| |  | | Gary Held | | President, CTEK | | For over 30 years Gary Held has been involved in almost every aspect of starting, building, growing and selling businesses. Following ten excruciating years of corporate law practice in his own law firm, Gary became president of Connecting Point of America on the day of its Chapter 11 filing. Over the next four years the company bootstrapped its revenues from $0 to over $250M, exited Chapter 11, paid off all creditors, and sold for over $50M. Following that Gary became president of Northgate Computers, a small start-up hardware manufacturer. During the next three years Northgate grew to over $200M in revenues, went from 11 employees to 968, was listed as # 57 and #11 on the Inc. 500, went public, and was eventually sold. Since that time Gary spent a number of years screwing around, but also helped dozens of early stage and start-up companies in fields as wide ranging as golf club manufacturing and sales, medical diagnostics and pharmaceuticals, enterprise software and web analytics, network infrastructure design and implementation, women's clothing design, and more.
Gary is currently president of CTEK, a 501c3 non-profit organization assisting innovative entrepreneurs to create profitable and sustainable businesses through access to early and seed stage capital, a network of venture centers and experienced business advisors, and assisting in the commercialization of innovative technologies.
Among other charitable activities, Gary has served on the Institutional Review Board of HealthOne Alliance (now Colorado Health), the board of the Bard Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado-Denver, the Economic Development Council of the Downtown Denver Partnership, and was the inaugural speaker for the MBA class at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.
Gary received a BA from Whittier College and his law degree from the University of Denver College of Law. Gary lives with his wife and the youngest of two daughters in Denver, Colorado, and is glad his jobs have never felt like real work (except the law thing).
|
|
|
|
|
|
