The Brighter Minds management team is comprised of experienced, industry leaders from the software and book publishing fields.
Sam Ifergan, Chairman & CEO
Sam has 20 years of entrepreneurial, technology, and venture capital experience. He has co-founded and run several companies in the telecom, media and life sciences sectors. He sits on numerous boards both public and private.
Currently he is managing director of Sirius Capital partners, a private equity firm committed to investing in strong, emerging companies, and supporting them through their growth. He is also President of Hargan Ventures an early-stage venture capital firm focused on start-ups. Both are based in Toronto.
Prior to that he was a consultant with Oliver Wyman, the world’s second largest strategy consulting firm, where he was involved in a number of industries and advised Fortune 500 companies on corporate strategy including M&A, IPOs and sales strategy. Mr. Ifergan has also held general management and technical roles at NCR, where he led the deployment of enterprise-grade information technology systems.
Sam holds a Bachelor of Engineering from McGill University and an MBA from the John Molson School of Business (Concordia University). He is married to Nancy Ifergan for 15 years and has three boys Noah, David and Daniel.
Richard Pam, Co-Founder, Vice President of Sales
Richard co-founded Brighter Minds. He heads the company’s business development and licensing efforts. Mr. Pam has extensive educational and software industry experience and was an educator for over 15 years.
Kevin Hess, Vice President of Finance & Accounting
Kevin has 17 years of corporate finance and accounting experience with firms such as Cardinal Health and Nationwide Insurance.
Jody McLain, Vice President of Operations
Jody has over 10 years of sales and marketing experience with such organizations as Relix Magazine, Jacor Communications and CompUSA. She manages the company’s new media initiatives.
