Rick Novak

Executive Director & Coordinator

Mr. Richard (“Rick”) Novak serves as Executive Director and Coordinator of the Area Coalitions for Education-Excellence (ACE-E).  Mr. Novak is also Chief Executive Officer ( CEO) & Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Novak & Associates, Inc., providing counsel in strategic positioning, business/marketing development, corporate-government-military relations, world-class education programs, and technology based  events/initiatives (specializations in vertical industry clusters with horizontal integration of Information Technology – “IT”).  Experienced in Corporate, Education, and Department of Defense (DoD) environments in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific Rim, and South America.  Mr. Novak collaborates and coordinates with General Officers and Senior Executive Service (SES) professionals in providing counsel.

Mr. Novak is a Fulbright Scholar who studied in Germany comparing U.S. and German information systems, technology, government, military, and educational collaborations focused on economic development.  He has completed the Master of Science (MS) degree from Syracuse University, and the Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree at Wright State University (WSU), with majors/concentrations/emphases in Information Systems, Management, Marketing, and Project Management.  He also has completed requirements for the Master of Arts (MA) graduate degree work in Technology.  His B.A. is in Philosophy (Symbolic Logic) from Syracuse University/Utica College.

Regional as well as global community and professional leadership responsibilities included serving as Board Chair of the nationally organized Area Coalitions for Education-Excellence (ACE-E), focused on technology based mentoring initiatives to develop world-class publicly supported education systems – includes meeting(s) with President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama; served as a member of the KeyBank Board of Advisors; a member of the Board of Directors of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) Dayton-Wright, and appointed to a 3-year term with the AFCEA International Technology Committee; served for 3 years as Co-Chair of the Defense Acquisition University’s (DAU’s) Keynote Speakers and Panels Committee for the annual DAU Alumni Association’s DoD Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) “Insight Days” with Dr. Ashton Carter, Secretary of DoD and AT&L as guest for 2 years; previous leader of the Board of Trustees for the Greater Dayton IT Alliance (GDITA) with 6 years of Executive Committee responsibilities and Chair of the Technology Commercialization Committee; former leader of the Foundation Board of the “Wright Brothers” Engineers Club with Vice President and Chair of the Business Development Committee responsibilities; Founding Member of the Wright Air and Space Center; Founding Member of the FBI-InfraGard Chapter;  and served on the Governor appointed Executive Order of the Ohio Commodores, with global commitment to the economic development of Ohio.  The Governor’s Director of Science and Technology had appointed Mr. Novak to the Ohio Nanotechnology Commission, with responsibilities for the Nanotechnology Summit to include the Keynote Nobel Prize nanotechnology speaker and the leader of Nano-IT commercialization for Hewlett-Packard Labs.  Other technology initiatives include RFID Summit Chairperson of Keynote Speakers in the U.S. Government and commercial emerging technologies, as well as Emcee for all RFID speakers and panels.

Mr. Novak serves as Executive Director with the Board of Trustees and Facilitator for the member volunteer Task Force of Air Force, DoD, and community leaders in the nationally organized Area Coalitions for Education (ACE)-Excellence (ACE-E) focused on technology based mentoring of pre-school to grade 16 of more than 1,000  inner city and Appalachian youths served, with Congressional/Presidential Insert support for the ACE PILOTS  — ACE Passion for Innovation and Leadership in Opportunities with Technology and Success — initiative.

Mr. Novak has served on the GDITA (aka Technology First) Board of Trustees (BOT) and served as GDITA Chairperson of the “IT & Small Business Summit: Connecting with the Air Force” wherein the Co-Founder of GOOGLE, Mr. Sergey Brin, was Mr. Novak’s guest for 3 days of meetings.  He also has been Chair of the GDITA Strategic Planning Committee, and has Chaired the Technology Commercialization Committee of the GDITA BOTs, which resulted in federal funding for $16.9 million in “Secure Knowledge Mining in Disparate Resources” commercialization project currently identified as the newly created Wright Center of Innovation for “Advanced Data Management & Analysis” (ADMA), known as daytaOhio.  Mr. Novak has served as Co-Chairperson of the Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) Business Systems Summit, and for 5 years served as the Information Technology Workshops Committee Chairperson of the nationally recognized AFCEA InfoTech Conferences.  Mr. Novak was honored as the only corporate representative on the “Air Force Small Business Information Technology Conference”.

Mr. Novak served as the facilitator and editor for the Dayton Technology Taskforce, a city government and community corporate based effort to coordinate information technology infrastructures in the Dayton regional environments, with leaders and local CIOs/CEOs/VPs from the City of Dayton, LexisNexis, NCR, Premier Health Partners, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.  He is involved in many scholarship donation programs as well as efforts to foster growth of the National U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.  He served as an Ambassador for the Steering Committee of the “i-Zone” – Innovation-Zone — in Dayton, Ohio, and has Chaired the i-Zone Wright-Patterson Air Force Base/Government Tech Transfer Committee.  As a founding member of the FBI-InfraGard Chapter of Dayton (Ohio), and an active past member of the Strategic Planning Committee of the “Wright Brothers” Dayton Engineers’ Club, Mr. Novak also continued to be involved as a life-time member of the Air Force Association (AFA), AFCEA, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Club, life-time member of the Fulbright Association, the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce Military Affairs Committee, and the Miami Valley Military Affairs Association (Ohio).