Datatrak Management Team
Our Leadership Team
Alex Tabatabai
Chairman & CEO
Alex Tabatabai has been Chairman of the Board since 2016 and CEO since 2021. He is the Chief Investment Officer of Tabatabai Investment Management LLC, the largest shareholder of Datatrak, since 2014. He is a value-oriented investor who believes in applying a common sense approach to analyzing businesses. Prior to his current firm, he was a founder and managing member of Fernbank Partners LLC from 2010 through 2014, which also focused on value-oriented fundamental investing with a contrarian approach. From 2007 to 2010, he worked at Penta Investment Advisers Ltd, a multi-billion dollar fundamental analysis style hedge fund. He earned a Masters of Law in taxation and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law School and Loyola Law School. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California with an emphasis studied in the entrepreneurial program at the Lloyd Grief Program at the USC Marshall School of Business.
Niki Kutac
Vice President of Marketing & Product Management
Niki Kutac is the Vice President of Marketing & Product Management for Datatrak. Niki oversees the overall marketing and product management strategies for the company, along with the technology implementations for the Datatrak Enterprise Cloud. Prior to joining Datatrak, Niki held various Data Management and clinical technology positions at Nuron Biotech, Pharm-Olam International, and ClickFind, Inc. Niki obtained a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University.
Board of Directors
Dr. Eric Wilhelm
Dr. Eric Wilhelm, has been a Class II Director since 2016. Dr. Wilhelm has founded several companies including the project-sharing community Instructables (acquired by Autodesk), high-altitude wind power company Makani Power (acquired by Google), the innovation and design partnership Squid Labs, and companies working on portable energy generation and health care. He is now the Vice President of Hardware and Communities at Autodesk. He received his SB, SM, and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT. He has been recognized as a top innovator by Technology Review Magazine and Popular Mechanics, won a Wired Rave award for Industrial Design, and was awarded the National Inventors Hall of Fame Collegiate Inventors Award for development of a nanoparticle printing technique.
Dr. Pontea Shabkhiz
Dr. Pontea Shabkhiz, has been a Class II Director since 2020. Dr. Shabkhiz is a Doctor of Pharmacy with over 15 years of professional experience in the pharmaceutical industry. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Molecular, Cell, Developmental Biology from the University of California Los Angeles, graduating Cum Laude with High Honors. She also holds a Doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of Southern California School of Pharmacy. She has worked as a community pharmacist since 2005, interacting with the public and providing front line services, such as vaccinations and drug dispensing. She has worked at CVS Health since 2007, where her responsibilities have included establishing new locations from the ground up, leading a team to efficiently operate a pharmacy, as well as recruiting, hiring, training, and supervising employees. Dr. Shabkhiz has clinical experience as a laboratory researcher who has worked on neuronal development of serotonin and FMRFamide, crossed different strains of drosphilia, micro dissected larval brain, and performed immunostaining and mounted results for data analysis. She also has experience working in a clinical pharmacy environment in various settings including on-site, off-site, inpatient, outpatient, ambulatory care, and pharmacy administration.
Dr. Behnam Tabatabai
Dr. Behnam Tabatabai, has been a Class II Director since 2016. Dr. Behnam Tabatabai is a bioenvironmental scientist whose research encompasses biotechnology and molecular biology. He has worked for the Central Pennsylvania Lab for Biofuels and Shea Labs at the Pennsylvania State University from 2008 to 2013. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioenvironmental Sciences from Morgan State University in December 2017 and is currently working there as a Research Associate. He holds a Master of Science from Pennsylvania State University as well as a Bachelor of Science in biology from the same university. He has earned numerous awards, been published, presented at major conferences, and served as a panelist at events in his field, as well as being a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Alex Tabatabai
Alex Tabatabai has been Chairman of the Board since 2016 and CEO since 2021. He is the Chief Investment Officer of Tabatabai Investment Management LLC, the largest shareholder of Datatrak, since 2014. He is a value-oriented investor who believes in applying a common sense approach to analyzing businesses. Prior to his current firm, he was a founder and managing member of Fernbank Partners LLC from 2010 through 2014, which also focused on value-oriented fundamental investing with a contrarian approach. From 2007 to 2010, he worked at Penta Investment Advisers Ltd, a multi-billion dollar fundamental analysis style hedge fund. He earned a Masters of Law in taxation and a Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University Law School and Loyola Law School. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California with an emphasis studied in the entrepreneurial program at the Lloyd Grief Program at the USC Marshall School of Business.
Colonel Jack H. Jacobs
Colonel Jack H. Jacobs, is a current Director in Class I and has held that position since 2016. Colonel Jacobs is the Melcher Family Chair of Politics and Professor of Humanities and Public Affairs at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where he has been teaching since 2005. He is also a principal of The Fitzroy Group, Ltd., a firm that specializes in the development of residential real estate in London, and invests both for its own account and in joint ventures with other institutions, for over 20 years. Colonel Jacobs has also been an on-air analyst for NBC News since 2002, where he was an Emmy nominee in 2010 and 2011 and a recipient of the 2011 Murrow Award. Colonel Jacobs is among the most highly decorated soldiers from the Vietnam era, having earned three Bronze Stars, two Silver Stars and the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest combat decoration. After retiring from active duty in 1987, Colonel Jacobs was the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of AutoFinance Group Inc., one of the firms to pioneer the securitization of debt instruments, from 1988 to 1989; the firm that was subsequently sold to KeyBank. He was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust, a diversified financial institution and investment bank, where he was responsible for the firm’s foreign exchange options business globally, and was a partner in the institutional hedge fund business. Colonel Jacobs has been a member of the board of directors of numerous publicly traded companies and is currently a director of Paragon Technologies, Inc., a public company, since 2012; Ballantyne Strong, Inc., a public company, since 2018; and Resonant, Inc., a public company, since 2018. From 2007 to 2012, Colonel Jacobs served as a member of the Board of Directors of Xedar Corporation, a public company; from June 2006 to 2009, he was a director of Visual Management Systems, a private company; and he was a director of BioNeutral Group, Inc., a public company, until 2009. From October 17, 2013 to October 28, 2013, Colonel Jacobs served on the board of SED International Holdings, Inc. Colonel Jacobs was previously a director of Premier Exhibitions, Inc. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the USO of New York. Colonel Jacobs is the author of the book “If Not Now, When?: Duty and Sacrifice in America’s Time of Need.” Colonel Jacobs received a Bachelor of Arts and a Master’s degree from Rutgers University.