Ali Saffari
Founder and CEO
Ali Saffari is a proven executive with an exemplary 25-year track record of affecting positive growth, building and growing world-class organizations, and empowering others to succeed. Mr. Saffari’s reputation as a respected leader and mentor is complemented with his focus on building and maintaining client confidence by consistently producing innovative products and services. These high-quality, innovative products and services enabled gaming industry giant International Game Technology (IGT) to maximize profits and grow their market share, to the point that it became the undisputed worldwide leader in gaming technology. Mr. Saffari’s long and incredibly successful career in bringing innovations to the industry has provided a network of professional connections that is second to none. He has a worldwide reputation among gaming industry professionals as the person who can deliver on what to some often seem impossible goals.
In his more than two decades with IGT, Mr. Saffari served in various roles within the engineering organization – starting as a firmware engineer and working his way up to hold several senior-level positions, ultimately running the 800-person Engineering Department as its Senior Vice President. Spanning his IGT career, Mr. Saffari was credited with the development of three products that revolutionized the industry, resulted in multiple stock splits, and spurred two unprecedented worldwide machine replacement cycles. Mr. Saffari is recognized as one of the most influential individuals in gaming and is credited with contributing some of the most widely accepted and profitable technologies in the industry to date.
Joe Bertolone
COO
With more than 25 years of experience in the gaming and system hardware and software manufacturing industries, Mr. Bertolone has most recently held the position of Director at William Hill US, assisting in the transition into the U.S. marketplace after William Hill PLC purchased Brandywine Bookmaking LLC. Mr. Bertolone assisted in combining operating organizations and directed capital expenditure programs to refurbish existing properties.
At Brandywine, as Director of Operations, Mr. Bertolone helped to build the business from ground up during the most challenging economic times the gaming industry has faced. He was responsible for all aspects of operational expansion of the business throughout the state of Nevada and into Delaware with an historic expansion of legalized sports wagering through the Delaware State Lottery, in partnership with Scientific Games, Inc. After growing the business to over $60 million in sales, he helped engineer the sale of the company to William Hill PLC.
Previously, Mr. Bertolone was the Vice President of Product Commercialization for Walker Digital Gaming, a division of Walker Digital. There, he spearheaded joint product development with International Game Technology and Walker Digital’s intellectual property pool.
Mr. Bertolone served at the Nevada State Gaming Control Board as Chief of the Technology Division. He played a key role in crafting regulations and legislation while advising the Board on regulatory and policy matters relating to technology. Mr. Bertolone helped lead the staff effort to re-align the Board’s divisional structure to better address the increasing reliance of technology in the gaming industry. Associated equipment and mobile gaming approval processes were also areas initially re-vamped under his leadership. Responsibilities included regulatory oversight of gaming devices and casino systems approvals and the Technology Division’s staff of engineers and auditors.
Christopher Lundy
Vice President Innovation Engineering
Mr. Lundy is the Vice President of Innovation Engineering for Leap Forward Gaming. He earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Arizona State University. Previous to LFG, Chris was a senior manager of software development for International Game Technology (IGT).
Mr. Lundy’s career at IGT includes 13 years of progressive responsibility from software developer to software management. During his tenure at IGT, Chris received two gaming related patents and contributed toward innovations which revolutionized gaming, including sliding pay tables for multi-denomination games, coupon cashless functionality for Bally SDS protocol, game and lottery system protocols and perhaps most widely recognized, he was team leader for creating the protocol and software for the first ticketing system, TITO™.
Prior to his career at IGT, Chris developed both software and hardware to support high speed Programmable Logic Controllers and Field Programmable Gate Arrays as part of the Value Added Division of Avnet Electronics, where he also earned an Innovation Award for process improvement. Chris’ creativity and talent has generated both issued and pending patents for IGT and now, the Leap Forward Gaming IP portfolio.
Lantz Litchfield
CTO
Dr. Litchfield is a company executive and principal of a myriad of diverse professional service groups having extensive experience with a variety of organizations including Fortune-500 companies, government agencies, and military projects at the highest level of security covering industries such as Gaming, Internet e-commerce and dot-com start-ups.
He holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology Management as well as the following computer security and IT certifications: CISSP, CSGE, CSGA, CSGI, CCSE+, CSE, CCSA, CCSI NG, NSI and NSA. This diverse background gives him special insight on security operations which allows him to design technology security solutions which cost-effectively utilize the most modern technology while increasing security, organization and operational efficiency and ROIs. Dr. Litchfield combines executive business savvy with technical know-how to produce solutions that are both realistic and effective and is heavily involved in LFG’s patent strategy.