Founded with a focus on business development and technology transfer in
our emerging market agribusiness sectors, AmniFPS International is
managed by a team of individuals holding a wealth of knowledge and
expertise anchored in the North American food and agricultural
industries and gathered from a rich cross section of companies,
industries and countries.
Using
an engaged, customer focused approach to venture execution, the
executive team provides innovative concepts, technology solutions and
results which enables venture partners to capitalize on growth and
expansion opportunities.
Our management team consists of:
Malcolm N. Speller, Founder and Chief Executive,
BSc., MSc.,
Malcolm
Speller built an impressive career as an engineer with multi-national
food companies in the United States where his work focused on
developing processes utilizing leading technologies for producing new
food products. This has included work with the Pillsbury Co., General
Mills, ConAgra Foods, M&M/Mars and the Sara Lee Corporation. Mr.
Speller's professional experience involves a diverse range of products
and processing technologies.
Mr. Speller founded AmniFPS
in 1998 with the mission of project development and technology exchange
with food processing and agribusiness companies in emerging markets. In
maintaining and furthering this vision, the firm's core interests lie
in the identification, development and investment in food processing
and agribusiness ventures that are commercially viable and appropriate
for the challenges facing our emerging economies and agricultural
markets.
In the development of AmniFPS International,
Mr. Speller has conducted agricultural
studies and engineering projects on five continents. He has given presentations
on the subjects of his research and studies
in Europe, North America, the Caribbean
and Africa. Mr. Speller has delivered
talks at the Department of Chemical Engineering
of the University of Birmingham, U. K.;
conferences of the Institute of Food Technologist
(IFT), the American Society of Agricultural
Engineers (ASAE), the 4th Annual African-USA
Conference on Manufacturing Technology,
and the Institutaõ National de
Pesquisas Espaciais (INPE), San Jose dos
Campos, Brazil.
Mr. Speller holds a Bachelors of
Science, Magna cum Laude, with a dual major in Food Science and Chemistry
from Alabama A&M University and a
Masters of Science in Food and Bioprocess
Engineering from the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. In addition, at Northwestern
University in Evanston, Illinois, he has
conducted graduate studies in Business and Engineering
Management.
A native English speaker, Malcolm N. Speller is fluent in French,
with working knowledge of Portuguese and
Spanish.
Darryl Cheeks, Chief Financial Officer, BSc., CPA
Darryl Cheeks has served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of The
Chicagoland Companies. His primary role is to provide the overall vision and
direction for the sister companies, Chicagoland Barbecue, Inc. (CBI) and
Chicagoland Foods Military Consortium (CFMC). In addition, Darryl serves as
Chairman of the Board for both companies, working very closely with both investors
and other directors.
Mr. Cheeks graduated with honors from the University of Illinois in
Champaign/Urbana, where he received a four-year academic scholarship to School
of Business. His first professional position was with Arthur Andersen &
Co., where he had previously served as an intern. While working in the
Enterprise/Commercial Group of Arthur Anderson, Darryl became a Certified
Public Accountant. He was chosen by the Chicago office of Arthur Andersen to
participate in the Harvard Summer Venture Management Program at Harvard
Business School.
Upon leaving Andersen, Darryl became the youngest person to be hired by Abbott
Laboratories as a Financial and Operational Consultant. He later accepted a
position as Chief Financial Officer for Hoyt/AXS Solutions, where he
spearheaded a corporate reengineering project, as well as several mergers and
acquisitions. In addition, he helped develop several inventory supply chain
concepts and was a critical member in the company’s subsequent IPO. It was
during this time that Darryl formed CBI with his business partners. He left AXS
to begin financial consulting, providing services in turnaround strategies,
mergers and acquisitions, raising capital and financial statement measurement
and preparation. He has now joined forces with Malcolm Speller in AmniFPS
International, LLC, bringing to work his many years of financial and management
experience and expertise.
Parallel to Darryl’s professional career are his vast religious and civic
responsibilities. He is an ordained minister who has served the Monroe Street
Church of Christ since 1990. Darryl serves as Chairman of the Trustee Board and
oversees all ministry efforts for the congregation. Perhaps his most
significant contribution is his work as Director of Soul Food Prison Ministry.
Darryl established this ministry in 1993 with the goal of serving the incarcerated
population of Illinois. Currently, more than 30 volunteers work with over
10,000 inmates annually, providing them with pastoral care, spiritual
instruction, correspondence and an ex-offender recovery home.
Darryl serves on several boards of directors, including A Safe Place, an
organization that focuses on the safety and rehabilitation of domestic abused
women and Marshall High School’s Academy of Finance, a national campaign to
promote business awareness in inner city schools. In addition, he is an
advisory board member of Enjoy Life Foods, a company serving people with Celiac
Desease and Southwestern Christian College, an institution providing christian
education and ministerial training. Previously Darryl has served on boards
ranging from professional training organizations (Northern Illinois Business
Association) to childcare (Reba Place Day Nursery). He is a member of the
Illinois CPA Society and the National Association of Black Accountants. He
often speaks at special events, addressing high school students on the
importance of education, business careers and preparing for work in our world of global markets.
Georges Fotso, Agricultural Officer, Bsc., MSc.,
Mr.
Fotso-Talom’s strong agricultural roots took hold in his
childhood. He was born in Cameroon and grew up doing chores on the
family farm. There he developed a deep respect for the land and the
people who work it. This passion would be evident in years following,
when he traveled to Germany to advance his knowledge of agriculture and
agribusiness.
At the
Humboldt University of Berlin, Mr. Fotso-Talom earned a Bachelor of
Sciences in Agriculture Sciences, a Master of Sciences in Agricultural
Economics and Agribusiness and a Post-Masters Certificate in
International Agrarian Development.
Mr.
Fotso-Talom’s career contains professional and academic
experience across three continents in such disciplines as agribusiness,
project management, marketing, sales, environmental quality and
agricultural technology transfer. In such capacities, he has worked in
Berlin, Germany with a leading Agricultural firm RUWE, Inc, in Project
Development and Plant Production Department for the Humboldt University
in Berlin. In Cameroon, Mr. Fotso-Talom served as Product and Teaching
Coordinator for SORAPAG, in the USA Product Distribution Coordinator
and Grower Coordinator for greenhouses and an organic farm.
To
acquire information regarding best practice in Agriculture and
Agribusiness, Mr. Fotso-Talom has traveled the world, participating in
workshops, seminars and projects in the Canary Islands (Spain), in the
USA, in Ukraine (former Soviet Union), France, Germany, and Africa. He
is author of a thesis titled “Changes in the Rural Structure of
Western Province of Cameroon Through the Commercialization of
Agricultural Products”, diagramming how the introduction of
agribusiness into emerging markets can transform the lives of a rural
populations.
Mr. Fotso-Talom is fluent in English, French and German.
Jermaine M. Stanley, Operating Officer, Bsc., MSc.,
Mr.
Stanley joined AmniFPS to help foster and further develop existing key
client relationships, provide project management and support, and align
external resource to ensure efficient management.
Prior
to joining the firm, Mr. Stanley worked in such disciplines as sales
and marketing, project management and process engineering. Mr. Stanley
is well respected for his business and professional acumen. As such, he
has worked with several high profile clients that include the City of
Detroit, Detroit Tigers Baseball Organization, the Detroit Zoo and
Johnson Controls.
Most recently he
has served as Principal Supervisor for the publicly traded energy firm
DTE Energy where he managed the ITS process-engineering group. In
addition to serving as the supervisor for process engineering, Mr.
Stanley was a member of the Software Engineering Process group (SEPG),
whose mission was to both reengineer and engineer application solution
delivery processes at DTE Energy. Mr. Stanley has also served as the
ITS lead for DTE Energy’s Sarbanes-Oxley initiatives. This
included the planning, verification, management and execution of
quarterly testing of internal key controls as well as assessing
effectiveness of IT general controls were effective.
Throughout
his career, Mr. Stanley has developed a passion for helping
organizations achieve core business excellence in the areas of
organizational behavior (OB), Organizational Development (OD) and
Strategy. Mr. Stanley holds a Bachelors of Science in Electrical
Engineering and a Masters of Science in Management Information Systems
