Executive Bios

Edward McLaughlin

Principal

Edward McLaughlin is a founding Principal of Alterion. He is primarily responsible for client and business development relationships with partner organizations and Federal civilian agencies.

Edward McLaughlin joined the National Software Testing Laboratories (NSTL), a McGraw-Hill company, in July 1991, assuming the position of Account Manager for Testing Services. His clients included Xerox, Intel, Lotus, AT&T and other industry leaders. His focus was selling confidential testing services (performance, compatibility, functional) to marketing managers, product designers and engineers, and corporate officers of these companies.

In 1995 he envisioned taking these concepts to the largest user of information technology in the world, the United States government. In order to be successful in that marketplace, he developed a new business model, strategy and marketing concept that used existing NSTL methodologies and skill sets, but also added a consultive, problem-solving approach that dramatically increased NSTL contract length, billing hours and profitability when compared with the company’s traditional methods. In addition, he designed the billing and accounting systems to comply with government regulations and the NSTL financial framework, obtained the GSA schedule, and was awarded several Blanket Purchasing Agreements that became the catalyst for the initial group revenues. He also worked closely with, and was an active member of, McGraw-Hill’s Federal Government Marketing Team.

Mr. McLaughlin served as the Director of Business Development and Marketing for NSTL's Government Services Division from 1995 through February 2000. During that time, and with the assistance of the other (now) Alterion partners, he oversaw revenue growth exceeding $6 million per year with high profitability. Government Services rapidly became the largest revenue and profit producer in the company.

Mr. McLaughlin became a principal of Alterion in March 2000, and brings more than twenty years of sales, sales management, and information technology business development and marketing experience to Alterion.

Andrew Froning

Principal, Director of Operations

Andrew Froning is a founding Principal of Alterion and serves as Director of Operations. He is responsible for the execution of contracts for all Alterion clients. Mr. Froning has an extensive background in all facets of information technology assessment, management, evaluation and testing and is an experienced manager of engagements with the federal government. Teams under Mr. Froning's leadership and supervision have fulfilled contracts for the US Department of the Navy, US Department of the Army, US Department of Defense, US Department of Justice, the Department of State, NASA and the US Senate.

Mr. Froning is an experienced public speaker and published author. His public presentations include talks on EDI, benchmark testing for outsourcing programs, and the role of IV&V in government projects. He has performed numerous briefs to senior government managers and committees. He made frequent contributions to BYTE magazine and his remarks have appeared in Business Week, USA Today and Government Computer News. He also served for four years as managing editor of the comparative journals PC Digest and Software Digest.

Mr. Froning has nearly thirty years of experience in the computer industry, with nearly half of that time spent in the analysis and testing of computer hardware and software. He holds a BA from the University of Notre Dame.

Stephen Platt, Ph. D.

Principal, Chief Technology Officer

Dr. Stephen Platt is a founding Principal of Alterion and serves as Chief Technology Officer and Chief Scientist. At Alterion, he provides technical direction for all corporate activities. Steve is the principal architect of the SharpThought™ set of program management and support methodologies. He is also the author of the ALP benchmarking suite, currently being used by NASA and other clients. In addition, he has provided process and computational/analytic support for program management, verification and validation, and testing for clients in the Department of Justice, Department of State, and Department of Defense.

Prior to Alterion, he taught Computer Science at Swarthmore College, developed real-time image analysis systems at Storage and Retrieval, and was a member of the Research and Development department at NSTL, finishing as the Director of Research and Development.

While at NSTL, Dr. Platt received a Corporate Achievement Award from their parent company, McGraw Hill, for his works in the development of the core testing and web presentation technologies for Business Week's "Maven" systems review publication system. During the same period, Canada Online named the Canadian NMSO/SIPPS site, based on the same underlying technology, one of Canada’s Top Ten Government Web Sites.

Dr. Platt has a Ph. D. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania, where his research focused on representation and simulation techniques for nonrigid objects. He is also a member of the IEEE and ACM, including the IEEE Computer Society and ACM SIGGRAPH computer graphics society.