Starting out like so many of his generation, Alan graduated with a degree in business accounting in 1962 and worked in that field for several years before being hired by Cosmopolitan Mutual Insurance Company to help bridge the communications gap between their accounting and information technology (IT) departments. Alan explains that his work there started off with a bang — or at least with a crash. On his first day with IT, Alan was told to run several huge stacks of tab cards through the sorter. He lifted the first stack with great care, only to be surprised, and embarrassed, when the cards exploded from the middle of the teetering stack to cover the floor, many ending up beneath a massive, virtually unmovable machine standing against the wall. Later he learned this was the standard way to haze new employees, providing much amusement to the rest of the staff. While at Cosmo, he learned to program, the first step in his 14-year ascent to Director of IT while working for a series of impressive companies, including Schering Plough, Babcock and Wilcox, and Union Camp Corporation.

After demonstrating his ability to innovate new ideas and methods many times during his years in the corporate world, Alan took the next logical step for an innovator. He went out on his own and founded his own company, Applied Concepts, in 1979. An early contract and consulting company, Applied Concepts originally specialized in development of military products, switching systems for wireless communications, and UNIX — and database software used as a part of Unix — during its earliest stages. As a company owner, Alan joined the New York Chapter of the NACCB. Although already in existence for several years, the New York Chapter had never grown beyond a small group of loyal members. Recognizing Alan’s talents as an innovator, NACCB’s first Director, Peggy Smith, called and asked him to take an active role in growing the chapter’s membership. “Well, of course, I turned her down,” says Alan, when recounting the story. Several more pleas for help from a determined Peggy were refused, also. Then, one day, Alan said, “Why not?” and implemented a new approach to attracting members.

Believing New Yorkers would be more likely to join if the meetings included good food and good booze, he saw that both were provided. Attendee’s limited to company owners, who all had equivalent interests and risks. He also insisted that high standards be applied when admitting members, so that joining was seen as a privilege, rather than something bought by paying dues, and so that members could comfortably discuss their business problems with trusted peers. This formula worked so well that New York went on to become NACCB’s largest and most active chapter. Alan served as Chapter President for five years and as Chapter Representative on NACCB’s Board for eleven years, serving on many committees during that time.

In addition, when the NACCB Board voted in 1998 to finance the founding of the Open Door Education Foundation (the Open Door), Alan once again agreed to help innovate, stepping forward, along with Dave Cassell from the Houston Chapter, to join Grace Gentry as the first Board members of the new organization. The mission was to increase the number of qualified Americans entering the IT Industry, and the Board’s first challenge was to raise money to pursue this goal. After the frenzy of preparation necessary to introduce the Open Door to NACCB’s national membership at the annual Conference, Alan, Dave and Grace were overwhelmed when the members responded with enthusiasm and over $500,000 in donations and pledges. The next task was to implement the Open Door’s first program: awarding scholarships to qualified and deserving students pursuing computer science related degrees throughout the nation.

Alan served on the Open Door Board through mid-1999, at which time he left to concentrate on preparing Applied Concepts for sale. When Applied Concepts was acquired by SBS later that year, Alan announced his retirement to one and all. Not surprisingly, his retirement was shorter than most. Within two months he agreed to serve on SBS’s Board and, not long after that, he founded a new company, Informeta, a small software company using Artificial Intelligence to develop its products. Their first product, Mentys, took 12 man-years to develop. Mentys identifies and corrects erroneous data, fills in missing data, and identifies the causes, sources and effects of erroneous data. It can also predict forward and backward and can read and “learn” from both structured and unstructured numerical and text data, correlating what is learned from all of these different sources to reach single conclusions without human intervention.

As Alan explains it, after 9/11, Mentys was used to reconstruct four weeks’ worth (two weeks prior and two weeks post) of uniquely formulated foreign currency data totally lost during the disaster. Mentys did the reconstruction using existing historical data and three years’ worth of NY Times articles extracted from the Web — all without human intervention. The client called the results “amazing.” Even more amazingly, Mentys can be used on any number of subject matters in any type of industry because it learns solely from the information given to it.

Alan is very optimistic about his company’s future. Certainly those involved with the Open Door hope it is very successful — and that his generous act inspires other NACCB members and Open Door donors to do the same with their company stock. When asked why he decided to be the first to make this type of donation, Alan said, “I consider that I have been very lucky, and this is my way of ‘giving back.’ Giving to the Open Door will make it easier for today’s young people to succeed, as I have, and will help make America stronger.”