Category Archives: Management

Robert M. Harbour

Executive Chairman
IBIA Chairman and President

With 40 years of experience, Mr. Harbour is an expert at managing technology-based companies. He serves on the Board of Directors of Start-Up Australia.Mr. Harbour is a veteran of the identity management industry. He co-founded Lumidigm Inc. in July 2001 and served as its Chairman and CEO until 2012, when he became Executive Chairman of the Board. Under his leadership, Lumidigm has introduced highly differentiated biometrics products and authentication solutions to industry-leading customers while developing a strong and diverse patent position for multi-imaging technologies. Mr. Harbour has attracted an outstanding management team and an exceptional group of investors.

Prior to founding Lumidigm, Mr. Harbour successfully started a venture capital company in Australia. As Managing Director, he specialized in early-stage technology companies. Previously, he was active in joint ventures and merger and acquisition activities worldwide and served as the Chairman and CEO of the DuPont/FUJIFILM joint venture in electronic imaging and as a board member for several DuPont investee companies. While at DuPont, Mr. Harbour held management positions in R&D, manufacturing, sales and marketing, business development and international operations.

Mr. Harbour currently serves as Chairman and President of the International Biometrics & Identification Association. Under his leadership, the IBIA promotes the effective and appropriate use of technology to determine identity and enhance security, privacy, productivity, and convenience for individuals, organizations, and governments.

Mr. Harbour graduated from Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota with a BA in Chemistry and from the University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri with a PhD in Physical Chemistry.

Mark Shermetaro

Chief Executive Officer

After serving on the Lumidigm Board of Directors for two years, Mr. Shermetaro became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Lumidigm in 2012. He has a very impressive and diverse background with over 29 years of experience in the technology sector, especially with mechatronic products.

Mr. Shermetaro worked at General Motors, United Technologies Automotive, and Methode Electronics from 1995 through 2011. Mr. Shermetaro’s most recent position at Methode was Vice President of Business Development. In that role he was responsible for leading corporate M&A activity, including acquisitions, forming strategic partnerships, technology licensing, and working with various business units on strategy and revenue generation.

His career began in engineering; he quickly moved into engineering management and operations. Over time, he has held a wide variety of positions including Purchasing & Materials Management, Quoting, Program Management, Sales & Marketing, Business Development, and various corporate functions. He has demonstrated a strong ability to develop vision, strategy and implementation steps and to assemble a team for execution.

Mr. Shermetaro holds two degrees from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan: a Bachelor of Engineering and a Master of Business Administration.

Robert K. Rowe, PhD

Chief Technology Officer and VP of Technology

Dr. Rowe co-founded Lumidigm in July 2001 and is Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Technology. He has over 15 years of experience developing novel optical products at both large and small companies in the U.S. and Europe.

Prior to starting Lumidigm, Rob held a variety of technical and managerial positions with companies including Leica, General Motors, and Sandia National Laboratories. He has been a key contributor in a wide range of technology areas including medical imaging using gamma rays, semiconductor process monitoring of high-purity gases, fabrication of precision optics, infrared imaging, and robotics.

Rob earned a PhD in Optics from the University of Arizona and a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Kettering University. He is inventor or co-inventor on more than 40 U.S. and foreign patents and patents pending for both hardware and algorithms related to biometrics, medical measurements, and other technology areas.

Carol C. LaRotonda, CPA

Director of Finance

As part of the management team, Carol C. LaRotonda is responsible for all aspects of finance and human resources for Lumidigm. She is actively involved in the upper level strategic planning, forecasting, and legal relations for Lumidigm as well as day to day financial operations. Carol has extensive experience with financial and benefit systems design and implementation. She oversees financial and governmental audits and handles all government contract reporting and contract maintenance.

Prior to joining Lumidigm, Carol was an owner/partner of Management Consulting Services where she offered services such as accounting systems setup, due diligence regarding mergers and acquisitions, Sarbanes Oxley compliance testing, and temporary controller functions.

Carol served as Chief Financial Officer at ESCA Inc. where she coordinated mergers and acquisitions, participated in strategic planning, forecasting and legal relations, and was responsible for all aspects of finance and human resources. At Kemp Smith Duncan & Hammond, Carol was responsible for all aspects of the accounting cycle, financial reporting, financial analysis and cash management for the three divisions of the firm. She was the controller at Eagleton Enterprises/Skyline Displays. Prior to that, Carol performed as key member of the team responsible for the merger and the initial public offering for ViaNet on the New York Stock exchange, under the name of US Delivery Service.

Carol is an Adjunct Accounting Professor at the University of New Mexico, where she teaches financial, cost, and tax accounting.

Paul W. Butler

Chief Operating Officer and Vice President of Engineering

Paul Butler joined Lumidigm in 2006 as the VP of Engineering and Operations. He is responsible for cross-company management processes and wall-to-wall product development. Mr. Butler has worked extensively in the technology sector for twenty-seven years. He is a technologist with marketing expertise and an effective leadership style. Practicing customer-centric innovation, he has worked closely with customers, sales, and marketing to produce many award winning products. Mr. Butler also has considerable experience in managing research-oriented initiatives.

Mr. Butler spent most of his career at Motorola, where he held a variety of engineering and management positions in hardware design, software design, systems engineering, and new business development, including Director of Advanced Systems Research at Motorola’s Digital DNA Laboratories and Director of New Product Development in the Semiconductor Components Group.

As Director of Product Planning in corporate marketing at Altera Corporation, Mr. Butler developed new product concepts and managed Altera’s product roadmap. He later served as VP of Engineering for Quicksilver Technology and ChipsAg.

Mr. Butler joined Honeywell International in 2003 where he served as the CTO and VP Engineering for the Honeywell Process Solutions Business. There, he was responsible for the global technology R&D team, wall to wall product development, and the HPS product and technology roadmap. At HPS Mr. Butler led a very large global team and introduced their next generation control platform which invigorated sales and grew the business $400M.

Mr. Butler received a BSEE in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Arizona State University.

Philip J. Scarfo

Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing

Philip J. Scarfo is currently the Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing at Lumidigm. He has more than 20 years of executive-level experience in the biometrics and personal identification industry.

Prior to joining Lumidigm, Mr. Scarfo held a number of senior executive positions in both start-up and Fortune 500 companies, including NEC, HID Global, and Polaroid ID (now L-1). He was CEO and co-founder of Imprivata, a successful identity management software company that employs a wide range of identity and access technologies. Among these are biometrics and other strong authentication technologies, including smart cards, secure tokens, data encryption, OTPs and enterprise-wide identity management software.

As SVP of NEC’s solutions business, Mr. Scarfo was responsible for NEC’s AFIS and Public Safety solutions business in the US, including many of the largest AFIS deployments in service today. At HID Global, he directed the company’s integrated identity and logical access business. These solutions offered biometrics and integrated contact and contactless smart card solutions for both physical and logical access control.

As VP of Polaroid’s worldwide identification business, Mr. Scarfo was responsible for a wide range of identity documents worldwide (US driver’s licenses, passports, national and voter ID card programs). His team was the first to deploy many finger and facial biometrics technologies in large-scale identification programs.

Mr. Scarfo has both an undergraduate (BA Math) and graduate degree (MBA) from Northeastern University in Boston. He also attended Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business for post graduate studies.

Stephen P. Corcoran

Chief Engineer, Director of Engineering, and Co-Founder of Lumidigm

Mr. Corcoran co-founded Lumidigm in July 2001 and currently holds the position of Chief Engineer. He has over 15 years experience in the design, development, and testing of state-of-the-art embedded real-time processing systems.

Prior to starting Lumidigm, Mr. Corcoran was the head of the electrical engineering department at InLight Solutions™, providing engineering services for a variety of novel optical systems. Earlier, Mr. Corcoran has served in various leadership capacities including the Engineering Director for the Real-Time Systems group at SVS Inc., project manager for the Air Force Maui Optical Site Tracker Development, and as signal processing leader for the Advanced Airborne Gimbal Sensor System, INSPECT Helicopter Inspection System, Small Inertial Stabilization System and Low-Cost Space Interferometer programs. Mr. Corcoran provided system-level engineering services to the electro-optical department of Rockwell International for a variety of Department of Defense special access programs.

Mr. Corcoran received his BS in Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla and is a co-inventor of 4 pending U.S. and foreign patents.

Gary Rogers

Director of Operations

Gary Rogers joined Lumidigm in 2003 and is currently the Director of Operations. He is responsible for development and coordination of all manufacturing processes across all products. Mr. Rogers has over 25 years of manufacturing, operations, and quality control experience in high-tech startup operations.

Prior to joining Lumidigm, Mr. Rogers was VP of Operations for NeoPoint, a smart phone startup in San Diego California. In that capacity, Mr. Rogers established and developed all departments required to support the launch of NeoPoint’s smart phone in North America.

From 1996 to 1998, Mr. Rogers was VP of Operations for Tandon Associates, a leading international manufacturer of components for hard disk drives. He was responsible for factory completion and ramping up volume production in Asia.

Mr. Rogers has held other positions including Director of Quality for Reveal Computer Products, Director of Worldwide Quality at Tandon Computer Corporation, and Vice President/General Manager for Franklin Telecommunications. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, Operations Management from California State University Northridge.

Alexander Litz

Director of Software Engineering

Alex Litz is the Director of Software Engineering at Lumidigm, where he leads the cross-platform application development, software architecture design, integration, optimization, and support teams. Mr. Litz has more than ten years of software engineering and application development experience, specializing in embedded fingerprint and face biometric technologies as well as general image processing technologies.

Prior to working at Lumidigm, Mr. Litz worked in the research and development department at Identix Inc, New Jersey, where he was responsible for and lead teams for algorithm porting to various embedded platforms for fingerprint and face-recognition algorithms. Prior to this, he worked at Cognitech Inc., Pasadena California, where he developed and implemented forensic video application and acquisition software. Mr. Litz attended Northern Illinois University, double majoring in Theoretical Computer Science, and Computational Math, from 1993-1998.

Executive Chairman IBIA Chairman and President