Our advisors bring decades of experience to the creation, improvement, and refinement of the Digital Railroad system.

Previously, Ben served as CEO of Clinton Management Group, a consulting practice that focused on a range of management consulting  engagements with clients in all dimensions of the digital imaging, digital content, content management, wireless content services, and digital asset management sectors.

He also served as Senior VP, Sales and Professional Services, for Fresher Information Corp., a venture-backed startup that pioneered the ASP sector for digital content delivery and syndication solutions. Ben was instrumental in successfully closing a $23MM round of venture-backed funding. Prior to Fresher Information Corp., Ben was Group VP, Digital Imaging, at Olympus America, Inc., where he led a $300MM business spanning digital cameras, software,  photo printers, accessories, and related e-Business initiatives spanning the consumer and select vertical markets.

Previously, Ben was with Eastman Kodak Company in a career spanning 20 years, where he held senior management positions in its Office Imaging, Kodak Professional, and Entertainment Imaging Divisions.  Additionally, Ben served in senior Corporate Business Development and Chief Marketing Office assignments, where he championed new business development opportunities arising from the convergence of computing, telephony, and the Internet with digital imaging. Before joining Kodak, Ben started his business career with Xerox Corporation in a sales and marketing capacity.

Ben received a B.S. in Business Administration, majoring in Marketing, from Seton Hall University and participated in the Executive Development Program at the University of Virginia ’s Darden Graduate School of Business.


Karen Mullarkey began her career in photography at Life magazine in the mid-1960s. She has been the Photography Director at various publications, including Rolling Stone, New York Magazine, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated. In the mid-1990s, Karen produced and directed a series of HDTV documentaries for Japanese television. In 1995, she began working on Internet projects as the director of assignments and photography for the groundbreaking project 24 Hours in Cyperspace. In 1999, she became the Vice President of Creative/Editor in Chief of Zing.com, an online consumer photography site. She has served as a photographic consultant for the designer Roger Black; the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Ft. Worth, Texas; and the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pa. Beginning in April of 2003, Karen joined the America 24/7 team as Assignment Director for the project’s national book (a New York Times Bestseller) and later became the Director of Photography for the 50 state books.  She is presently a visual consultant for a number of organizations. Her next project will involve editing material for a special photographic collection at Stanford University.


Hilmi Ozguc is co-founder and CEO of Maven Networks (www.maven.net) with present venture financing exceeding $15 million from Catalyst Ventures and Accel Partners. He has 20 years experience as a successful entrepreneur and executive in the software industry. Previously, Hilmi was co-founder and CEO of Narrative Communications Corporation, a pioneer of rich media Internet advertising technologies and services. In less than four years, he guided Narrative and the development of its flagship Enliven product from a streaming media startup with $13 million in venture financing from Greylock, Accel Partners, and Carlyle Ventures to a $100 million acquisition by @Home Network in 1999.

Before co-founding Narrative in 1995, Hilmi spent seven years with Lotus Development Corp., a $1 billion revenue leader in enterprise software, where he held a variety of senior management roles in product development, marketing, and international operations. Prior to joining Lotus, Hilmi was a software architect and engineering manager for electronic design automation systems at Mitsubishi Semiconductor and its R&D Labs in Japan. Hilmi received a Bachelor's of Science degree in Systems Engineering and a Master's of Science degree in Software Engineering from Boston University.


Scott Rafer is president and CEO of Feedster (www.feedster.com), a fast-growing search engine. Feedster delivers more relevant and timely information by continuously collecting data from over 750,000 RSS content feeds. Before Feedster, Rafer co-founded WiFinder, the Wi-Fi hotspot directory; BookBroadband, the broadband hotel finder; Fresher Information, RSS indexing way too early; and FotoNation, a creator of connected photography solutions. Previously, Rafer led the Internet products group at Kodak Hollywood and worked in investment banking at Needham & Company. Scott graduated from the Management of Technology program at the University of Pennsylvania.


Jack Reznicki is one of the best-known and most respected people photographers in the United States. A 1976 graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, he opened his New York City studio in 1980, and has promoted products and services for such companies such as Tylenol, The Wall Street Journal, Hyatt, Toys “R” Us, Kodak, Reader’s Digest, Crest, AT&T, Playtex, and has several Time magazine covers to his credit. 

Jack is the author of several books including “Studio and Commercial Photography, “A Kodak Pro Workshop” book. His popular "Pro Vision" column appears every month in Petersen’s Photographic magazine, and he contributes articles to PEI (Photo Electronic Imaging) and Professional Photographer magazine. He also founded and runs the Photo News Network (PNN) (www.photonews.com), home to professional photographer forums PhotoPro, PhotoTech, PhotoDigital, and PhotoWed.

Jack is a lecture speaker and a workshop teacher for professional groups and colleges nationwide, instructing on how creative thinking helps solve his clients’ visual needs. A 100% Digital capture photographer, he is among the original “Canon Explorers of Light” and one of the original “Epson Stylus Pros.” He has consulted with Mamiya, Microsoft, X-Rite, and Creo-Scitex as a beta tester on its Leaf C-Most and Valeo digital camera backs.

Along with many other awards, Jack is the recipient of the 1999 IPC (International Photographic Council) Leadership medal for “Excellence in Studio Photography” at the United Nations. He is currently a Board Member of Professional Photographers of America (PPA); is a past President of the New York chapter of Advertising Photographers of America (APA), sat on that organization's Joint Ethics Committee, and a former Board Member of ASMP/NY.


Donna Romer recently was COO of Celartem Technology and CEO of Celartem USA. She has 20-plus years of experience in executive leadership, having both founded and operated innovative businesses where she consistently produced award-winning commercial software products and services in the digital media industry. She has been an avid developer of business-driven technology throughout her career and currently holds several patents in wireless digital camera technology and pattern-recognition algorithms, as well as multiple patents pending in Natural Language Processing and image database retrieval.

Donna also founded Romer + Associates, a successful M&A practice, where she provided deal leadership, channel expansion and company integration services. Prior to that, she worked in the venture capital community as Entrepreneur-in-Residence for EastWest VentureGroup, a California VC with focus on the rich media and internet infrastructure space.

She was Senior VP and CTO for two digital asset management companies, eMotion, Inc., and Picture Network International, where she provided executive and operational leadership. Before that, Romer held technology executive positions at Eastman Kodak Company namely in the Entertainment Imaging Division..


Michael Schumann (www.Schumann.com) has been involved in both the software and photography industries for over 20 years. As a photojournalist, he has worked for newspapers, wire services and for magazines such as Life, Time, and Newsweek. As a technologist, he helped create some of the earliest websites that used the Web to share and promote professional photography. He has also been an architect and engineer on software that enabled others to publish to the Web.

In 1995, Michael co-founded TemporalImage, a pioneering website that displayed photography in virtual galleries. The following year he helped guide the creation of the 24 Hours in Cyberspace website. In 1996, Michael joined NetObjects as a software architect. He was one of the original designers of an award-winning software product that allowed users to easily create sophisticated websites. Michael helped take the product through numerous releases and its evolution into an enterprise Web content management system. Netobjects went public and was recently acquired by Merant, where he continues to design enterprise management systems.


Rick Smolan is a former Time, Life and National Geographic photographer. Rick co-founded the best-selling "Day in the Life..." photography series. Rick and his partner Jennifer Erwitt are also the co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, which specializes in the design and execution of large-scale global projects that combine compelling storytelling with state-of-the-art technology. Their projects have been featured numerous times on the covers of magazines around the world, including Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Asia Week and US News & World Report.


Eran Steinberg is the CEO of FotoNation Inc. (www.fotonation.com), a leading technology company in imaging and connectivity for digital photography since 1997. Prior to FotoNation, Eran was chief scientist and vice president of software at Epix Imaging Systems in charge of the software development for the first programmable digital camera, the CTO of Zing Networks Inc., Previously, Eran was a color scientist and manager of the Core Technology group at Electronics for Imaging (EFI). Prior to that, Eran was teaching and working as a professional photographer. Eran is the inventor and author of several granted patents in the field of Imaging and Digital Photography. Eran is currently the project leader of the ISO Committee for Command Language for Cameras (ISO-15740/Picture Transfer Protocol). He holds a Graduate degree in Imaging Science form Rochester Institute of Technology, a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science form the Hebrew University and a BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in NY.

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