Meet the Team

Mr. Morgan is responsible for all aspects of operations of Sonoma Media Partners.  He is a former Xerox Corp executive and has over 30 years of experience as a Founder, Financier, and CEO of venture capital backed companies including: Human Engineered Software (Microsoft financed); Office Club/Office Depot (the largest global office products retailer) (NYSE: ODP);  MedChoice (medical products retail distribution); U.S. Electricar/Enova Systems (electric vehicles & drive systems) (AMEX: ENA & AIM: ENV/ENVS); Med*Rite Laboratories (FDA Approved medical device company); and Alternative Technologies, Int’l., a Merchant Banking firm. Mr. Morgan is experienced in all aspects of corporate development from start-up to exit. Education:  Bachelor of Science degree, Business Administration & Product Management, Calif. State University.  MBA course work, UC Berkeley & Golden Gate University.

Mr. Rowlands is responsible for business development at Sonoma Media Partners.  From 2007 to 2012, Mr. Rowlands has been a Vice President at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, providing portfolio management services and financing services for individuals and businesses. Previously, from 1984 to 2007, Mr. Rowlands was a Senior Financial Advisor at Merrill Lynch, where he financed many small, mid-size and large companies, including two public offerings, and managed portfolios valued at over $300 million. At Merrill Lynch Mr. Rowlands also raised seed capital, mezzanine financing, convertible financing, lines of credit, acquisition financing, working capital loans, real estate financing, and other financing for numerous companies. Mr. Rowlands has been self-taught in working with HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, and JavaScript, and also works with images using Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, and Flash. From 1977 to 1981, while attending Sonoma State University, he worked as a full time as a Medical Technologist and Toxicologist.  Mr. Rowlands holds a Bachelor of Arts Biology degree, with minors in Chemistry and Physics, from Sonoma State University (1981).

Steve Saleen is considered to be one of the most successful and well known automotive legends in the country. He was born and raised in Southern California, which has been the home of the “hot Rod” culture for decades. Like many of his peers, he was inspired by the performance and muscle car era of the time. Steve Saleen’s entrepreneurial business plan laid the groundwork for an entire new industry of design, engineering, manufacturing, and sales of high performance vehicles that were race proven and marketed for sales through new car dealership showrooms nationwide; this included very successful racing programs featuring himself as a lead driver in vehicles of his design that went on to win numerous national championships. Steve Saleen’s approach to tie in the marketing with vendors created a never before seen collaboration of race proven parts that were subsequently used for the street cars. Steve Saleen is recognized worldwide for his expertise in small volume vehicle manufacturing, vehicle certification processes and mass customization – creating customized products in an efficient mass – production manner. From humble beginnings in a 3 car garage to an expansive network for multiple manufacturing plants and distributions centers in North America and Asia, Steve Saleen dominated the automotive landscape with his much respected brand. Saleen Mustangs, Sportrucks, Saleen SSC, Saleen S351 and S281 led the way for the truly innovative and world class “Great American Supercar”, the Saleen S7, which is the most successful supercar to date, having won races at virtually every major racetrack in the world, bar none, including Daytona (US), 24 Hours of LeMans (France), Silverstone (England), Monza (Italy), and nurburgring (Germany). Other significant accomplishments are the engineering, development and subsequent manufacturing of Ford Motor Company’s supercar, the Ford GT (40, paint and sub-assembly of the Dodge Viper, the supercharged Harley Davidson Ford F150 and the construction of the first “running’ Camaro for its introduction in the movie “Transformer”. Numerous Hollywood films have featured Saleen vehicles such as “Fast and Furious”, “Bruce Almighty”, “Transformers” (as the Decepticon “Barricade”) and “Ironman”. As the “History Channel” program pointed out, Steve Saleen is part of a trio of “legendary” performance car builders alongside Enzo Ferrari and Ferdinand Porsche. Steve Saleen is currently the President and CEO of SMS Supercars and Chairman and CEO Saleen Electric Automotive, Inc, continues to build the next generation of ultra performance cars, and now is ready to implement the Steve Saleen branded electric vehicles. Steve has a business degree from USC.

Naomi Tickle is an International speaker, career consultant and author of What Makes People Tick and Why. She was first introduced to Face Pattern Recognition 22 years ago.  Amazed by the accuracy, she could immediately see how this approach could help couples to better understand and work with each other.

Face Pattern Recognition offers a new approach for discovering who we are.  It’s piece of the blue print we were born with.  It helps us to discover the unique qualities in every individual.  When Naomi sees a person’s face, no matter where they live in the world, she sees the potential that is written in the face.  Potential that individual may never discover.  Her passion is about making a difference to people’s lives.

Naomi has appeared on CNN, Fox News, NBC, BBC, Good Morning America and numerous television radio interviews around the world.  Her clients include Norwich University, IBM marketing division, CNN, AT&T, National Semiconductor, College Administration Conference, Orthodontist, FAMA conference plus many more.

Mr. Oblad is responsible for technology development at Sonoma Media Partners, and is co-responsible for writing the code for of Cruizing.com, which is a state-of-the-art online dating site. Mr. Oblad is an experienced software engineer and application developer with a proven track record of high quality and on-schedule performance, including multi-threaded application design, inter-process communication, builds management, networking, object-oriented programming, product installation, scripting, automation, web development, and systems administration.   From 2007 to 2011, he has been a software engineer at Autodesk, Inc., where he has served as tech lead for AutoCAD install team, developed product installers, service packs, and application extension installers, among other functions.   From 2004 to 2007, he was a Software Engineer/QA Engineer at Caymas Systems, where he designed, implemented and maintained Perl based regression test automation environment, tested databases, and automated many processes.  From 2003 to 2004, Mr. Oblad was a Software Engineering Consultant at Giga-Tronics. In the summer of 2003 he was a Software Engineering Consultant at Caymas Systems.  From 1999 to 2003, Mr. Oblad was a Software Engineer, where he developed a Fault and CDMA applications in C++ for Linux based wireless communications test instrument, among other projects that included an Optical Spectrum Analyzer and GPIB remote communications. From 1997 to 1999, Mr. Oblad was a Production Engineer at Hewlett Packard.  Mr. Oblad received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the Sonoma State University (2000).

PETE will be in charge of the artistic and media development at Sonoma Media Partners. PETE will manage audio/video production and implementation of media-rich social networking and web-based educational and persuasive video campaigns, apps and traditional TV and Radio spots. He is talented in exploiting the latest social and online media to provide visual communications utilizing the latest online technologies and mobile media. In addition to PETE’s media talents, he is a talented musical artist and is the lead of the band “The Stringtones”. Some of the companies that PETE has worked for include Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Radio Shack, Classified Records, 3 Dog Multimedia, HealthStream, Inc., Redwood Toxicology, Hamilton Partners, Inc., and Moontoast, LLC. He is a Recording Artist / Performer / Actor at Creative Destiny, LLC. PETE earned is his AA degree in Music at Santa Rosa Junior College, his BA from California State University, Chico (Suma Cum Laude), and a Master’s degree in Interactive Multimedia from California State University, Chico.

Mr. Mayfield has been involved with full static and dynamic websites development. He has worked with various graphic artists to design the sites and can implement the static site using pure HTML CSS, AJAX and JavaScript or develop dynamic sites using various platform backends with PHP or C#.Net or Java. Mr. Mayfield has specialized in Web development using a variety of tools including content management systems (CMS); Joomla, Drupal, WordPress and Umbraco which allow the customer to add and change pages and keep the content fresh and vibrant. He has also implemented online shopping carts for some clients using Cubecart, Maian (Joomla based), Ubercart (Drupal based) and Cart66 (WordPress based) and Zen Cart. He is highly experienced in databases such as MySQL and SQLServer and frontend programming using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. His current emphasis is on incorporating CSS3 and HTML5 into our development which provides enhanced websites and capability. Some of the companies that he has worked for include Hewlett Packard (intranet), Qualys Inc. (QualysGuard), UCSF Department of Surgery (55+ sites), Bigge Inc., Autodesk (intranet), IMSI Inc. (Easy Language, TurboCad), Hyperarts (multiple sites), Kontiki, Talking Fingers – Educational Software, Meridian Property Management, Skis on the Run, Sun Chariot Solar, Vascular Cures, Pivotal Resources, and Real Music.

Costas will be in charge of the design of the overall user experience. Mr. Schuler has been working as a Graphic Designer for over 18 years, helping clients generate more sales through professional and well-thought-out design solutions.

Costas was Born in Athens Greece to an English father and a Greek mother who met in Australia and then traveled across Asia by land on a three month honeymoon. His story begun in Greece, but he ended up in California in 1985 after a few interesting years of bouncing around Europe and getting to know the various accents.

Mr. Schuler now lives in West Sonoma County with his wife Sandy and four beautiful children living close to his extended family. He has spent the last 5 years creating the Mercedes Pens Art Car and collecting used pens for his One Million Pen Project in order to have enough pens to one day build Pentopia.

Mr. Kovatch will be in charge of the Sales and Marketing at Sonoma Media Partners. He is an innovative, forward-thinking senior professional with an MBA and a record of driving growth and revenue through expert direction of sales operations and sales team management, product marketing and development, and marketing efforts focused at Internet websites, mobile applications and in the software as a service sector. Mr. Kovatch has been instrumental in the development and execution of marketing and go-to market strategies, product development, with a recognized ability to assemble, organize, motivate and lead high-energy teams and new initiatives to market. He has been reputable for combining entrepreneurial skills with corporate expertise to build efficient and profitable operating policies and procedures. His background includes high-level financial management and accounting experience. Some of the companies that Mr. Kovatch has worked for include PairShare, LLC. – Santa Rosa, California, Contact Center Compliance – Santa Rosa, California, Red Condor, Inc. – San Diego, California, Eschelon Telecom (formerly Advanced Telecom Group) – Multiple Locations, and Metro.net – San Francisco, California. Mr. Kovatch earned a Master of Business Administration – Finance & Telecommunications – University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, Bachelor of Science in Accounting – Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA. 4-Year Participant – SCU Men’s Soccer (NCAA – Div 1): Captain Senior Year.