The Greater Metro Orlando area is quickly gaining a solid foothold in the lead pack of the high-tech industry with over a thousand operational software companies in the region. Though technology knows no geographic boundaries, leading periodicals such as Entrepreneur and Business Week charts Metro Orlando as one of the top 10 best cities for doing business and creating startups.

Various sectors saturate the Metro Orlando region and have been the added force behind the development of successful software. Companies such as Dynamics Research, Lockheed Martin are rooted in the modeling, simulation and training. In the arena of animation and gaming, digital media can be found in the software development of Tiburion and Kosmo Studios. In the more professional business and legal market, technology has paved the way for companies such as Wave Software.

Young professionals are thriving in the start-up market and are providing computer-science and technology majors the ability to contribute to a truly dynamic arena. Metro Orlando is on the rise and will continue to experience success in the software technology industry as the community continues to see the benefit this industry provides.

Robert Childress
President of Wave Software

Wave Software President and co-founder, Robert Childress, a 2004/2005 National Register Who’s Who in Executives and Professionals Winner and winner of the Florida Small Businessman of the Year 2005, has overseen tremendous development in the emergence of Wave Software as a leading legal technology company. Childress is recognized as one of the 20 most influential people in the legal software business, having held senior positions with a number of key technology corporations including Lexis-Nexis, Thomson & Thomson, Elsevier Science, CXA Inc., McGrawHill, and Shepards. While at Lexis-Nexis, Childress managed product design and software sales for legal management software products for their corporate, government and legal markets. Robert was one of two founders of CXA, Inc. and its subsidiaries. Childress Attended University of Colorado. Childress has been awarded numerous government contracts from clients such as the FBI, CIA, White House and Homeland Security.

Wes Hodges
Vice-President of Wave Software Development

Before joining Wave Software, Mr. Hodges was Director of Development for Electronic Data Discovery at Driven, Inc. Mr. Hodges created in-house tools to both speed and make the EDD process easier. Previously, Mr. Hodges was CTO of HIPAAdocs. Mr. Hodges joined HIPAAdocs in July 2002 to oversee development and operations. HIPAAdocs creates solutions for small health practices to become compliant with the government HIPAA regulations. For five years, Mr. Hodges owned and managed Fab Gear Interactive, a web development company. Mr. Hodges worked closely with many clients to develop innovative solutions to meet their needs. Mr. Hodges was also responsible for all financial aspects of the company. Previously, Mr. Hodges worked in software development creating IT solutions for Picture Network International, which was later bought by Kodak. Picture Network International created software to manage digital media with support to sell such media via E-commerce with digital rights management. Mr. Hodges received his Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech.

Richard Clark
Vice-President of Wave Business Development

Richard Clark started in the legal industry in '01 out of Orlando, FL after graduating at Liberty University with a B.A. in Communications. Mr. Clark became quickly acclimated with the legal process as it related to discovery as he was an account manager with a litigation support company. Since the company was ahead of the curve with the changing technology, Mr. Clark was able to assist his clients with better productivity and cost cutting discovery. After a few years, Mr. Clark left the company and opened the Tampa office of CXA Inc., which is based out of Orlando. With immediate success, he was able to establish monthly Summation training and technology seminars in Orlando and Tampa, as well as increase the client base. After working with partners of CXA Inc., Mr. Clark was hired out of CXA Inc. by one of their partners Compex Legal Services. Compex Legal Services is a court reporting and records retrieval company and quickly grew and its records retrieval business tripled for the state of Florida due to the efforts of the newly hired sales staff. With large accounts brought on by Richard Clark, the company quickly adapted to the change and Mr. Clark was asked to repeat those same efforts with Wave Software.

Alexandra Saphos
Executive Accounts Manager