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.
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 student of the health care coding system
and 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. Dr. Brandon has also previously served as the
CEO of a Medicare approved outpatient rehabilitation facility which involved working
closely with Medicare and Medicaid. These experiences have given him a unique perspective
on the complexities of health care and led him to realize that the market suffers
first and foremost from excessive costs and any solution must start with solving
that problem.
Dr. Brandon 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
is working to patent 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.
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 starting
his entrepreneurial journey in 1996. Young has helped build several firms including
XploreNet, a Web development and technology consulting firm, dovetail solutions,
a full-scale marketing and communications company, Security Threat Films, producer
of the movie Seclusion, and Management Factor, a training and consulting firm.
Young has raised private equity, successfully sold divisions of XploreNet, and been
honored by the Denver Business Journal as a winner of the "Forty Under 40" award
in 2000, PC Magazine Technology Award, and the Denver Business Journal’s Fastest
Growing Private Company award.
Author
Young teamed with Michael Sevilla to write the book WEBPLICITY - A Critical Guide
to Successful Web Strategies and teamed with Dave Dixon to write Webplicity 2.0,
both books help c-level executives, business owners, marketing, and IT personnel
with understanding and completing a web and technology plan.
Making a Difference
Young is a member of the Denver Active 20-30 Children's Foundation (85 men in their
20's and 30's), serving as President for the 2006 year. This organization raises
nearly a million dollars each year 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.
Additionally, Young sits on the Board of Directors for the St. Anthony’s Hospital
Foundation, Denver Kids Inc., and The Tennyson Center for 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.
Dave Dixon
Dave brings 15-years of marketing and account/product management experience to Talus
from companies such as the worldwide ad agency of Young & Rubicam, the Broadband
division of AT&T (now Comcast) and Great-West Healthcare.
Dave began his career with 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/pay-per-view, digital telephone and high-speed Internet products.
He then managed the operations of a boutique, strategic marketing studio and was
member of the product development team with Great-West Healthcare, where he led
various initiatives to improve their Managed Care and Life Insurance products. Most
recently he led client services and operations for XploreNet, a leading website
and custom web application development firm in the Denver metro area. Dave has an
under graduate degree in business from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he
also swam on an athletic scholarship all four years, as well as an MBA from the
University of Denver, Daniels College of Business.
Outside of business, Dave is very active in the community. He is a member of the
Denver Active 20-30 Children's Foundation, which raises money for at-risk and disadvantaged
youth in Denver & Colorado—having served on its Board of Directors for four years
and as its President in 2007. Dave also currently serves on the Board of Directors
and chairs the Marketing Committee for Denver Kids, Inc., a counseling and mentoring
organization that serves kids in the Denver Public School System and is a member
of the Community Advisory Board and Strategic Marketing Task Force for The Wildlife
Experience, an educational and entertaining wildlife museum in southeast Denver.
Scott L. Smeester
Scott L. Smeester has over 15 years of business development, marketing and sales
experience in his entrepreneurial endeavors. He is the former owner and founder
of The Internet Design Firm or TIDF, LLC, as it became later known, with over 450
satisfied clients. He recently built the successful online business for a consumer
pet product line, growing the client base to over 200,000 customers. In addition
to his extensive experience with business development and sales, he is a degreed
engineer that is skilled with Internet technologies that include custom programming
Internet database 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.
Scott spends the remainder of his time reading, exercising and spending time with
his wife and two boys.