Biographies of ARC's board of directors

bazzel baz - founder and president

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Baz is known as “the Patron Saint for Missing Kids.” He is a former CIA Intelligence Special Operations Group Paramilitary Case Officer, recipient of the Intelligence Commendation Medal, former counter-terrorism officer in the United States Marine Corps and a graduate of The Citadel. He currently contracts as a “life guarantor” for people entering high threat environments.

In 1993 Baz founded the Association for the Recovery of Children (ARC), an organization comprised of former and active intelligence, military, and law enforcement personnel dedicated to the recovery of missing and exploited American children in foreign and domestic locations. In 2019, on invitation of the White House and DOJ, Baz introduced ARC’s legislative initiative involving severe penalties for those who sexually exploit any child under the age of 18 in the U.S.

Baz is well known globally for his expertise and extraordinary skillset. Author of "Terrorism Survival Handbook" and several other books, he has been called on by CNN, CNBC and MSNBC as an advisor and spokesperson on the war on Terrorism and Homeland Security. He is also a film and television writer, producer and actor. Bazzel Baz co-starred as the commander of Raymond Reddington’s paramilitary group on NBC’s "The BLACKLIST" for four seasons.

As a Life Coach and a well sought after motivational speaker, Baz travels nationally and internationally to provide breakthroughs to awesome performance with an uncanny ability to bring simple solutions to complicated scenarios.

Sharkey baz

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Airline Transport Pilot with over fifty years of flying experience with 14,000 + hours. Certified Flight Instructor/Instrument Instructor, Single and Multi-engine aircraft both land and sea. Type rated in Lear, Citation Jets and King Air 350. ( prior owner of Lear 003) Chief Pilot of Citrus World, Director of Aviation Polk Air Inc., Director of Aviation Alpha Jet Inc. Panorama Air Tours Hawaii, ComAir Orlando Fla., and VP Tires Unlimited. He is a retired Major United States Army, former 8th Special Forces Group (Green Beret) and distinguished combatant from conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. He also served as Senior Military Police Advisor to the Georgia National Guard, Forces Command Headquarters, and United States Air Force Crew Chief KB-29 Air Refueling. Sharkey holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Law from the University of Nebraska and attended Language School (Spanish) in Monterey California. He is the recipient of Prcht Badge, GCMDL, ARCOM w/1st OLC, EIB, AFRM, VCM w/60 Dev, VSM w/4 Bronze Stars, VCG w/Palm, AM, BSM , Air Force Outstanding Unit Award, Royal Thai Supr Mst Badge, MSM.

Enrique “Ric” Prado

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Enrique “Ric” Prado is a paramilitary, counterterrorism, and special/clandestine operations specialist, with a focus on international training operations and programs. Mr. Prado is a twenty-four-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency where he served as an Operations Officer in six overseas posts. He was Deputy Chief of Station and “Plank Owner” of the original Bin Ladin Task Force/Issues Station under Senior Analyst, Michael Scheuer, as well as Chief of Station in a hostile Muslim country. He also served as Chief of Operations in the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center (CTC) during the September 11th attacks, where Mr. Prado helped coordinate CIA/CTC’s special operations (SPECOPS) activities with the National Security Council and FBI, as well as with elite U.S. military representatives from Delta Force and SEAL-Team Six, then detailed to CTC/CIA. He retired as Senior Intel Service-2 (SIS-2, Major General equivalent at CIA).

Mr. Prado spent his first ten years at CIA as a paramilitary officer in Special Operations Group/Special Activities Division (SOG/SAD, Ground Branch) which is CIA’s “special operations force.” His service included 36 months in Central America jungles as the first CIA officer living in the anti-Sandinista “Contra” camps. Subsequently running counter-terrorism/insurgency operations in Peru and in the Philippines. Other key positions included head of the CIA’s Korean Operations and Chief of CIA Liaison in Seoul, ROK. He is fluent in his native Spanish and once held a 2+ level in Japanese. He received the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal (highest award given to a retiring operations officer) and the George Bush Medal for Excellence in Counterterrorism, among others.

Mr. Prado is co-owner of Camp-X Training ( www.campxtraining.com ). Mr. Prado continues his service training and supporting the “SPECOPS” Community as Subject Matter Expert (SME) at the SWCS’ ASOT (Advanced Special Operations and Techniques) and ASOT Managers Course, Dragon Warrior, Emerald Warrior, among others.

Lincoln Sokolski

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Lincoln Sokolski graduated with a double major from North Carolina State University (BA in Business and BA in Economics). Following graduation he honed his business and selling skills at Atcom, Inc. in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina helping sell and engineer business PBX Telecom systems to mid and large corporations. Following a most successful experience there he moved to Atlanta, Georgia to manage and grow sales for Whirley-DrinkWorks!, a product design company focusing on innovative products and programs for the food and beverage industry. Clients included Disneyworld, Six Flags, Dollywood, 7-Eleven, Coca-Cola and many others. After 13 years as Regional Sales Manager and helping grow the territory over 10X, Lincoln moved back to the World Headquarters promoted to VP Sales and Marketing and then 4 years later to President and CEO of Whirley-DrinkWorks! Today WDW has revenues over $100 million and operates has sales in over 20 countries.

Lincoln is passionate about serving his community which he grew up in. He currently serves as president of the board of directors for his local YMCA, past president of board of directors for United Fund of Warren County, Trustee at Warren General Hospital and has participated in numerous philanthropic activities to help his community be a better place to live.

In 2018 Lincoln was recognized with the Warren County PA Community Service Lifetime Achievement Honor awarded to one person each year for outstanding community service.

Mark Schouten

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Mark Schouten is CEO of Diversified Roofing.

JP James

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Over the past decades, James has helped start, acquire, restructure, and scale stagnant ventures in their management strategy, business process automation, technology automation, and capital solutions. Having built ventures from startup to hundreds of millions in valuation. He owns, invests, and advises fast growth ventures.

Author & Lecturer

  • Co-Authored “Data Analytics: Effective Methods for Presenting Results” with Dr. Satish Nargundkar
  • 10 years of Lecturing on Quantitative Computational Finance at Georgia Tech's School of Industrial Engineering
  • 6 years of Lecturing on Big Data, Analytics, Statistics, Actuarial Science at Georgia State’s Masters Of Business
  • James has also taught and helped implement Agent Based Modeling, machine learning, reinforcement learning algorithms and back propagation algorithms including polynomial regressions, and deep learning models specifically, Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) in the hedge fund and consumer finance industries.
Founder & Chairman, Hive Financial Systems, LLC
James invested and helped scale Hive Financial Systems, a financial technology company, providing technology to a portfolio of closely held consumer lenders.
  • Grew almost 8000% in revenue since 2017, in less than 30 months as of the start of 2020, as one of fastest growing companies in the world
  • Designed and built an end to end financial automation software including marketing, underwriting, loan management and analytics architecture with capital from multiple VCs and balance sheet financing from several institutional lenders for its closely held portfolio of lenders.
  • Co-Author of Two patents filed on System for Processing Loans using Machine Learning and Identifying and Processing Data impacting Enterprise Valuation
Chairman of the Board, Libreum International LLC
Former Partner & Shareholder, Lending Science DM Inc.
Founder, Libreum Capital Management
Non-Profit Activity
  • TiE Atlanta President 2020-2021
  • TiE Atlanta Angels, Co-Founder & Chair - $4.3MM deployed in 2.5 years in early stage ventures
  • Board Member of Atlanta Police Foundation, 21 Century Leaders, Buckhead Club
  • Active National Member of BENS, Business Executives for National Security

RJ McINTOSH, MBA: Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

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Mr. McIntosh is a proven senior management executive with twenty year’s combined experiences in the aviation, communications and energy industries. Mr. McIntosh is a U.S. Army military veteran serving 12 years in the Military Intelligence, Counter Intelligence and Combat Aviation fields. RJ holds an MBA from City University of Seattle with additional B.A. degrees in science, technology and business management. Presently he is a U.S. Voting Member to the International Standards Organization (ISO) and is an active participating member to the FBI "Infragard" critical infrastructure program for cyber security.

DON DARLING

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Don started his construction company in 1979, 2 years after he married Larraine. Don has run a successful business in several states but recently the last 30 years has been in Colorado. Baz and Don met after Baz purchased a home that Don built in Colorado, they quickly became friends of the special and lifetime nature.

Don was a member of the local Sunrise Rotary club for over 25 year, he served as chair person on several committees, also served as the president in 2003. Don set up the club on email and provided several other benefits. Don is an active asset for ARISE, an organization founded by one of the great humanitarian persons of our time to battle BDS. Don’s also a supporter of several organizations that make a difference with supporting good and wholesome organizations.

Don continues to oversee the operation of his construction company, and recently appointed his son as the president. This allows Don to invest his solid and consistent abilities to serve with Baz and the entire ARC family to save children.

Tom Flores (Deceased)

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Tom Flores was Director for worldwide corporate security for Fluor Corporation. He was accountable for directing and managing corporate security efforts across a wide spectrum of project types including oil and gas, mining, industrial, and government as well as corporate investigations concerning fraud, waste, and corruption throughout the world. Rising to the rank of Colonel, Mr. Flores served from 1966-1990 in the U.S. Army that included multiple combat tours in aviation and ground assignments. He held a variety of command and staff assignments to include duty in the 82d Airborne Division (1977-81), public policy development on the Army General Staff at the Pentagon (1984), human intelligence collection in Central America (1984-85), and worked for U.S. senators as a Congressional Fellow (1986-87). He served in U.S. Special Forces in both Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations (1976-77). Mr. Flores served in Latin America in the Defense Attaché’s Office in Peru (1982-83) and as an Inspector General (1990-91), responsible for investigating alleged improper conduct of senior army officials. He also served as Professor of Military Science at the University of Arizona (1987-89).

Mr. Flores was a Foreign Affairs and Congressional Fellow at Johns Hopkins University where he was tasked with organizing POW/MIA Veteran’s Affairs Committee hearings for Senator Dennis DeConcini of Arizona (1986-87). He held a Bachelor of Arts Degree in History from Santa Clara University (1966), Master of Arts Degree in Political Science from the University of Louisville (1976), and a Master of Arts Degree in Management/Human Relations from Webster University (1979). He was also a graduate of the Centro de Academicos y Estudios Militares of the Escuela Superior de Guerra (Peruvian War College) in Lima, Peru (1983).

William A. Wilson (Deceased)

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William A. Wilson, Los Angeles businessman and a member of President Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet," was appointed the first U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. Not only was he a member of the inner circle of advisors who persuaded Reagan to run for California governor in 1966, and then helped guide his political campaigns but a friend and advisor who aided ARC in navigating major fault lines within the United States and abroad, bringing a 14,000-foot view of the corruption and political players that undermine the efforts of most NGOs in the war against trafficking. To date, his contributions allow ARC to connect the dots that mitigate liability when dealing with the “forces of darkness” that make exploitation of children part of their financial platform, whether that be in politics, industry, global expansion or the undercurrent of secret societies.

Unknown to most of the world, it was the brilliant--and highly sensitive--strategy of President Reagan in appointing Ambassador Wilson to the Vatican that has now yielded much of the intelligence that uncovered the sex trafficking and abuse of children that has occurred within the Roman Catholic Church.

 

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