Board of Directors
Zounds has assembled a world class Board of Directors with expertise in fields ranging from computers/electronics, retail, marketing and medical sales.
Bannus Hudson is Chairman of the Board for Zounds, Inc. and is the former Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Beverages & More! Mr. Hudson brings an impressive twenty-nine year track record of successfully building and managing business entities. From 1995 to 1997, Mr. Hudson served as President and CEO of Equity Enterprises, Inc., an independent strategic advisory service for CEO's and corporations during periods of growth, start-up, turnaround and expansion. As President and CEO of United States Shoe Corporation (NYSE) from 1990 through 1995, Mr. Hudson successfully turned around the company's $700 million Footwear Group and completed a major restructuring of the company's $1.2 billion Apparel Retailing Group, which included the Casual Corner and Petite Sophisticate specialty retail chains. He negotiated the sale of the Footwear Group for a substantial premium to Nine West Group and the sale of U.S. Shoe to Luxottica SpA of Italy in 1995. U.S. Shoe's market capitalization was $400-500 million in the Fall of 1993, when most of the restructuring and management team changes were completed; this nearly doubled over the following twelve months and was increased to roughly $1.4 billion with the final merger negotiations with Luxottica SpA. Mr. Hudson joined U.S. Shoe as part of LensCrafters in 1985, where he served as President and CEO. Mr. Hudson was instrumental in helping the company achieve worldwide industry leadership and growing the chain from twenty-five stores and $40 million in annual sales in 1985 to over six hundred stores and $900 million in sales. Previously, Mr. Hudson enjoyed a seventeen year career with Procter & Gamble where he held senior level positions in manufacturing, brand management and category management for a number of the company's most successful brands. Mr. Hudson has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas.
Samuel Thomasson is the Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Zounds, Inc. Mr. Thomasson has twenty-two years of experience in the analog and digital signal processing fields in general management, design, operations, quality and marketing management roles at companies including Acoustic Technologies (President and CEO), Medtronic (Quality and Reliability Manager, Manufacturing Manager), VLSI Technology (Design Manager, Marketing Manager, Quality Manager) and Motorola (Government Liaison, Quality Engineer, Manufacturing Engineer). Mr. Thomasson's experience includes extensive work with several major customers including AT&T, IBM, Intel and Hewlett Packard. Mr. Thomasson earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix. He has been granted 20 patents (several more pending) in the areas of audio and telecommunications technology.
William Turner is the Co-Founder and member of the company's board of directors. Mr. Turner is Managing Director of Signature Capital, a venture capital firm that he co-founded in 1997 and an affiliate of the Placement Agent. Between 1983 and 1989, Mr. Turner served as President, COO and a Director of Automatic Data Processing (ADP - NYSE), a computerized transaction processing, data communication and information services firm with 1989 annual revenues of over $2 billion. In 1989, Mr. Turner formed Turner and Partners, a management services firm, specializing in the management of leveraged buy outs. For one client, Forstmann Little, he served as Executive Chairman and/or Chief Executive Officer for over thirty separate business units with combined annual sales of over $2.5 billion. From 1979 to 1983, he served as the President of Texas Instruments Consumer Products Division. Earlier in his career, he held systems engineering, marketing and senior management positions at Sylvania Electronics and minicomputer maker, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). He has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac - NYSE) since 1990 and currently serves on the boards of several private venture capital companies including Acoustic Technologies, NetNumber, Tango Networks, Helium Exchange and VIRxSYS Corporation.
Lawrence Michaelis, M.D. is a Director and is also Chairman of the Board of Advisors. He attended Indiana University Medical School and trained in General, Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Virginia, where he also earned a Master's Degree in Surgical Physiology. After four years as Senior Surgeon at the National Heart and Lung Institute of the National Institutes of Health, he was recruited in 1975 as the first Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Northwestern University Medical School (NUMS) and Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) in Chicago, a position he held until 1989. From 1989 to 2000 he served as Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President of Medical Affairs at NMH and as an Associate Dean of NUMS. Dr. Michaelis has served as Vice President of the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation and as President of Northwestern Healthcare Corporation. He has been a member of and has served in an array of management and board positions in public and private companies, including Board Chairman of VIRxSYS. He has been involved with a wide variety of professional organizations including the Presidency of the American Heart Association of Metropolitan Chicago. He remains a tenured Professor of Surgery at NUMS and continues to assist in fundraising for the Northwestern Memorial Foundation. Dr. Michaelis is the author of over one hundred and thirty peer reviewed journal articles.
Paula Schmitz Ph.D., J.D., M.B.A., C.F.A. is the Secretary of the Company's board of directors and General Counsel. She has extensive experience in technology based companies, handling a variety of legal issues including patents and other intellectual property rights, as well as health care and technology licensing. Dr. Schmitz has worked in both large law firms and as inside general counsel to technology companies in biotechnology, software, hardware, internet, medical device, wireless communications and healthcare. In addition to her legal background, Dr. Schmitz has an extensive professional background in corporate finance, is a Chartered Financial Analyst (C.F.A.) and an arbitrator for the N.A.S.D. Dr. Schmitz earned a law degree from The University of Texas at Austin, following her completion of a Ph.D. in finance as well as a M.B.A., also from The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Schmitz earned her undergraduate degree from Davidson College.