Executive team

Marc Strauch- Marc has more than 25 years in senior level positions in technology and consumer marketing. As the founder and chief strategist for Nuovadyne Marketing Group, Marc worked with software and clean technology companies as they bridged the gap from product development to a market and sales driven company. Prior to founding NuovaDyne, Marc was CEO and co-founder of Topaz Bridge a developer of enterprise software. Marc has also served as Chief Marketing Officer for NS8 Corporation a publicly traded software company specializing in digital rights management and secure content distribution for the emerging media markets. Marc led the marketing and business development and sales teams to launch the company’s proprietary, patented products into the global market. Marc was a marketing communications and strategy consultant to Microsoft Corporation for nearly 12 years. At Microsoft, Marc and his team worked with Microsoft product groups on the launches of the last four versions of the Microsoft Windows client, Windows Server, Small Business Server, Office, and SharePoint platforms as well as many other business solution groups. In 1996, just as the dotcom era was beginning to emerge, Marc wrote a series of educational articles published on MSDN for CXOs on the business value of the World Wide Web. He also worked with other leading information technology firms such as Cognizant, Intel, HP/Compaq, Quantum, Tata, and Wipro as well as numerous start-up and emerging technology companies. Marc spent more than 7 years in consumer brand and direct response marketing, working with major US advertising agencies such as Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy & Mather, Leo Burnett, McCann Erickson and others on Fortune 500 accounts such as Levi Strauss, Walt Disney, Chevron, Quaker Oats, Oshkosh, Anderson Windows and other companies. Before working in technology marketing, Marc spent nearly 10 years working with community organizations, municipal governments and regional planning authorities doing public policy strategy and organizational management in housing and economic development and regional land use and environmental planning. Marc earned a Master of Urban Planning degree from the City University of New York, and a B.S. in Environmental Science and Public Policy and a B.A. in Economic Geography from the State University of NY. He has additional graduate level coursework in international marketing, executive leadership, organizational management, and finance, as well as coursework in film and television development and production with American Film Institute and the UCLA School of Film & Television.

Alexander Cequea- Alexander Cequea is a business and sustainability student at Maharishi University of Management. He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Conscious Times, a student publication at Maharishi University, and he has been passionately involved in creating change in the areas of business and sustainability through writing and speaking about such subjects in public forums. He leads the Public Meditation Project- an independent spiritual activist group that carries out public displays of meditation in major cities across the US. The Public Meditation Project has won awards from Quantum Shift.tv and Karma Tube, and has been featured in What is Enlightenment? magazine and Deepak Chopra's Alliance for a New Humanity newsletter. He’s also the host and creator of the Changemaker’s Half hour, a weekly radio show that reaches the Fairfield, IA area and can be streamed online at kruufm.com. He’s pursuing an MBA in sustainability from Maharishi University of Management.

Robert Gongwer- Robert Gongwer has a BA in Psychology with an emphasis in Industrial Organizational Psychology from California State University of Fullerton. He has experience in marketing, small business start ups and technical recruiting. After quitting his corporate headhunting job, he decided to get back to nature and took a job at Montecito Sequoia as a cross-country ski shop manager and snow shoe guide in the Sequoia National Park. He is currently perusing an MBA in Sustainability form Maharishi University of Management. He is passionate about changing the world through consciousness, sustainability and the marketplace.

Troy Van Beek- Troy Van Beek is a man that likes a challenge. 9 years in the U.S Navy Seals as a Special Forces medic created a leader that's handy to have around. Prior to the military he was a King crab fisherman off the shores of Alaska. After the military he worked as a bodyguard in hostile environments internationally, in the Middle East and Africa. The purpose of a good challenge is to know the self,and he has taken that process to the next level by pursuing a degree in Sustainability from Maharishi University of Management. Consciousness-based education through mediation and philosophy makes this education in sustainability a cut above from any green study available on the market today. He is passionate about sharing ideas and connecting people that are proponents for positive change.