In the early part of 2001, CaliVita International gained Mr. Craig Hall as a new member to its advisory board bringing with him an impressive array of business experience, expertise and wisdom. Mr. Hall is an American businessman, U.S. State Department consultant, author, civic leader, and art collector.
Hall Financial Group (HFG) is the most prominent of Mr. Hall's business ventures. Over the past 30 years, Mr. Hall dramatically grew his company starting from a small personal investment into the formidable business it is today; HFG is a diversified venture that develops, owns and manages real estate properties throughout the United States. Due to Mr. Hall's outstanding business sense, HFG owned at one point 72,000 apartments making it the second largest apartment owner in the world and currently the company is developing a four million square foot office park near Dallas, Texas.
Throughout the history of HFG, Mr. Hall has been involved with various other business enterprises. He was founder and director of three savings and loan associations, twice a member of bank control groups, co-owner of a bank, and was founder and director of one of America's first for-profit Health Management Organizations. Furthermore, as a good sports enthusiast, he was part owner of the American football team "The Dallas Cowboys".
Recently Mr. Hall has focused on activities in Central and Eastern Europe including consultation to the U.S. State Department, business investments and a regional study conducted at the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. During this time Mr. Hall has also worked on writing his fourth book.
To balance out his successful business life, Mr. Hall has been an active participant in a variety of community activities, including chairing a task force to revitalize Dallas inner city neighborhoods, serving as a director for the Dallas Symphony, the American-Austrian Fullbright Board and chairing the board of a non-profit AIDS relief organization. He has received numerous awards, including being named one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men of America in 1979. He has authored three books. Mr. Hall currently resides in Vienna, Austria with his wife, Kathryn, the U.S. Ambassador to Austria.
In light of Mr. Hall's many and outstanding achievements, CaliVita International looks forward with great eagerness and anticipation to working together with him. We believe that Mr. Hall's addition to our advisory board will prove to be fruitful and in fact, a very healthy relationship.
Ambassador John B. Ritch III is the United States representative to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna, a position he has held since January 1994. UN-Vienna organizations include the International Atomic Energy Agency and the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention. Ambassador Ritch is also the American representative to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. From 1994 until 1996, he served additionally as U.S. representative to the UN Industrial Development Organization and UNRWA (the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees).
In 1994 Ambassador Ritch served on the U.S. delegation to the U.S.-North Korea nuclear negotiations in Geneva, in 1995 on the U.S. delegation to the UN Conference to Review and Extend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in New York, and in 2000 on the U.S. delegation to the UN Conference to Review the NPT.
Prior to his appointment to Vienna by President Clinton, Ambassador Ritch served for 22 years as a senior advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was hired by Chairman J.W. Fulbright in 1972 and served under seven chairmen, both Democratic and Republican. His primary area of activity was European affairs, including NATO and East-West arms control, on which he wrote extensively. In 1989, while on the Senate staff, he devised the Support for East European Democracy (SEED) Act, legislation that served as the principal vehicle for American aid to the emerging democracies of the former Soviet domain.
Ambassador Ritch graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1965. A member of the West Point basketball team, he was an Academic All-American and all-NIT and received the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Association's award as the Outstanding Scholar-Athlete" of 1965. After West Point, Ambassador Ritch attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. There he received a Master's Degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics.
Between 1968 and 1972, Ambassador Ritch served as an infantry captain in the U.S. Army, with assignments on the Korean DMZ and in the office of the Army Chief of Staff.
Outside of government, Ambassador Ritch has been an entrepreneur. Between 1974 and 1994, he was President of Viking Management, a real estate development company which acquired, financed, rehabilitated, and managed apartment buildings in Washington, D.C. In 1992 Ambassador Ritch was co-founder of CaliVita International Europe, a multinational enterprise that remains successful in marketing American-made vitamin supplements and other fitness-related products in over 30 countries throughout Europe.
Ambassador Ritch and his wife Christina have two daughters, Nina and Alyssa. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the American Association of Rhodes Scholars.
Chairman of the Medical Advisory Board
M.D. Valeria Szedlak-Vadocz
Valeria Szedlak-Vadocz MD, PhD was born into an ethnic Hungarian family in Vojvodina, Yugoslavia on 18 December 1946.
She graduated summa cum laude from the Medical Faculty of Novi Sad University (Vojvodina, Yugoslavia) in April 1971, where she also started her professional carrier and is still working as a full professor. She is involved in the education of medical students, students of stomatology, and acts as a supervisor of postgraduate students and doctoral candidates. She also teaches as a full professor at the English Medical School of the University of Novi Sad.
During her thirty-year-long professional carrier she achieved specialist degrees in Medical Biochemistry (1978), Nuclear Medicine (1980) and Clinical Pathophysiology (1986). After completing her experimental and clinical researches in the field of pathophysiology of obstructive uro-nephropathy she attained a PhD in Medical Science in 1986.
Starting as an assistant lecturer in 1978, her academic carrier proceeded through different academic titles, until finally she was elected a full professor (the highest academic rank in Yugoslavia) in 1998.
She contributed 160 professional articles and scientific studies to both Yugoslav and international medical journals, Bulletins and Congress Publications. Her scientific article: "The effect of radiopharmaceutical choice on the assessment of the relative renal function in upper urinary tract obstruction. Eur J Nucl Med 1988; 14: 32-36." was cited in the Current Science: Current Opinion in Radiology, 1989; Vol 1: 460-467. She is also the author of several chapters in four different Medical Textbooks and Monographs, published in Yugoslavia.
Professor Szedlak was included in the 1998 edition of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - Hungarian Researchers Abroad.
Professor Szedlak was included also in the 1999 and 2000 edition of Who Is Who? - Outstanding achievements of business and professional women (USA),
Professor Szedlak has been interested in Pharmacognosy, Orthomolecular medicine, optimal nutrition and supplementation, and Traditional Chinese medicine for more than fifteen years. She has been working for CaliVita International for almost ten years. In her spare time she is chief editor of the journal Nutrition & Health, a scientific bulletin of the Yugoslav Fitness League, published in Serbian language, in Novi Sad. She is also the president of the same League, which is an association founded in order to promote overall fitness and a healthy lifestyle. She is also president of the Scientific Medical Committee of the Yugoslav Fitness League.
Professor Valeria Szedlak-Vadocz speaks five languages.
She is married and has two sons with academic degrees (in veterinary science and economics respectively).
Chief Financial Officer
Steven Finta
Steven Finta (48), is a Canadian of Hungarian extraction. He studied international economics and finance at the prestigious Institute of International Relations in Moscow, later on in Frankfurt am Main/Germany and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Canada where he conducted research on the indebtedness of certain Latin American and European countries.
He worked for over a decade in international banking in various positions at the National Bank of Hungary, at DG Bank, Frankfurt and Bank of America. He participated in syndications or negotiated loans amounting to 5 - 400 million US dollars.
In Vancouver, BC. Canada Mr. Finta became the director and VP for Finance of a successful company, CEL Industries Ltd.
Mr. Finta did not cut his ties with the academic world either: for 6 years he lectured at Simon Fraser University.
Mr. Finta is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) of the CaliVita International group and also works on issues of controlling and developing corporate strategy. His main concern is to secure the balanced growth of the group and to improve our work continuously.
Mr. Finta speaks seven languages, therefore he very much enjoys working in this truly international environment. He frequently travels to all CF countries, as he says, his home countries.
Mr. Finta has two lovely daughters Ann-Marie (16) and Stephanie (13), both high school students.
