Board of Directors

Crom Carmichael (Chair) is a native of South Bend, Indiana and a 1971 graduate of Vanderbilt University. He now resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

Over the last 10 years Crom has funded and participated in the founding of over a dozen companies in a variety of high tech industries. Crom currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Nashai Biotech.

In addition to his business career, Crom has been an active political commentator in the Nashville media market for the past twenty years. From 1989 to 1996, Crom wrote a bi-monthly column for The Nashville Tennessean, opposing the paper’s editorial positions. From 1990 to 1992, he provided regular commentaries on the NBC local affiliate in Nashville, WSMV-TV’s 6:00 p.m. news telecast, The Scene at 6. Crom also brought his views on local and national issues to the Nashville airwaves between 1985 and 1994, as a regular commentator on Teddy Bart’s “Round Table,” a morning radio talk show.

Arthur Laffer is the founder and chairman of Laffer Associates, an economic research firm that provides global investment research services to institutional asset managers, pension funds, financial institutions, and corporations. Previously, he was a founding member of the Congressional Policy Advisory Board (105th-107th Congresses), a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board (1981-1989), and was the first Chief Economist at the Office of Management and Budget (1970-1972).

Laffer currently sits on the board of directors or board of advisors of a number of companies, including Alpha Theory, Armor Concepts, Atrevida Partners, BAP Power, BridgeHealth Medical, Cubit, Dataium, Executive Trading Solutions, HealthEdge Partners, LifePics, and Pillar Data Systems.

Cameron A. Newton brings several attributes to the Consensus Point team. During his ten years in the financial services industry, he developed a broad analytical skill set ranging from macro and micro economic theory, to industry and market evaluation to company/asset valuation and optimal capital structure analysis. Cameron is very adept at financial modeling, projecting future earnings and cash flow capabilities and discerning distressed break-up valuations. He has experience canvassing investor participation in primary and secondary transactions and supporting such transactions with in-depth analysis. Cameron maintains deep personal and professional connectivity to Wall Street where he has spent the majority of his career. He is a CFA level III candidate and member of the CFA Institute. Cameron currently resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Dean Newton serves as advisor to portfolio companies to address strategic and operational challenges, especially as they relate to social networks, information technology, intellectual property and social media. In addition to Relevance, Dean serves as Asst. General Counsel at Blackboard Inc., with responsibility for the company's “Connect” mass communication and “Collaborate” web conferencing divisions. Prior to Relevance, Dean was Chief Operating Officer of Emotive Communications, a company he co-founded in 2006 to enable the peer-to-peer distribution of media through social networks using mobile devices. He first joined Emotive co-founders Anthony Stonefield and Shane Dewing as General Counsel at Moviso, the first and largest ringtone company in North America, where he authored the first licensing structures that brought music to mobile phones. Many of his licensing regimes continue to govern mobile media revenue models. InfoSpace Inc. acquired Moviso, where Dean continued as Vice President of Business Affairs and Entertainment at InfoSpace Mobile, serving on its senior management team and managing the Entertainment Media group, where he was responsible for structuring and negotiating entertainment content, new media and technology-related transactions, as well as distribution agreements with carrier, handset manufacturer, retail and online portal partners. He is a music and technology attorney by training, having worked at Gang, Tyre, Ramer & Brown in Beverly Hills, California where his practice included representing recording artists, music producers, writers, entertainment and new media companies in entertainment-related transactions. He began his career in corporate practice with Los Angeles-based firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Dean is a graduate of Harvard University, where he received both B.A. and J.D. degrees.

Linda Rebrovick is the President and CEO of Consensus Point. Read her full bio on our Leadership Team page.

Michael D. Shmerling is Chairman of Choice Food Group, Inc. (“CFG”), a Nashville, TN based food distribution and manufacturing enterprise employing nearly 300 people in the Nashville area.

A native of Nashville, he began his career as a Certified Public Accountant (“Inactive”) in 1977 with the Nashville office of Ernst & Young, formerly Ernst & Ernst CPAs. Mr. Shmerling has founded or co-founded five (5) businesses since leaving the practice of public accounting, four (4) of which were ultimately sold to publicly traded (NYSE or NASD) companies. He has received numerous Nashville Business Journal Future 50 – as well as INC. 500 Awards for companies in which he was involved. In addition to this recognition, he received the Tennessee Society of CPAs – Outstanding CPA in Business and Industry Award in 1999. In 2007, he was awarded both the Tennessee Society of CPA’s and the American Institute of CPA’s Public Service Awards. In 2009, he received Community Nashville’s Human Relations Award.