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Advisory Board Member:

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Abbas Yazdani
President and CEO, Artel, Inc.

Abbas Yazdani is the founder, president and chief executive officer of ARTEL, Inc., a leading global provider of integrated and secured telecommunications and enterprise solutions for the public and private sectors. He has more than 20 years of management, financial and operations experience, coupled with deep knowledge of telecommunications engineering and systems implementation.

Under his leadership, ARTEL has evolved from a five-person company in 1986 to become a global IT/Telecom mid-market leader. At the company’s inception, Mr. Yazdani’s original vision for ARTEL was one of creating a global one-stop shop for all of a customer’s telecommunications, information technology and security needs. Within a year of the company’s founding, ARTEL won contracts with AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Centel Telephone, supporting telecommunications projects in the face of more established competitors. ARTEL then branched out into the public sector winning multiple contracts with U.S. government agencies. The company further diversified its business by expanding offshore into Europe, China, the Middle East and Latin America.

Today, the company has engagements in six continents, with more than 50 percent of its business conducted overseas. ARTEL has developed a reputation for managing large, complex IT projects, and today competes and plays in the same league as some of the industry’s biggest IT players, with many of these giant multi-billion-dollar companies playing the role of subcontractor to ARTEL. Furthermore, with a near 95 percent retention of its key clients, more than 92 percent of business undertaken by ARTEL is as the prime contractor, and record revenue of $118.6 million in 2004, Mr. Yazdani has propelled the company forward to achieve new levels of growth and success.

Prior to establishing ARTEL in 1986, he served in technical, managerial and advisory capacities for AT&T, OAO, CONTEL, Booz Allen Hamilton, and ARINC.

Mr. Yazdani earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of the District of Columbia and continued his graduate studies in Telecommunications Systems Engineering at George Washington University. He is actively involved in various industry organizations such as the Industry Advisory Council and Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association that play a key role in shaping the government’s IT agenda. In 2005, Mr. Yazdani was awarded the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his industry expertise, innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and the Federal Computer Week 2005 Federal 100 for his industry leadership.