SKYShades - Key Personnel - Barry Maranta, Joe McKenna, Greg Norman

Barry Maranta - President

Barry has built up over the past 30 years a reputation as one of Australia's leading business innovators. As recorded in the "Who's Who in Business in Australia", Barry has emerged from an academic career to become the founder of a wide range of business ventures in Australia and the United Kingdom. On leaving Academia, he moved into the property sector covering subdivisions, retail, commercial and industrial developments. He introduced the first "Mini-warehouse" projects to Australia after observing the rapid growth of this form of development in California and Arizona. By the 1980's, Barry had helped create a successful National Insurance broker network, a Sports Management Company (responsible for organising the Australia Tennis Open and the Davis Cup), and the first Property Trust Company in his home state of Queensland, managing almost $200 Million within its first five years. In sports-mad Australia, perhaps Barry is best known for creating and becoming the Founding Chairman of the Brisbane Broncos in 1987, a professional Rugby franchise which has become the most successful sporting team in the country. On selling the franchise to Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd/Fox organisation, Barry was invited by News Ltd to head up a similar franchise in London (UK) which he called the London Broncos. He invited Richard Branson (of Virgin Atlantic / Megastores fame) onto his Board and within a year, Richard bought out Barry's equity. Barry is the Founding President of SKYShades U.S.A. and will apply his experience in start-up ventures to the CEO's role in formulating and driving forward the Company's determination to become a major participator in the burgeoning Shade Industry within the United States.

Joe McKenna - Executive Vice President

Joe is a graduate of Clemson University, majoring in Financial Management. After being engaged in sales and marketing in the Financial Services industry in Florida, he ventured abroad with his wife to explore opportunities in South-East Asia and then Australia, where he had dwelt for 15 years up until January 2004. Joe has established over the past seven years his own highly successful Detergent Distributor Business which markets a United States product throughout Australia. Hence he has first-hand knowledge as to how to organise, motivate and monitor his Distributors who are spread throughout the country. It was because of Joe's many visitations back to his home base in Florida, that he observed the lack of shade protection provided in the U.S. compared to his everyday experiences in Australia. Joe had already spent a couple of years and much of his own money in researching the Shade Industry before enlisting Barry Maranta in 2001 to look further into rolling out a business plan to launch this highly developed industry in Australia into the vast U.S. marketplace. With Barry, Joe travelled to the United States on a number of occasions assessing the prospects of educating Americans in the aesthetics and functional advantages of shade protection; as well, both looked at the competitors already established in the Shade Industry and noted that they were few in numbers, and they were technically far behind the real advances made in the Shade Industry in Australia by the elite technicians who were to make up the SKYShades team. Joe, is the Executive Vice President of SKYShades and fulfils the critical role as Director in charge of Franchises.

Greg Norman, known affectionately round the world as "The Great White Shark", has won in total 86 professional events, including 18 U.S. PGA Tour titles. He has recorded 29 top 10 finishes in Majors, or more than 38 percent of those he entered. And while his well-documented wins on the golf course secured him a spot in the World Golf Hall of Fame, he continues to work at both his game and his business career which promises to succeed long after his playing days are behind him. Greg's many years in Australia have accustomed him to the campaigns waged nationally to mitigate the effects of Skin Cancer, particularly amongst youngsters. His signature 'White Hat' worn on Golf Courses throughout the world has been his strong public message that the sun's rays are not to be underestimated and shade should be encouraged. Greg enthusiastically embraced the concept of spreading the message among young and old of the dangers of the sun's UV rays. Having lived in the U.S. for the past 25 years, he too observed that Americans were slow to recognize the need for shade, and expressed excitement in being part of an opportunity to spread an Australian technology across the U.S. Not only was this seen as a unique business opportunity, but it fulfilled his other goal of lending his name and image to help in reducing the incidence of cancer.

Greg has for many years been an enthusiastic contributor to the National Childhood Cancer Foundation, and he already has supported the drive to help prevent the scourge of skin cancer among American children. Indeed, the American Academy of Dermatology had already made Greg their spokesman in national publicity campaigns warning the American public of the consequences of skin cancer. From the business point of view, Greg's role in evaluating the profile of SKYShades Holdings cannot be underestimated. Whether in designing golf courses across the world, in spreading the value of SKYShades among his high net-worth colleagues, in introducing the Company to key individuals in the U.S. and overseas, Greg has greatly assisted in building on the image of SKYShades.

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