Morella & Associates

Mr. Joseph received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his Juris Doctorate degree from the Duquesne School of Law. Over the last 12 years Mr. Joseph has held C-Level executive positions in the services, technology, and industrial markets. His experience includes leading startups, turnarounds, and fast growth enterprises. He has a background in all aspects of operational management, including sales and marketing, operations, finance, and legal. He has significant experience in buy and sell side mergers and acquisitions as well as fund raising through initial public offerings, secondary offerings, venture capital, private equity, strategic partners, and traditional debt based financing.

Mr. Joseph began his executive career with Predictive Systems, a network-consulting firm focused on supporting their clients in building out LAN/WAN networks and building the Network Operations Centers to manage those networks. Mr. Joseph was recruited to open the first satellite office for Predictive in Northern Virginia. In 18 months Mr. Joseph grew the region from zero to a $10 million revenue run rate and 80 people. He was promoted to Chief Operating Officer when the company’s revenue was $27 million and 200 people. At the time Mr. Joseph took over operations Predictive was operating in a regional model with consulting hour utilization at 68%. One of his first initiatives was to create a system that maintained the autonomy and entrepreneurial spirit of the regional model while leveraging the total assets of the company as a whole. This required a restructuring of the current business model which needed to be orchestrated without disrupting the current business. Through Mr. Joseph’s efforts in 60 days utilization went from 68% to 90%. With overall responsibility for operations, in just over two years, the company grew to over 1000 employees, $100 million in revenue, and had a successful public offering in 1999.

After Predictive Systems, the venture firm that seeded Predictive Systems recruited Mr. Joseph to be the CEO of a distressed portfolio company, Three Pillars. Three Pillars was a startup focused on the network security outsourcing market. Three Pillars provided outsourced security services including email, antivirus, firewall, and intrusion detection services. At the time of his appointment the business was undercapitalized, lacked focus in their business model, and had four founders who lacked the capabilities to conceive and execute on a plan to revitalize the company. In the course of building a strategy to turnaround the company it became clear that three of the four founders did not have long term roles and would need to be removed. In the midst of this effort and in spite of the acrimony typically accompanied with a foundational change of this kind Mr. Joseph recruited a qualified management team, restructured the business model, revamped operations, integrated the remaining founder into a productive non-executive role, and raised the necessary additional capital. With that capital he built out a 28,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art Security Operations Center, launched the initial product offering, established the anchor customer base and sold the company to the leading player in the space. The turnaround and successful sale of the business was accomplished in 14 months.

Subsequent to the successful sale of Three Pillars Mr. Joseph founded ESS for the purpose of acquiring two distressed entities in the Industrial Ventilations market in order to provide systems and services to the homeland security and postal automation market. The two predecessor companies that made up ESS were sister companies focused on the air pollution control and dust collection markets. One company was a manufacturer’s representative focused on selling parts and equipment. The other company was a system integrator that designed and installed entire solutions. At the time of the acquisitions the company had a strong sales pipeline, with one extremely large government contract pending. However it also had numerous pending law suits from vendors and former employees and a cost infrastructure that created negative cash flow. The combined companies had negative book value.

Mr. Joseph formed ESS, negotiated with the lending institution to take over the existing debt and acquired the assets of both entities. He then resolved pending litigation, evaluated and right sized the existing infrastructure which resulted in a 50% cut in organizational staff with no loss of revenue or delivery efficiency. In combination with the restructuring Mr. Joseph was able to immediately restore positive cash flow by aggressively managing vendors relative to payables. These moves put the new entity in a position of strength financially and operationally to be awarded the $26m contract the acquired companies had been pursuing. Once the contract was awarded Mr. Joseph moved the company into a new facility and built out a fully integrated systems and process to maximize profit margins for the company. This infrastructure allowed for growing the initial contract to 40m. Over the next three years ESS delivered on 60m in revenue with profit margins ranging from 15% to 20%. From it’s founding, in 3 years ESS obtained and delivered on 60m in contract revenue and grew from 5 to 100 employees.

ESS has been a typical case of an opportunity where the underlying business had strong potential but had over the years built out an organization which was inconsistent and too large for the needs of the business. Structuring a deal with vendors and the lending institution that allowed the business to have cash flow breathing room made it possible to right size the organization. This put the company back in a position of strength to grow. From this position of strength ESS was able to implement technology and process that enabled a streamlined organization that could both grow the top line as well as maximize margins.