Our Community

Consultants

Our consultants include (i) respected authors create cutting edge solutions, (ii) leading attorneys and consultants who are trusted advisors to companies like yours, (iii) experienced project managers who lead the transformation from paper to digital of companies like yours.

Our consultants bring broad legal, business, and IT experience, work with VeriComply to help identify customer objectives and select from a library of best practices and techniques to achieve their business objectives. Our distinguished group of consultants can be engaged remotely as part of a VeriComply solution, providing customers with unprecedented value. Now your professional services budget can be spent on the best minds engaged in solving your problems, rather than managing your paper or billing for travel. It's part of the New Science of Compliance.

Elizabeth Blust

Real Estate Consultant

Worked for over 10 years on real estate and development projects, including administering multimillion dollar real estate closings for residential and commercial developers as a paralegal in the Luce Forward Real Estate Practice Group, and coordinating land acquisitions for Shea Homes Limited Partnership in San Diego. She has tapped this extensive real estate transactional experience to help VeriComply manage a complex real estate workout transaction that involves thousands of documents and dozens of people. Elizabeth is a California bar member with a law degree from California Western. She also holds a B.A., cum laude, in Communications from the University of Dayton.

Steven Emmons

Former General Counsel of Taco Bell and Author of the Re-Franching Solution

Steve is an expert in Re-Franchising, Divestiture and Acquisition and has authored an Application for which he will offer consulting services to implement. Steve gained unprecedented experience as Chief Legal Officer, Secretary and Director of Taco Bell Corp from 2001 to 2009 and as VP/Associate GC at Yum! Brands from March 2009 to February 2010. He has extensive expertise in franchise relations and legal matters, including leading a legal team in the negotiation and closing of approximately 250 divestiture/re-franchising transactions covering almost 2,000 units. In addition, he led legal teams in acquiring and integrating a competing, 100-unit chain into his client's concept, and in acquiring and integrating a competing, 200-unit chain (with 100+ franchised outlets). None of these projects resulted in the filing of even a single lawsuit. Steve has also taught as an adjunct professor at Chapman University Law School and lectured at Loyola Law School.

Rafiq Ghaswala

Franchise Industry Consultant

Brings 9 years of franchise operations experience, including more than 5 years of experience designing and implementing compliance infrastructures for large organizations. While at Money Mailer Franchise Corp., he led the charge to bring the Legal Services Department into a paperless environment by making agreements and forms available online for the entire organization and extracting data from these agreements for ad hoc reporting. At Gold Coast Dogs Franchise Systems, he streamlined back-end processes to increase efficiency and automated front-end operations to increase franchisee compliance. Mr. Ghaswala has also worked with multi-unit franchisees of Subway, Dunkin Donuts and 7-Eleven. Mr. Ghaswala has an MBA from the Paul Merage School of Business at University of California, Irvine.

Michael (Mickey) Green

Former Vice President/General Counsel/Corporate Secretary of Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation and Worldwide Restaurant Concepts, Inc.

Mickey has almost 40 years of legal experience as a trial lawyer in the Department of Justice, private practice in a Washington, D.C. law firm and served in the legal departments of Montgomery Ward & Co, ARCO and then as Vice President/General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of two publicly traded companies -Worldwide Restaurant Concepts, Inc. ("WRC"), parent company of the Sizzler and Pat & Oscar's Restaurant chains from 19977 through 2006 and Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation from 2007 through 2010. He has extensive expertise in franchise relations and legal matters, working on the ARCO petroleum, ampm and SMOG PROS franchises and the Sizzler restaurant franchise. Mickey supervised the legal team in the negotiation and closing of a significant number of franchise and company owned Sizzler restaurants commencing with a Chapter 11 filed in 1996 and continuing through the sale of the Company. In addition, he participated in the sale of ARCO's assets in the eastern United States in 1985 and led legal teams in acquiring a growth chain for WRC in 2000, and in the sale of WRC to an Australian private equity firm in 2005 and the sale of assets of a division and subsequent financial restructurings while at Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation. Mickey also has extensive experience in corporate governance and directing protracted civil and criminal investigations and litigation.

Marc Loewenthal

Advisor on Enterprise Risk Management

Marc Loewenthal has over 27 years experience in legal and enterprise risk management for financial institutions. Marc is recognized expert in data security and privacy. Mr. Loewenthal helps clients assess and reduce systemic risks associated with poor legal and business processes. He is SVP - Chief Security / Privacy Officer of LPL Financial responsible for enterprise wide security and privacy programs and initiatives and also served as Senior Vice President, Enterprise Risk Management & Chief Privacy Officer for New Century Financial Services Corporation. Previously, he was also Senior Vice President Corporate Affairs & Chief Privacy Officer for Providian Financial Corporation.

Sean McCarthy

Former President and Chief Financial Officer of Diedrich Coffee

Has over 25 years of finance and operations experience in multi-site restaurant, retail and franchise companies and most recently, he was President and Chief Financial Officer of Diedrich Coffee (NASD: DDRX). Sean was awarded CFO of the Year/Outstanding Transformation Agent by the Orange County Business Journal for 2009 after leading the dramatic turnaround of Diedrich Coffee from perennial money losing retail coffeehouse operator to a profitable wholesale coffee company which was sold to Green Mountain Coffee Roasters for almost $290 million in May 2010. Sean joined Diedrich Coffee in April 2004 as Vice President, Controller and was appointed Chief Financial Officer in January 2006 and added the title of President. Prior to Diedrich Coffee, he has held various finance and accounting roles with Orange County restaurant companies such as Taco Bell, El Torito and Coco's Restaurants. Mr. McCarthy earned a Bachelor of Science in business management from Pepperdine University and a MBA from the University of Southern California.

Craig Weichmann

Capital Markets Consultant with Meyer Metz Capital Partners, LLC.

Mr. Weichmann, Capital Markets Consultant with Meyer Metz Capital Partners, LLC, Craig is a distinguished and experienced equity analyst and investment banker who has been repeatedly recognized for his skills by the Wall Street Journal as a top analyst and by Institutional Investor Magazine as the number one stock picker in 1989. His current practice covers mergers and acquisitions, private placements, financial advisory, strategic capital markets planning. While at Morgan Keegan as equity analyst over 20 years where he worked on 30 IPO's and secondary offerings, sell-side engagements for private and public companies, strategic evaluations, Fairness Opinions relating to sale transactions and valuation reviews. Mr. Weichmann frequently speaks at restaurant industry conferences like Restaurant Finance and Development Conference and MUFSO and is regularly quoted in numerous publications and trade journals.  Mr. Weichmann received his (Chartered Financial Analyst) CFA, A B.A. degree in Economics with Departmental Distinction from Southern Methodist University and his M. B. A. degree in finance from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia.

Rick Wolf

Compliance Consultant and Founder and Managing Partner of Lexakos Consulting LLC.

Rick Wolf is a Compliance Consultant and is the Founder and Managing Partner of Lexakos Consulting LLC, a premier business consulting firm, offering governance, risk management and compliance services. Mr. Wolf is the former senior vice president and head of global compliance for Cendant Corporation a Fortune 100 global franchise holding company. Rick led the global effort to transform Cendant’s compliance, alternative dispute resolution, and records and information management systems. Mr. Wolf has a long distinguished history of leading beneficial change in companies and industries. He helped form the Compliance and Ethics Leadership Council, a division of the Corporate Executive Board and developed records management systems, which the General Counsel Roundtable selected as a best practices model. Mr. Wolf is a past president of the Association of Corporate Counsel's Greater New York Chapter, and has served as a liaison to the ABA Presidential Task Force on Attorney-Client Privilege for the ABA Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice.  Mr. Wolf is an elected member of The American Law Institute. Mr. Wolf lectures and writes frequently on corporate governance, compliance, records and information management, and litigation management. Mr. Wolf holds a B.A. in liberal studies from Richard Stockton College. He received his J.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.