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=Rip Gerber=

Rough draft for LOC-AID Tech's Rip Gerber wikipedia page. Please do not delete.

Robert “Rip” Benthall Gerber, Jr. (December 27, 1962 – ), is an American author, business executive and entrepreneur.

Early Life
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Robert Benthall Gerber, Jr. was born in Washington, DC, on Thursday, December 27, 1962, to Robert Benthall Gerber, a plumber, and Carolyn Wyser Gerber, a State Department employee. Raised in Falls Church, Virginia, he had three siblings: a brother, William, and two sisters, Donna and Cheryl. Gerber pursued cartooning in his youth. At age ten he started a business designing and selling greeting cards. His business was successful and he earned a scholarship to attend the University of Virginia, beginning in 1981. In college he studied biophysics and chemical engineering and supported himself by designing campus posters, T-shirts and greeting cards, working as a staff political cartoonist for the Cavalier Daily and University Journal, and working summer jobs at the Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He also served on the University of Virginia’s Honor Council and as an officer for the Virginia chapter of Delta Upsilon fraternity. He was a member of the Virginia rugby and cycling club teams. During the course of his undergraduate study, an engineering professor criticized Gerber's excessive doodling and what he deemed unnecessary language in his lab notes, prompting Gerber to enroll in a fiction writing class his senior year where he received the only A+ grade in his entire college career. For his writing class he produced his first short story, "A Fishing Day Correspondence", later published in The Virginia Literary Review in 1985. Gerber did not write another work of fiction again until twenty years later.

Gerber applied for and was rejected by Harvard Business School in 1987. Upon his second attempt at admission he did not complete the required personal essays for his application, and instead constructed a large painted wooden puzzle of a pictogram detailing his life and accomplishments and shipped it to Harvard Admissions in a Zip-Loc bag. Gerber was accepted into Harvard University’s School of Business and graduated in 1992. At Harvard, he became a political cartoonist and journalist with the HARBUS school paper and co-wrote the Harvard show, ”Vulgarians at the Gate,” with Don Sull, now an author and London Business School professor, and Jay O’Connor, son of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Writing Career
Rip Gerber's books have been published by Random House under the Heyne imprint and sold almost exclusively as German language techno-thrillers in Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology.

The Journeyman was Rip Gerber’s first published novel, published by iUniverse in 2007. It is a novella of 52,000 words in length which describes the coming of age of an Iraqi boy in post-war Iraq. The manuscript was rejected by over a hundred agents, primarily for its favorable views of the outcome of the Iraqi war, an unpopular stance at the time. It sold under a hundred copies.

In 2007, Gerber published Pharma, his first techno-thriller concerning a team of pharmaceutical scientists conducting genetic tests on exotic rare plants in the Amazon rainforest. The novel included references to emerging biogenetic procedures, particularly growth enhancement of photosynthesis, that have since become mainstay techniques in biogenetic engineering research laboratories. The Random House edition published by the imprint Heyne briefly reached best-seller status in Germany in mid-2007.

In 2010, Gerber published a sequel entitled Killer Virus about a plot to infect the American public during a nationwide anti-terror rally utilizing medical device implants. The book received excellent reviews but was published only in German under the Heyne imprint.

Also in 2010, Gerber’s second short story, "Last Supper", was selected among hundreds of submissions to be included in an anthology from new authors and New York Times best-selling authors. The anthology, First Thrills: High-Octane Stories from the Hottest Thriller Authors was published internationally by Forge. Gerber’s story concerns a priest who utilizes the chemical properties of exotic mushrooms in administering the last rites to the man who murdered his pregnant wife. The story garnered much acclaim from Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist.

Timeline
He began his career at the Central Intelligence Agency, with documented roles in both the Psychological Testing Division in Arlington, Virginia and at Central Records in Langley, Virginia.


 * 1985: He built the first polychromatic polyethylene manufacturing plant for Firestone Tire & Rubber in Hopewell, Virginia.
 * 1987: Gerber held key line positions as a senior marketing director at American Express, Inc. in New York, where he was the youngest employee in American Express’s history to join the Graduate Managament Program.
 * 1992: Gerber was a senior practitioner at Deloitte & Touche, later Deloitte consulting. He is most noted for being the first management consultant in Deloitte’s software practice. He also served in Deloitte’s Merger & Acquisition division (and an affiliation with KKR).
 * 1997: Gerber served as President and Founder of @once Inc, an email marketing company that was later acquired by InfoUSA.
 * 1999: Gerber served as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Marketing of Commtouch Inc., an email infrastructure company based out of Tel Aviv, Israel (NASDAQ: CTCH). He served as Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Marketing Officer look the company public on the NASDAQ.
 * 2001: Gerber was Senior Vice President for Digitas Inc. (NASDAQ: DTAS) where he established the firm’s B2B division.
 * 2004: Gerber also served as Managing Director and Group Vice President of Carlson Marketing Group, subsidiary of Carlson Companies. Gerber led regional integration of CMG’s acquisitions, notably the Peppers & Rogers Group, and he initiated and led the firm’s technology practice for clients including HP, Intel, Oracle, Xerox and Home Depot.
 * 2004-2006: Gerber joined Intellisync, then a struggling consumer data sync company, to lead a restructuring, repositioning and re-branding of the company, consolidate its products and market focus and position Intellisync for sale. Gerber and CEO Woody Hobbs transformed the company and brand to a worldwide leader in wireless email and mobile software for the enterprise and wireless carrier markets. Nokia acquired Intellisync for $480M in February 2006 . Rip Gerber was the Chief Marketing Officer and head of Ecommerce and Business Development for NOKIA (NOK) following the acquisition.
 * 2009-Present: Gerber is currently President and Chief Executive Officer of LOC-AID Technologies, Inc., a “Location-as-a-Service” (LaaS) company that provides network location to mobile application developers in the United States and abroad.

Credentials
Mr. Gerber earned a biochemical engineering degree from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He is also a published author (PHARMA; Random House in July 2007; PILOTS TO PROFITS; Hudson House in 2005), and KILLER VIRUS (Random House, December 2010). He is a member of various writing and national organizations, including: MENSA, International Thriller Writers, Squaw Valley Writer’s Conference (2007), San Francisco Writer’s Workshop, and Mystery Writers of America.

Personal Life
Placeholder for information about Rip's personal life.