Our Team

Karl Fox, President: Lithik is Karl’s third executive management role in a technology startup, the most notable of which was Morning Star Technologies. He was a co-founder of Morning Star Technologies that sold to Ascend Communications in 1996 for $25 million. Ascend then sold to Lucent in 1998. From 1996 to 2003 he was Chair of the Point-to-Point Extensions Working Group for the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). His accomplishments include the development of Morning Star PPP, at the time considered the industry standard implementation of the IETF Point-to-Point Protocol. He invented the fourth generation firewall technology used in SecureConnect firewalls, which won numerous industry “best product” awards. He has designed and coded embedded communications systems from SNA, bisync 3270 and 3780 to TCP/IP routers and IPSEC VPN devices. Karl was Vice President of Engineering at Applied Innovation and has had other management consulting engagements. Karl received a Master of Science in Computer Science, summa cum laude from Stanford University, a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, magna cum laude from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Certified Information Security Manager (CISM).

Ron Kellogg, VP Business Development: Ron came to Lithik in late 2005 with approximately 30 years of experience in growing business revenue. Ron started his career with Procter & Gamble where he established record sales revenues with major corporate accounts. Since then, Ron has focused on building companies with an opportunity to capitalize on unrealized market opportunity. These companies have included the startup of Ohioponics, a controlled environment agricultural company; the turnaround of Krema Products, a 100 year old peanut butter company where Ron led them to 4.5 times growth in revenue; Scotty MacBean Roastery, the first specialty coffee company in central Ohio (Starbucks was strictly west coast at the time); Secure Interiors, a developer of network security appliances for SME; NTLEX, as co-founder, Ron grew this first wholesale VoIP network in the USA to $33 Million annual revenue. Ron has a Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ron Kremm, VP Operations: Ron’s administrative and operations skills were honed while building an industrial services start-up into a multi-million dollar company with 240 employees and profitability and customer retention four times industry average. Average ROI for initial investors was over 100% annually. His core passion is developing a corporate culture of operational excellence as a means to achieving high-level customer service and retention.