one of Mexico's first Internet Service Providers. As its CEO, the company had grown to serve over 5000 business and individual customers in the Mexico City metropolitan area and had deployed one of the first high-speed packet switched metro area networks in the country.
Most recently, Mr. Berardi held the position of Executive Vice President of B&B Systems and Convergence Corporation in Glendale, California. His responsibilities included the restructuring and consolidation of the two business units and directing the development of modular, turnkey IT-based high-definition television production and archive systems.
Scott Webber, CEO of Encompass, stated, "Joe is a specialist in strategic development, business modeling and large scale implementation of emerging technologies in a wide range of domestic and international environments. With his success in leading the launch of Quadrant's new High-performance Virtual Computing Services, he will begin focusing on our Rotary Engines and XBoards."
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Forward-looking statements in this news release are made under the "Safe Harbor'' provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Certain important factors could cause results to differ materially from those anticipated by the forward-looking statements, including the impact of changed economic or business conditions, competition, the success of existing and new product releases and other risk factors inherent in product development and other factors discussed from time to time in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.