Our Team

The Talus management team has the impressive and rare combination of business school training, medical field experience, brokerage experience, and technological entrepreneurship. Collectively the team represents over 85 years of medical, finance, marketing and management experience. These founding members have extensive backgrounds and experience from health care, commodities trading, marketing, website development and business and are all dedicated to exploiting the potential that this opportunity presents for not only Talus, but a commodity exchange partner, the health care industry and health care consumers. Our management team is made up of the following five people: Lorin Brandon, Bill Young, Dave Dixon, Scott Smeester and Michel Vallee.

Bill Young - CEO

Bill Young brings an array of start up, sales, management, and strategy development experience to Talus. He has consulted with hundreds of firms at all different levels including GE, Quiznos, Starz, Qwest, Pak Mail, and State of Colorado since co-founding XploreNet in 1997 (www.xplorenet.com). Young's vision has built a Web development and consulting company that brings a human perspective to a technology-driven industry, becoming a leading technology provider in the Rocky Mountain Region.

XploreNet was different from the beginning, conceived as an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and growing to create divisions in development, consulting, networks, and hosting. Young accomplished all this with no outside equity investment until June of 1998, when the company gained funding from an angel group led by a cofounder of a successful wholesale newspaper distributor in Germany. Young has been honored by the Denver Business Journal as a winner of the "Forty Under 40" award in 2000. The ISP division was successfully sold in 1999 and the hosting division in 2000.

WEBPLICITY - A Critical Guide to Successful Web Strategies

Young teamed with Michael Sevilla to write the book WEBPLICITY - A Critical Guide to Successful Web Strategies The idea was to help c-level executives, business owners, marketing, and IT personnel with understanding and completing a web plan.

Entrepreneur

Young has helped several firms through the start up phase and conducts training seminars and speaks to several schools, organizations, associations, and non-profit groups each year.

Making a Difference

Young is a member of the Denver Active 20-30 Children's Foundation (55 men in their 20's and 30's), serving as President for the 2006 year. This organization raises money for various children's charities like the Griffith Center for Children, I have A Dream, Denver Kids, Inc., and Anchor Center for Blind Children. He served as Chairman of the Denver Polo Classic in 2001 and 2002 and was awarded rookie of the year for 2001 and member of the year for 2002 and 2003. Other events Young participates in through Denver Active 20-30 include Christmas For Kids and Brokers Benefiting Kids. Additionally, Young sits on the Board of Directors for Denver Kids, Inc., The Tennyson Center for Children at Colorado Christian Home and the Anchor Center for Blind Children.

Michel Vallee

Mr. Vallee is the President of ValAtlantic Asset Management, Ltd, a private investment company. A graduate of the University of Paris in France with a Baccalaureate degree in Philosophy and History, Mr. Vallee spent 33 years in the brokerage and investment banking industries. Schooled in finance and economics at New York University while with Goodbody & Co., Mr. Vallee spent nine years as the Chairman of the Board of Blyth Eastman (France), SA and of Paine Webber (France), SA from 1977 to 1986. Until his retirement in June 2001 he was NYSE/NASD registered and an SEC registered Investment Advisor.

Dr. Lorin Brandon, DPM - Founder

Dr. Brandon is the founder and developer of Talus Exchange and the concept of health care trading on the open market. He is a board certified surgeon who has developed and refined the process for over ten years. As a physician Dr. Brandon has seen the effect of high health care costs on his practice and on his patients. He has encountered costly health care and the difficulties it has brought upon families and the country on a personal and professional level as well as on his award winning radio show 'Health In America'. This has led him to rethink the entire health care process and consider it from an entirely new perspective. He has patented the process through which health care will be traded as a commodity. This is the process that will allow Talus Exchange to revolutionize the health care industry and finally bring health care into the 21st century.

Dave Dixon

Dixon brings 13-years of marketing, account/product management and operations experience with companies such as the worldwide ad agency of Young & Rubicam, the Broadband division of AT&T - now Comcast - and Great-West Healthcare.

He began his career with the Young & Rubicam where he was ultimately responsible for managing multi-million dollar advertising and marketing efforts for the West and Midwest regions of the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln-Mercury division. While with the AT&T Broadband, who at the time was the nation's largest cable operator, he managed the development and execution of numerous national marketing campaigns for their digital cable, digital telephone and high-speed Internet products. He then managed the operations of a boutique, strategic marketing studio for a short time prior to joining Great-West Healthcare as a member of the product development team, where he led various initiatives to improve their Managed Care and Life Insurance products. Currently, when not driving Talus forward, Dixon is the Chief Operating Officer of XploreNet, Inc., a web development and online marketing firm. Dixon has a B.S. in Business from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and an M.B.A. from the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver.

Making a Difference

Dixon is a member of the Denver Active 20-30 Children's Foundation (www.da2030.com), serving as President. Dixon has served on the Board of Directors for 5-years, was the Chairman of the Denver Polo Classic (www.denverpolo.org) in 2004, the organization's flagship fundraising event and was honored by the members of Denver Active 20-30 as the Member-of-the-Year in 2004. Dixon also serves on the Board of Directors for the Anchor Center for Blind Children (www.anchorcenter.org) and Denver Kids, Inc. (www.denverkidsinc.org). Additionally, Dixon is a long-time volunteer of the The INTERNATIONAL at Castle Pines PGA golf tournament.

In his spare time, Dixon enjoys skiing, golf, running, cycling and hiking.

Scott L. Smeester

Scott Smeester is the former owner and founder of The Internet Design Firm or TIDF, LLC, as it became later known. In addition to building TIDF, LLC into a successful Internet company back in the mid to late 1990s, with over 450 satisfied clients, he also recently owned and successfully built the online business for consumer pet product line. Smeester has extensive experience with Internet technologies that include programming Internet applications and ecommerce solutions, as well as online marketing and advertising tools.

Scott Smeester earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University in 1992.

Making a Difference

Smeester is dedicated to giving back to the community as a volunteer for the Colorado Special Olympics, or through his involvement with various children's charities. He is an 8-year member of the Denver Active 20-30 Children's Foundation, a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to raising funds for at-risk and disadvantaged youth. And, he served for several years as a member of the Board of Directors for Family Homestead, a non-profit provider of emergency and transitional housing for homeless families.

When not working or helping the community, Scott spends the remainder of his time reading, exercising and spending time with his wife and two boys.