5/31/2000
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VSI Communications Group Installs Veteran Executive as Chief Operating Officer
Jon Gardner joins PC e-Learning leader from Tomen America
Norwalk, CT, May 31, 2000 VSI Communications Group, the industry-leading content developer in multimedia e-Learning, has announced that Jon S. Gardner has joined its executive management team as Chief Operating Officer. Gardner will be responsible for all global operations at VSI, including product development, information technology, finance, and human resources.
VSI, a subsidiary of PSINet, Inc., (NASDAQ: PSIX), is the leading content development firm focused on creating just-in-time e-Learning tools for major corporations and e-businesses.
Gardner brings to VSI a wealth of successful top management experience from derived during a distinguished career. Most recently, he held the position of senior vice president and general manager for the subsidiary management group for Tomen America, the $4 billion U.S. holding company of Tomen Corporation, a $40 billion Japanese trading conglomerate. During his tenure at Tomen, he led corporate management teams in all aspects of mergers and acquisitions and turned around the subsidiary group's $8 million in losses to $24 million in profit.
Prior to Tomen, Gardner was the director of Corporate Planning and Development at Avon Products, playing a leading role in Avon's expenditure of $500 million in new ventures and acquisitions in their cosmetic, fragrance, retirement living, health care, and apparel industries. He has also served in financial and business development executive roles in American Can Company, and was a consultant with Booz, Allen & Hamilton.
In his new position, Gardner will be responsible for managing the company's internal processes to strengthen VSI and their product offerings. His immediate priorities include managing the aggressive employee growth to fulfill the increase in product demand, the organizational structure and processes to maintain effective operations, and the move of the entire company into larger new office facilities
VSI Communications specializes in creating revolutionary training software such as Mentor, VSI's marquee product which is a multimedia teaching tool that helps corporate employees learn new software as they work, acting as a virtual coach that quietly resides on an Intranet, local hard drive, network, the Internet or CD-ROM. When users have questions, they simply click the Mentor icon located on the embedded in the software task bar. An animated 30- to 90-second multimedia demonstration plays and walks the user, step-by-step through the exact task they are trying to perform. This approach accelerates learning and reduces the need for costly training classes. Corporations across the world such as IBM, DaimlerChrysler, GE Capital, DuPont, Colgate-Palmolive, Duke Energy and 3M have heralded its success and adopted it for major IT initiatives.
Gardner has a Bachelor of Science degree from the U.S. Military Academy. His graduate degrees include a Master of Science in systems analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an M.B.A. in finance from M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management.
"Jon comes at an important time in our company's history,' says VSI CEO Dan Gallo. "The nation's leading corporations have endorsed and adopted Mentor because it enables their employees to get the most out of their IT investment as a leading computer training tool. To manage the growth of our company, we need additional executive leadership to handle key operational initiatives. Jon's level of industry experience will help to continue to grow the Mentor brand as well as allow us to strengthen existing relationships with our strategic partners."
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