CEO: Gary Beall, PhD. CEO & Founder							

Lead Partner: Mark Fields, Jason Preston							

Company Website: www.nabacoinc.com 							

Nabaco’s game-changing approach to produce preservation is through an  edible, organic coating called NatuWrap® that works by retaining  moisture and restricting the passage of air into fruits and vegetables.  This same nanotechnology safely also prolongs the freshness of floral  products.

NatuWrap®, meets all FDA requirements for safe consumption, is  certified for use on organic produce and is extremely cost effective.

“I literally started my career in the basement of a bank processing checks on an NCR machine.”  Learning businesses from the bottom up is a keystone of Mark’s professional journey.  From his training years at Union Bank and pioneering time with TD Securities in the technology and communications sector, through the launch of Ernst & Young’s Capital Services Group and CME Group’s IPO, Fields was always at the frontier of his organizations’ efforts to achieve long-term strategic goals.  Just prior to joining ALP, Mark was CEO of Wickr Inc., a secure messaging and communications platform where he refocused the business from a consumer-targeted messaging platform into an enterprise-worthy secure collaboration platform.  Prior to Wickr, Fields spent 15 years at CME Group as a leader in corporate finance running M&A, business, and strategy development teams. CME executed over $20Bn in M&A transactions during his tenure.  Fields led the team that established the cleared interest rate swap product line which at CME which has cleared $ trillions of trades as a central counterparty.  Fields conceived, founded, and was appointed the Managing Director of CME Ventures, the company’s corporate venture capital group.  Fields headed the investment committee and led the investment team which made minority investments in emerging technology companies in cybersecurity, settlement & payment, computational, AI, and big data software tools. In 2015, Fields was recognized as one of Crain’s Chicago Business Tech 50.  Fields holds a BA in Economics from Rutgers University and an MBA from Pepperdine University.  Fields currently serves as a board member at ALP portfolio companies Baton Systems, Ion Storage Systems, Ascent Technologies, and as an observer at Nabaco, Inc.  Between 2011 and 2021, Fields served on the Board of Trustees at Dominican University, and as a Senior Advisor to Dominican’s Brennan Business School.  Fields also served as an establishing member of the Board of Black Tech Mecca.

Mark Fields

Partner

Jason Preston is a Partner. He is the  co-founder of a conference and community called Dent, and for a time  ran a consultancy that helped companies build great teams. Like most who  find themselves doing interesting things, it is difficult for Jason to  explain how he wound up doing them. 

Jason was born in Texas but grew up  in Bellevue, Washington. After attending Occidental College in Los  Angeles, Jason moved to Seattle and began working on one of the first  conferences about business blogging. From there, he followed his nose:  he met Matt Mullenweg and learned the ins and outs of WordPress (when  MovableType was the thing), he worked with the early team at Twitter to  build the world’s first Twitter conference, and helped connect Hollywood  to Silicon Valley through a series of hospitality suites.  

Throughout this process, Jason  started to wonder at the difference between leaders that saw  extraordinary success and those that merely did OK. Why did some people  and some teams “dent the universe” — as Steve Jobs once said? 

This question led Jason to co-found  the Dent Conference with Steve Broback. The conference finds actionable  lessons from success and creates an environment for people to meet each  other and build friendships. Dent draws a remarkable set of  participants: astronauts, artists whose medium is genetically engineered  plants, technology CEOs, magicians, young entrepreneurs, world champion  free divers, and consulting detectives. OK — just one consulting  detective. 

Members of the Dent community began  asking Jason for advice, so he decided to share the lessons from years  of interviews, pattern-matching, and practice. As a consultant, he  helped companies and teams make foundational decisions about their  culture and smart strategic decisions about their products and their  stories. 

Jason is also a part-time lecturer in  the Human Centered Design and Engineering department at the University  of Washington. He reads a lot of books, is a fan of esports, and is the  dungeon master in his local D&D game.

Nabaco

Company Overview

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