Ralph Cavallaro, Principal with New Reach Consulting Partners, began consulting independently in May of 2005. After 15 years in the music industry, Cavallaro left to provide consulting services to internet startup music.com. In his two years there, he implemented a social network, a cutting edge mobile music application and video partnership with Brightcove. Cavallaro was asked to join the Music.com board of directors, and continues to serve in that role today.

Prior to forming New Reach Consulting, Cavallaro spent 10 years at Universal Music Group. As Vice President of Digital Initiatives Global IT, in 2004 Cavallaro managed a system development budget of over 10 Million dollars which enabled the company’s growth into online music and mobile sales. Revenues for the company in these new areas, this same year went on to exceed 100 Million. UMG has gone on to become the leader in digital music market share.

Prior to Cavallaro’s US and London based staff completing a year and half effort to digitize the entire Universal Music Group active catalog, enabling UMG’s ability to supply the legitimate digital download business, Cavallaro was awarded Vivendi Universal’s “Excellence in IT Award”. He was also that year nominated to chair the RIAA/IFPI’s music industry integrated identifiers project (MI3P). After chairing a two year effort, he and his MI3P colleagues submitted the first music industry standard for interoperable messaging and trade unit identifiers. Cavallaro continues to consult on digital music industry standards and online music strategy.

Cavallaro was made Vice President of Universal Music Group’s business to business application team, In March of 2000. In his role he built an industry award winning retail Extranet and global infrastructure to leverage the company’s web assets for cost savings initiatives and further developed his skills in web technology. Prior to this, Cavallaro began strategizing web application efficiencies in March of 1996 when Universal Music Group hired and relocated Cavallaro to Los Angeles to implement a data warehouse of point of sale, airplay and shipment information. Immediately in November of 1997, he was promoted to Director of IT for MCA Records. In this role he designed, implemented and oversaw the labels back office systems, along with the internal and consumer facing web applications. His duties included launching many of the labels priority artist web sites, developing AR research data mining applications and providing just in time market data via a companywide intranet.

Cavallaro began his major label career at EMI North America Group in 1994 as a Senior Business Analyst implementing sales processing applications for their artist royalties systems team. Cavallaro began implementing software as a partner in a Miami Beach based recording studio. His love of technology and music began while studying recording engineering, digital audio, computer science and music industry operations at the University of Miami school of Music Engineering in 1990.  

Steve Weaver has over 20 years experience in technology, and has designed and developed secure, large-scale, highly available databases, web services, and internet aware applications for many Fortune 500 companies including IBM, Vivendi Games, Allstate Insurance, Countrywide Bank, and most recently Universal Music Group. Weaver began working with Ralph Cavallaro and Charles Almond in early 2000, helping to create content management, distribution, and tracking systems for the music & gaming industry.

In 2003, Weaver architected and helped developed applications to streamline the process of approving and validating loan documents, as well as, allowing partners and other banks to purchase loan packages for Countrywide Bank. These systems greatly improved the accuracy and speed at which loan paper moved through the process and are still in use. Loans processed and packaged amounted to hundreds of millions per month.

In 1998, Weaver joined Answer Financial Insurance to manage their web development and bring one of the first real-time insurance quoting engines on the web. The web site integrated all aspects of the company including their 24-hour call center and quoting across multiple companies for quote comparison.

Weaver graduated from Arizona State University in 1985 and started work for Salt River Project, one of two major utility companies in Arizona, designing and building a Graphical Information System to automate construction and facilities management. Though the 90’s, he also consulted for McGraw-Hill, building educational games; American Express, creating interactive kiosks to market their travel branch; and Intel, building a just-in-time materials management system.  

Charles T. Almond IV, Principal with New Reach Consulting Partners, began consulting independently in January of 2001. Almond joined forces with Ralph Cavallaro to build award winning retail Extranets and create a global infrastructure for exploiting Universal Music Group’s content. For over five years, Almond and Cavallaro worked together to implement over twenty different systems. Many of which are in use today and are considered best of breed automation

tools, including systems that digitize and distribute the entire UMG active catalog to digital partners for UMG’s digital download business.

Prior to his work with UMG, Almond partnered with a former Oracle executive to launch a Beverly Hills company focused on creating web based software to enable companies to increase revenue and lower operating cost from licensing content, trademarks, and copyrights. In a time when shareholders were pushing management to do more with less, RightsLine provided the first software solution focused on increasing revenue from intellectual property while driving down overhead costs. From automating licensing and sales divisions to improving financial accountability, RightsLine provided a proven set of rights management, licensing and royalty products, allowing their customers to increase revenue, satisfy compliance requirements and improve efficiencies.

In 1999, Almond joined Countrywide’s Global Home Loans to lead a team of 15 developers in building the first web based Global Loan Origination system. Through a partnership with the U.K.’s second largest bank, Countrywide was poised to leverage its industry knowledge to service loans in the United Kingdom. Due to the high levels of throughput, data storage and processing, the latest technologies from DB2, Java and Microsoft were utilized. The system was a success and by 2005, GHL operation was processing more than $20.3 billion in loans. As of December 31, 2005, GHL's subservicing portfolio was $102 billion.

Immediately after graduating from the University Of Colorado at Boulder in 1997, Almond began creating custom software solutions on behalf of a Denver based consulting company. The largest project had Almond in Washington DC for a year enhancing the Department of Defense’s Military Traffic Management Command system. Almond’s expertise in logistics and automation were essential in developing the web based application to manage assets comprised of 10,400 containers, 2,100 railcars, and 142 miles of government railroad track.  

Ariyah Okamoto, has been committed to the music industry for over 20 years. As a media & music strategist for New Reach Consulting Partners, Okamoto brings his experiences as an artist, producer, agent, promoter and label president to the firm. In addition to his work at New Reach Consulting, he is also the President of Organic Music, a world music label and management group. Organic Music is a distributed label by Fontana, a Universal Music Group company.

Prior to joining New Reach Consulting, Okamoto won critical acclaim from the New Times and the Miami Herald for his alter-ego, Ravelstein, which he created and performed as, throughout South Florida. It gained him multiple accolades as the Best Show, and Best Band selection for Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties in 2006 and Best Lounge act in 2005 and 2004. Okamoto’s personal work has been distributed by Shimmy Disc and has been on rotation on BBC 1 radio.

Before this Okamoto was the President of Sync Studios for over a decade. Under his leadership, Sync Studios became a four time award winning “Best Recording Studio” – Miami, as reported by the New Times. While at Sync Studios, Okamoto developed a large client base of artists and major media companies, including the Pepsi World Cup and Millennium campaigns; Bobby Thomas – Weather Report, Billy Bang- Sun Ra, Drew Carey , Dharma and Greg and Blue-stage the nationally syndicated radio show.

Okamoto did his undergraduate work at the University of Miami honors program with a triple major in Philosophy, Literature and Economics. He was selected a Presidential Scholar and was awarded the Best Paper by an Undergraduate in the State of Florida by the American Philosophical Association.