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AdvisoryBoard

GPEKS Advisory Board

Below is the list of GPEKS Advisory Board members who are regularly consulted for strategic advice. More positions are currently being filled. This page explains why this board was created and how it functions. The board has members who are authorities in the fields of Project Finance, Energy, Transport, Real Estate, Project Management and Training.

Project Finance

Richard Maryanski

Mentor / Inner Circle Mentor / Elite Legacy Trainer / Real Estate Coach. He is an active investor in Florida, and has been a public speaker and real estate trainer for over 15 years. Rick began his career as a geotechnical consultant in Los Angeles, California, and practiced in this area for 17 years in various California and Florida markets. Thanks to his business and real estate experience, Rick helped launch the original mentorship program for Elite Legacy and has helped to change the lives of many through his trainings and mentorships. Rick currently teaches the Creative Financing class as well as Domestic Land Development. He helped create, created or wrote the books As a subject matter expert for the mentor program, finance class, land development class, foreclosure class, Commercial class, and he personally has mentored over 1,500 students over the last 20 years and taught several thousand students in classes live and on-line.

Video Bio

  

Energy

{:name}Lester Issac

Brazilian business developer, focused on disruptive and cutting edge technologies to enhance people´s quality of life in diverse sectors such Health, Education, Mobility, Solid Waste, and Economic & Sustainable solutions to reduce oil, gas and electricity costs in industrial and commercial installations.            

Lester is the top executive of Grupo SLX, and Solexor Tecnologias Solares. Lester work is focused on cutting down oil, gas and electricity expenses and, at the same time, promoting a positive environmental and financial impact in a wide range of industries by using sustainable technologies to produce heat, cool and electricity. With expertise in sustainable solution´s feasibility analysis and technical HVAC solutions mainly using solar technologies, Lester truly thinks these technologies are first financially feasible, contributing to improve industries' financial health and sustainability goals, building a legacy aimed at leaving a cleaner world for the next generations.

LinkedIn Profile

  

Transport

{:name}Joseph Parker

Joe is the Chairman of the Board for North American General Bus Corporation, Inc,, which is developing breakthrough technology Solar and Hydrogen buses and vehicles.

Joe is also the Chairman of Parker Transnational Industries, LLC, a parent holding company of several of his international business ventures, including CD3I International Business Development, LLC. In developing Business Corporation and others. Since 2003 Joe has created several PTI subsidiary automotive companies that have been sold or merged with publicly-held companies. He also chaired or has been CEO of publicly-held companies. These ventures have created national public transportation systems, automotive manufacturing facilities, precious metals mines, and other businesses.

Lieutenant colonel Parker permanetly retired from the military in 1994 and took a position with General Motors as Fleet Sales Manager for Africa and the Middle East. While in this position, he made the largest single fleet sale in GM’s 75-year Africa history, with an 850 vehicle, $37M sale to the government of Namibia. He was also responsible for the technical development of the line of right-hand-drive (RHD) Chevy trucks, and managed the establishment of a Chevrolet upfit and assembly facility for the new RHD vehicles in Namibia. He was instrumental in the identification of viable dealers and business partners for GM all over the world, and during that period, the number of GM dealers in Africa and the Middle East doubled. He represented GM as Vice Chairman on the Board of Directors of the Corporate Council for Africa, and was responsible for GM’s leadership position in the US-Africa and Middle East business community. He testified on behalf of General Motors numerous times at Congressional hearings involving trade related issues, and spent much of his time working automotive trade issues at the very highest levels of government in the US, Africa, and the Middle East. He also lead numerous trade missions to Africa and the Middle East, directed several US – Africa Business Summits, and hosted numerous Presidential level trade missions to the US.

In early 1999, Joe left GM for a short tour as Vice President for Africa Operations with EuroAmer, a real estate development company. There he negotiated an $80M housing project in Algeria, including 100% of the financing. From 2000-2001 Joe served as Senior Vice President of World Transport Authority. There he negotiated and closed over two thirds of all the company contracts.

Joe initially left the service in 1981 and became a manufacturing engineer at the Texas Instruments plant in Attleboro, Massachusetts. In less than six months he received a promotion to Manufacturing Supervisor, where his innovations improved profitability by 25%, improved production efficiency and quality by 50%, and set TI records for production output.

Joe graduated at the top of his class from the US Military Academy at West Point a with a BS in General Engineering, and received a Presidential Appointment to the West Point Military Academy. He excelled in military studies, engineering, and physics, and became a Regimental Logistics Officer. After completing the Officer and Ranger school, Joe served in a number of military leadership positions, graduated at the top of his class in the Chemical, Biological, and Chemical Warfare School, and won recognition for his development of the Army’s first TOW antitank missile combat training program.

  

Real Estate

martin limMartin Lim

After graduating as a civil engineer more than 30 years ago, Martin embarked upon a journey that took him through diverse fields like building design consultancy, project management, development management, civil engineering, sustainable building design, lifecycle costing, facilities management, energy performance contracting, total asset management, operations and corporate management.

As a senior management executive in various organisations, he was instrumental in leading transformational business initiatives including five start-ups as founder and  technopreneur and holding senior position in public listed subsidiaries with a staff strength ranging between 400 to 1,200 staff in the local and international markets. During 2003 to 2006, he was headhunted into Honeywell South East Asia to review business strategies and re-brand the company. Over a period of five years, Martin was responsible for the introduction of energy services, total asset management, lifecycle management, customer relationship management, marketing, strategic planning, business development and mergers and acquisition (M&A). The integration of these strategies through the strong support of the regional team successfully turned around Honeywell into the black and transformed its business positioning in South East Asia as a leading player.

In the process, he was one of the influential leads in ensuring that project delivery teams were accountable to key clients in the finance, technology, retail, residential, commercial and industrial sectors as well as managing multi-million dollar projects in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and China. His delivery approach has always been dynamic, innovative, focussed with a high level of strategic vision and flexibility in responding to evolving practices and expectations

One of the biggest responsibility was as the previous Development Management Director for  the multibillion 9,450 hectare New Clark City, Philippines, a joint project between the Philippines Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA), Japan Overseas Infrastructure Investment Corporation for Transport and Urban Development (JOIN) and Surbana Jurong (SJ). He worked with a an international multi-disciplinary team to develop the master plan review, urban design guidelines, smart city design, sustainable city guidelines, Inforcom technology (ICT) blueprint, visioning, resiliency framework, infrastructure surveying, planning, design and construction management.

In the field of property management, his experience spans into total asset management, lifecycle costing and facilities management with a portfolio of over 50 million square feet managed for clients in the infrastructure, commercial, industrial, retail, pharmaceutical, healthcare, institutional and residential segments.

Since 2020, Martin is involved as a principal project manager in the Surbana Jurong (SJ) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) S$61 million joint corporate lab five-year partnership, leveraging NTU’s strengths in engineering and sustainability research, and Surbana Jurong’s track record in providing urban, infrastructure and industrial solutions to its global customers. Funded by the National Research Foundation Singapore (NRF), this joint corporate laboratory aims to develop next-generation sustainable solutions to tackle industrial and complex urban challenges with innovative and sustainable solutions that will alleviate near term urban challenges and improve lives for people around the world. His role includes identifying innovation solutions with commercial viability to develop and integrate into the company’s value chain in the international markets

Martin was intensely involved with late world-renown engineer – Dr Alfred Yee and Dr Hans Krock in developing next generation renewable energy through Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC). This work was a reference point for his post-graduate work on the hydrogen economy to solve the world’s energy issues utilising the technology in OTEC to produce hydrogen for powering up cities and the built environment thereby contributing towards the reduction of carbon emission for the built environment.

As an author and public speaker, Martin has presented technical papers in the International Power Quality Conference, International Power Engineering Conference and the International Green Building Conference and other regional conferences; became an accomplished author/writer with more than 100 articles published in the Straits Times, Business Times, South East Asia journal and The Singapore Engineer.

He is actively involved with the Building and Construction Authority (BCA) on various green environment initiatives, providing professional advice on the design and maintenance of environmentally-friendly buildings to Tianjin Eco-City; developing a lifecycle management module for BCA in the Green Mark for Facilities Managers (GMFM) certification course as well as co-developing the BCA Green Mark for restaurants, a new criteria for the food and beverage industry.
 
  

Real Estate            
(eco/Green Tourism)

{:name}Wilson Jn.  Baptiste

Wilson is an experienced tourism professional and is skilled in management with emphasis in accounting. Wilson has over two decades of hotel and tourism administration experience promoting Caribbean destinations in the U.S market. Wilson also worked in the Financial Services sector in New York as a financial consultant with New York Life Insurance and John Hancock, worked with a private equity firm and also served as a consultant with the United Nations Development Program in New York.

In 2010, Wislon founded “The Gems of St. Lucia” to develop strategic alliances with other enterprises in the public and private sector, both nationally and globally. This concept was formed with the goals and objectives of utilizing the presence of nationals globally for the purpose of marketing their St. Lucia’s tourism products and other products under the theme “Marketing is Everybody’s Business.” These products have been branded “Gems.” Gems contributes towards filling a gap during the slow season in the hospitality sector in the Caribbean, and more precisely, in the small hotel sector which has neither the financial capacity nor the human resources to engage in overseas marketing, individually.

Wilson holds an Associate Degree in Travel and Tourism from City University of New York (CUNY) a Bachelor’s in Hotel and Tourism Administration from New York University (NYU), N.Y., a Master’s in Travel and Tourism from New York University, in December, 2012 and a Certificate of Specialization in Financial and Managerial Accounting for Hotels from the Educational Institute of the American Hotel and Motel Association.

LinkedIn Profile

  

Project Management

{:name} Eric Uyttewaal

Eric is one of the foremost trainers, consultants and authors on the use of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) applications from Microsoft, and works at the frontiers of managing projects, programs and portfolios and making sure the resources are available to accomplish them. He has  authored the books ‘Forecast Scheduling with Microsoft Project 2010/2013/2018’ and 'Forecasting Programs'.            

Eric is President of ProjectPro, a company specializing in training and consulting in Microsoft Project, Project Server and Project Online. ProjectPro provides a certification curriculum in Microsoft Project. Formerly, he was Executive Director at the International Institute for Learning (IIL) in New York. At IIL, he developed and managed the White, Orange, Blue and Black Belt certification curriculum in Microsoft Project and Project Server. Eric has managed many organizational change and management development projects. He has been involved in many projects and some programs of up to $200 million. Eric has presented in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Caribbean, China and South-Korea. In 1997, he was President of the Ottawa Chapter of PMI. In 2009/2010 he was president of the MPUG-Ottawa chapter (Microsoft Project Users Group). Eric received an award from MPUG in 2012 ('Community Leader') and from Microsoft (‘MVP Project’ - Most Valuable Professional) from 2010 – 2017. In May of 2009, Eric received an award from PMI for his ‘Significant Contributions to the Scheduling Profession’.            

These contributions are books, articles, certifications and new concepts like: ‘Principle of Dynamic Scheduling’ (When one thing changes in your project, you should have to update only one cell in your schedule), the ‘Resource-Critical Path’ (see his books), Earlier-Than dependencies (see article ‘Scheduling is not about chronology; it is about logic’) and the 1%-10% rule to establish a proper level of detail in project schedules (see his books).            

LinkedIn Profile

  

Training

Rima Aristocrat

Rima Aristocrat is the current president of 25-year-old TeKnoWave Inc. offering industry-led, job-ready skills training and education/capacity building enabling adults to transition into careers in business, healthcare, technology, and Cybersecurity. As the president and CEO of Willis College for 35 years, Rima provided leadership to a team that was focused on providing education and training to all Canadians in the Ottawa area. As the founder and president of TeKnoWave Inc., Canada’s first national Indigenous nonprofit organization, Rima continues to provide leadership and programs geared to indigenous community development.

Rima is the founder of several other organizations including the Canadian Association of Immigrant Professionals, Willis Cybersecurity Academy,  Scholarships, Engaging   
Women in Cybersecurity Global Forum and founding director of the Veteran Friendly Transition Program.

She is the only Canadian represented on MS Education Advisory Council, has been a frequent invited guest speaker and has appeared on many magazines as the cover page story.

She has received numerous national and international recognitions for her contribution to post- secondary education including 2018-19 Global Cyber Startup Observatory Cyber Hall of Fame Canada, France and US Slides.

Rima Aristocrat has recently been appointed as honorary Colonel for the Canadian Forces Network Operations Centre (CFNOC).   
 

Publications/Articles: Aristocrat R., (1995) Adult Learner Back in Classroom. Ottawa. Aristocrat R., Wilson K.,   

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