Lee is a co-founder, investor and board member of Ellis Jaxon Farms where he serves as CEO. Lee co-founded Americans For Schools – a non-profit organization that aims to create a sustainable solution to fund education and social programs – and serves as its president. Lee brings to the organization three decades of experience as a successful entrepreneur and leader in the industry of recreational vehicle manufacturing and sales.
Lee and his wife Tina founded Mid-State RV Center in 1989, and have grown that company to become Georgia’s largest volume dealer and one of the only full-service RV dealerships in the Southeast. The company was recognized for 14 consecutive years as the largest dealer of Coachmen RVs in the world.
Lee is a member-owner of the Priority RV Network, a dealer cooperative that is the nation’s largest retailer of recreational vehicles.
Before opening Mid-State RV, Lee had a successful stint with Coachmen Industries for five years as a district marketing manager, earning recognition as one of the top producers in the nation several years in a row.
Through the years, Lee has served on the Dealer Council for GE Commercial’s RV Lending Division, and the Dealer Council for Coachmen RV Company. He has been named an honorary Deputy Sheriff of Bibb County, Ga. He is a past board member of the Better Business Bureau, and currently serves on the board of the Georgia Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs.
Graduating in 1982 from Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Ga., Lee received a bachelor’s of science in mechanical engineering. He and Tina have been married 31 years, and are the proud parents of a daughter, Mary.

Sean Kumar is the principle Founder of Ellis Jaxon Farms and serves on its Board of Directors as Chief Philanthropy Officer.

Sean began his professional career in International Marketing where he successfully established an extensive network of automobile spare parts dealerships throughout Italy, England, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Pakistan, and Indonesia among other countries.

In 1994, he founded American Trend Wares (ATW), located inside of the renowned Chicago Merchandise Mart & established manufacturing facility in Bellwood IL to manufacture and market a line of Christmas outdoor decorations made from MDF carried by regional and national retailers, including Menards, Lowes, Jewel Osco, Ace Hardware, True Value, Finger Hut, Miles Kimball, US Army & Navy Exchange, among many others. The company today is OEM to Bose sound systems.

In 1998, Mr. Kumar entered the Payment & Merchant Acquiring Industry and grew his portfolio to more than 1,600 merchants. In 2001, he designed and implemented a finger print, facial recognition and IRIS biometrics enabled money service business software, and built the early generation of finger print enabled PIN PAD systems & iris enabled POS systems. In 2005, he was nominated for “Member of the Year” by the ETA.

Sean Kumar as CEO and founder of IMPACTorg led the vision of creating a no interchange mobile/ card payment program. IMPACTorg is a consortium of small and medium size Fuel retail merchants advancing the mobile technology, payments & commerce in retail space. In 2013 he was chosen to be the key note panel speaker on mobile payments at the Chicago retail conference, where he addressed the largest group of national retailers alongside MCX, Sears, and Kohl’s among others.

In 2012, Sean Kumar co-founded Americans for Schools (501 C) to advance the cause of supporting elementary education and elimination of child hunger from elementary education system. AFS today is one of the fastest growing non-profit organizations in the State of Georgia and its activities are getting wide TV and media publicity around the nation.

In 2011, Sean Kumar founded the In store TV Network broadcasting public local, national news in C stores and other similar public places. The test network now is live and is now growing and adding an AM channel and a Print magazine news network.

A scholar of Economics and business Sean Kumar is a hobby journalist, has interviewed heads of state and visits foreign officials for print media, and has spoken on cultural and humanitarian issues at several public or private forums.

Champion Capital Group LLC is a boutique business development firm with a global presence and reach specializing in expert business development and consulting services accommodating Small cap - Large cap companies Internationally, including the United States, Europe and Emerging Markets. The business development portfolio of Champion exceeds over 20 advanced or early stage start-up companies broadly encompassing the leading industries today.

In addition, Champion Members and Board Advisors currently serve or have served as lead Executives or Founders of some of the worlds leading private or public companies, whether in consumer goods, biotech, telecom, pharmaceutical, advanced technology and fintech.

Consistent with Champion's business development initiatives and through the noteworthy efforts of Eric Bentov, Champion led the way to the formation of the Eilat Hub Israeli Tech Center, a tech hub supporting the advancement of companies with new technologies that will lead the world to its next stage of innovation.

Champion's Founders Eric Bentov and Peter Lagonikos, with deep roots in philanthropy, bring a combined over 35 years professional experience and broad leadership to Ellis Jaxon Farms along with their extensive business background with experience in investments, finance and business development.

As part of the Executive team at Ellis Jaxon Farms, Peter serves as its Chief Financial Officer in addition to managing the firm’s legal affairs, including responsibility for legal compliance, corporate structuring, contract negotiation as well as strategic business development.

Peter's is also a co-founder of Champion Capital Group LLC, a business development firm with a global presence and reach and he has more than 17 years of professional experience in business operations, strategy, finance, law, real estate and management consulting.

Mr. Lagonikos began his career as a real estate and commercial litigation attorney in the City of New York. Over the ensuing years as a serial entrepreneur, Peter invested in several New York City business ventures related to the food, entertainment, telecom and hospitality industry(s).

In addition to Ellis Jaxon, he currently serves as a business consultant, legal advisor and/or Executive Director for various philanthropic, advanced technology, fintech and early stage start-up companies, including the Eilat Tech Center, an innovative tech hub in Israel, and EELP International LLC, owners of substantial oil and gas assets and reserves in Texas.

Peter previously served as Co-Editor of the New York Criminal Law News and also as Legal Advisor to the Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization, a United Nations NGO. He is licensed to practice law in New York State and earned his J.D. from New York Law School in 1998.

Diane (Vogt) Faro has been on the Board since April 1, 2014. Since December 2011, Ms. Faro has been President of National Benefit Programs, LLC, a provider of brand loyalty and discount programs to small to mid-size businesses. Prior to joining National Benefit Programs, from 2009 to December 2011, Ms. Faro was a consultant for the electronic payments industry focused on assisting companies in growing revenues. From 2005 to 2009, Ms. Faro was President of Global Merchant Services at First Data Corporation, a payment processing company where she was responsible for over $1 billion in annualized revenues. Ms. Faro also served as President of First Data s Alliance Group. Prior to these roles at First Data, Ms. Faro was Chief Executive Officer of Chase Merchant Services LLC, which processed over $170 billion in payment volume annually during her tenure. Ms. Faro currently serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Transactions Association, Merchant Link and Front Stream Payments, all of which are private companies in the payment processing industry. Ms. Faro is one of the founding members of the Women s Networking in Electronic Transactions (W.net), which offers women in the payments industry a place to network and find mentors. Ms. Faro s extensive experience in the payments industry enables her to provide management with insight into marketing and operational issues.

Rex Gambill has worn many hats in adult life. He worked full-time in retail for several years while earning two bachelor’s degrees from Valdosta State University. A nine-year career in print journalism immediately followed, first as a reporter, then as a copy editor, and finally as managing editor of several daily newspapers. In 2003, Gambill was asked to lead the effort to transition The Houston Home Journal in Perry, Ga., from a weekly newspaper into a daily. That newspaper received 22 press association awards in its first year under his leadership.

In his next career, Gambill came to work for Lee Pickard at Mid-State RV Center as internet sales manager in 2006. He sold recreational vehicles, built the company’s website, and shepherded the company’s adoption of customer relationship management (CRM) software by iMagicLab. Since then, he has been asked to serve on iMagicLab’s product advisory board, and currently serves as marketing director at Mid-State RV.

In 2012, along with Pickard and Sean Kumar, Gambill was instrumental in the founding of the nonprofit organization Americans For Schools, helping to craft effective marketing strategies and identifying partners and others who shared the team’s vision. He even designed the logo. Gambill is passionate about improving the quality of education in our nation’s schools, and ensuring a brighter future through an educated citizenry.

Gambill has served on numerous boards and service organizations. He is married and has one son.

Dr. Cynthia Hammond graduated from The Fort Valley State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice. She began her professional career as a police officer in Macon, Georgia, and later worked as an officer in Fort Valley. She was honored as Police Officer of the Year and promoted to Detective where she dealt with juvenile crimes and taught the D.A.R.E. program.

Dr. Hammond went back to college to obtain a Master’s Degree in Education, a Specialist Degree in Educational Leadership and a Doctorate Degree from Argosy University. She began teaching at Byron Middle School and was selected as Byron Middle Teacher of the Year. She then went on to be Peach County’s OVERALL Teacher of the Year. She transferred to Houston County and began teaching at Tabor Middle School in 2000 and was selected as Tabor’s 2004 Teacher of the Year. Dr. Hammond was an assistant principal for five years in Houston County. Of those five years, she has worked at Matt Arthur, Westside, and Miller Elementary Schools.

Dr. Hammond was selected as Georgia’s Outstanding Assistant Principal by the Georgia Association of Elementary School Principals for 2009 (GAESP). She is married and has 3 children.

Over the past 25 years, Ryan has helped global leaders drive exponential value and profit growth through the real-time harvesting of customer insights. Individually and as a team leader, He has applied advanced analytic tools to more effectively monetize data streams. Today he plays a key role at IBMiX, the world's 5th largest advertising agency, helping drive innovation for global clients that leverages the unique advantages of mobile devices to drive deeper relationships, stronger revenue growth and higher profit margins.

Recently Ryan has integrated information including location, transaction and social network behavior to prevent churn, reduce credit risk, and accurately predict propensity for up-sell, cross-sell, referrals and more. Clients in the US and Asia have seen their business in key markets grow, particularly in India and China where he has spent a total of more than 15 years.

Prior to joining IBM, Ryan was the Mobile Commerce Project Leader at Delta and Solution Architect at Soft Card (now a division of Google Inc.), leading the development of solutions that advance the application of insight-driven, highly-relevant mobile marketing interactions.

Cooper is the CEO and founder of a Santa Monica-based tech startup called "Klickly", a unique charity driven payment system technology, which serves as an integral part to the growth and philanthropic initiatives of Ellis Jaxon Farms. In line with these initiatives, Cooper is also on the Board of the non-profit organization "Hidden Voices".

Moreover, Cooper produced award-winning digital content for companies such as PostIt Notes, Kimberly Clark and DailyMotion.

Although she is very accomplished as an philanthropist, entrepreneur and technology expert, Cooper also has a noteworthy career in acting. After originating a role in New York at the Off-Broadway Cherry Lane theatre, Cooper has worked in numerous national print and commercial campaigns, feature films, stints on several daytime TV shows, including the "Young and the Restless" and series regular roles in two pilots.

Andrew Reeves is an Agriculture Teacher/FFA Advisor with over fourteen years of teaching experience in various fields including math and science, in both general education and special education settings. He has also served Houston County Schools as an Instructional Coach, mentoring other teachers and modeling best practices in the classroom. Mr. Reeves received his bachelor’s degree from Georgia Southwestern graduating Summa Cum Laude, his Masters in Educational Leadership from Nova University graduating with a 3.96 GPA, and his Specialist in Brain Based Learning from Walden University graduating with a 4.0 GPA. Mr. Reeves has also been recognized at the school level as Teacher of the Year and by the State as a Georgia Master Teacher. He frequently speaks at various state conferences and is a member of several professional organizations.

Mike is a Founding Board of Director and Loan Committee Member of American Pride Bank in Macon, GA, with three branches statewide.

An entrepreneur at heart, Mike has successfully invested over the years in numerous projects in the hospitality arena, including well known name brands including Comfort Inn and Suites, Best Western Inn, LaQuinta Inn, Country Inn & Suites, Spring Hill Suites by Marriott, and Residence Inn by Marriott. He has also invested in real estate, including several Gas Station & Convenience Stores in Middle Georgia.

In addition to numerous philanthropic endeavors Mike has been involved in over the years in various platforms, including Americans For Schools and Ellis Jaxon Farms, Mike has also served as a Board of Director for the Byron Convention and Visitor Bureau in Byron, GA.