Profile

Born 1965 in Cyprus, a Greek island in the Mediterranean, Al is an entrepreneur, senior e-business consultant, web designer, photographer and martial artist. With more than 30 years of business experience, he has worked in North America and Europe, developing strategic plans, corporate infrastructure, business relationships and robust e-business systems.

At age 9, Al experienced first-hand the tragedy of war during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, in 1974. At the age of 17 he served two years in the Cyprus army and later on he attended undergraduate studies in Business Administration & Computer Information Systems, then postgraduate studies in Business & Production Management, in Greece and Cyprus.

Al is actively involved in martial arts (3rd Degree Black Belt, WTF Tae Kwon Do, 2016), he runs web design firm COMMbits which he founded in 2002, and he is an Oakville photographer. He loves playing the piano and currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

During his career Al made a name for himself for building and retaining loyal teams and for solving difficult problems. At around 1996 he managed the German HENKEL detergent production facility in Cyprus, with staff of 30. Software systems he built along with processes and procedures won the Firm ISO9001 certification for Standards & Quality. At around 2002 he built and led an IT team of 70 through major acquisitions in the US.

In 1989 Al was the first to discover and patch an elusive bug haunting the first commercial lasers printers, which subsequently couldn’t print Greek characters properly, in then-popular Word Perfect for DOS.

Other achievements through various career roles include migration of a commercial product to the Internet and its integration with Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank’s legacy systems in Toronto Canada, and the design and implementation of a $1M data center, in Toronto then in the US.

A pivotal moment in Al business career came around 2002, when he designed and developed from scratch an advanced prototype and business model for a Social Networking system, BEFORE the Facebook era. Unfortunately, the project failed to achieve funding – deemed too early for investors to understand “Social Networking”.

He founded COMMbits shortly thereafter, to help Small-to-Medium companies establish and maintain a robust online presence through web design, search engine optimization, business hosting and Outlook Business Email services built on Office 365 solutions.

Other than his work with COMMbits, Al spends a lot of time on the training mats coaching children and adults in Martial Arts. He works with the Taekwondo Masters Academy in Mississauga, and DCR Taekwondo Academy in Burlington.

Al is also involved professionally in photography, which he has brought to COMMbits as a complement to business web design services. See also www.telling.photos for his partial photo portfolio.

PROFESSIONAL ROLES HELD:

• Founder, COMMbits Inc, Toronto – Canada (2002-Present)
• CTO, e-Business, World English Centre, Toronto – Canada (2001-02)
• VP IT, e-Business, Carbiz.com, Toronto – Canada, Sarasota – FL, US (1999-2000)
• Founder/President, IT/e-Business, Ledasoft Ltd., Nicosia – Cyprus (1993-99)
• Production Manager, Manufacturing, Detergenta (Henkel Germany products), Nicosia -Cyprus  (1990-92)
• Systems Manager, IT Integration, Chr. Kirmitsis Ltd., Nicosia – Cyprus (1989-90)

EDUCATION:

• Post-Graduate Management Diploma, Mediterranean Institute of Management (MIM), Nicosia – Cyprus, 1992
• B.Sc. in Business Administration and Computer Information Systems, Deree College, The American College of Greece, Athens – Greece, 1989.
• Fluent in English-as a Second Language, and Greek as a mother language.
• 3rd degree Black Belt from the Kukkiwon, Korea, WTF Tae Kwon Do