Hello, my name is Winston Jerome Lindsley. I am the founder and president of ITIC. I attribute my business success to personal relationships established over many years of face-to-face contacts and trust-building interactions. The personal integrity I bring to these business relationships grows directly from my distinctive family background, which provides me with deep roots and a powerful set of life experiences.
My family lines include enough rags-to-riches stories to easily explain my unflagging entrepreneurial drive. And there are more than enough links to Anglo-American military, political and business leaders to account for my pride in America and my interest in building a safer world through nuclear disarmament and world commerce.
A direct descendant of Mayflower colonist John Alden and kin to President John Quincy Adams, I have a family tree that includes naval hero Augustus Ludlow who, as second-in-command of the battleship Chesapeake in the War of 1812, received the historic command and current US Navy Motto, "Don't give up the ship." My great grandmother (Jessie Jerome) was 1st cousin to the mother of Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and my relatives include the family of John Deere, founder of the international stalwart John Deere Tractor Company. A summer spent with family at John Deere headquarters in Moline, Illinois, at age 12 helped spark my early interest in automobiles.
The son of a twelfth generation New Yorker who has been listed in the New York Social Register since birth, I was born in the Philadelphia's Main Line. In 1950, my father, Fanshawe Lindsley, invested the family fortune in CTS, the first cable television network. A generation ahead of its time, the company collapsed, taking with it the Lindsley family fortune.
Homeless at age 15, I moved in with cousins and went to work pumping gas at Eddie's Esso in Devon, Pa. I quit high school in 10th grade and enrolled in night school where I studied auto mechanics. I went on to parlay my automotive training as a Journeyman Master Technician into a successful global automotive business that is now moving rapidly into the field of international information technology.
As a young auto mechanic in California in the 1970s, I was inspired by a television feature on the burgeoning sales of General Motors cars in the Middle East. Seeing a strong future for auto mechanics in that region of the world, I wrote GM and then flew to company international operations center in New York City where I made contacts to find employment at a dealership in Abu Dhabi that was owned by the family of the president of OPEC. Not long after that, I partnered with New York-based Metro Global Corp., an exporting firm working with other overseas General Motors dealerships.
Branching out on my own, I started International Technological Information Consultants (ITIC), an automotive training company, in 1978. I acquired a large motor home that I customized to include living quarters and stocked with 4,000 pounds of automotive equipment, including 5,000 tools and a complete diagnostic center and machine shop.
From Detroit, we drove the unit to New York and loaded it onto a ship. However, when the ship tried to pull out of New York Harbor, it ran aground slicing a sixty foot hole in the hull which caused 100,000 gallons of the ship's diesel fuel to spill into New York Harbor. Our Unit was not damaged and after a month of repairs to the ship, it was on the high seas for the Middle East.
This workshop-on-wheels, called Metro Mobile 1, operated for two years, assisting newly established GM dealers in Saudi Arabia build and operate their service departments. From 1980 to 1981, I worked in the industrial city of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, where ITIC managed contracts for the General Motors dealer that was under contract supporting a $150 billion construction project for the Royal Commission of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. From 1981-91, I worked as a GM Diplomatic Representative, started global shipping operations, sold Embassy of USSR GM fleet, and worked for US Government FBI, soviet Counter Intelligence Group.
Using my international experience in the Middle East as a springboard, I expanded ITIC's interests to the Former Soviet Union where I became involved in shipping, vehicle sales, GM dealer financing, spare parts sales and business development. Setting up a U.S. office in the Washington, D.C. area in 1990, I teamed up with an American auto parts supplier for logistical support for ITIC's two main operational branches in Moscow and the Arabian Gulf. In 1990-91 ITIC participated in Operation Desert Shield/Storm in Washington and Arabian Gulf. Since 1991, I have aggressively cultivated FSU customers, creating a far-reaching network that includes clients in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Russia. I also successfully arranged and managed a $10 million, privately funded loan agreement from 1992 until 1999 for the first General Motors franchised dealer in the FSU.
My business operations have always employed state-of-the-art technology to keep customers satisfied. In recent years, I used this reputation and my extensive network of business relationships in the Middle East and FSU to move ITIC into the fields of telecommunications and information technology. In partnership with eGlobe/IDX, I launched a pioneering effort involving a long distance discount global telephone service in the Arabian Gulf, utilizing a dedicated optic fiber link between the Gulf and the U.S. My international partners and I put together ITIC divisions in the Middle East and Russia that recruited exceptionally well-trained professionals to service IT projects outsourced from Western companies facing dramatic shortages in trained IT personnel.
Throughout my successful career, I have been guided by a business philosophy stressing the importance of establishing relationships of integrity, trust and respect with customers. In keeping with ITIC's motto -- "ITIC-Closer to the Customer" -- I follow an extensive travel schedule to maintain face-to-face contact with customers around the world. From the Saudi peninsula to the uplands of Siberia, I have traveled to more than 30 countries in every continent of the world with the exception of Antarctica. It is my personal reputation and commitment that sets ITIC apart in the realm of international commerce.
On April 29, 2002 I had an aneurysm on my aorta which caused internal bleeding. I was flown to INOVA Fairfax Hospital to undergo immediate surgery to repair the tear in my heart. The surgery took about 3 hours but I was in the Operating Room for 7 and half hours due to the bleeding that followed; only one in ten people survive this procedure. A few days after my surgery when I woke up, they discovered that I had had a stroke (this often happens as a result of the surgery I had). As a result of the stroke, which affected the left side of my brain, I was totally paralyzed on the right side of my body but have now regained most of my strength back. My ability to speak has been impacted; I suffer from aphasia and apraxia. I can understand and think as I did normally but the words do not come out correctly - this is improving but it is going to take quite a bit of time. I am seeing a speech therapist three times a week which is helping, as are my friends. APHASIA IS A COMMUNICATION DISABILITY caused by damage to the language centers of the brain, as the result of a stroke. It is not a loss of intelligence. Depending on where and to what extent the brain is injured, each person with aphasia has a unique set of language disabilities. While intelligence remains intact, abilities to speak, understand spoken language, read or write may be reduced or eliminated.
I continue to have miraculous success in my recovery. The relearning of speech that I am doing is some of the most challenging work I have in my life to date. Like my ancestors, I "Will not give up the ship." And my story goes on......
WINSTON JEROME LINDSLEY
PRESIDENT WINGOGLOBAL, L.L.C.