Bio Sketch

Some people want to know a lot more about a person before they feel comfortable entering into a trusted work relationship. To help fill in the blanks a little bit, what follows is a somewhat extended biographical sketch of our president, Ric Routh, who is the chief consultant for all our client engagements.

Routh grew up as the son of a career Army officer. This means he moved a lot, living on three different continents before he was 18 years old. His most formative years, all of his middle school and his first year of high school, were spent living in Europe (first Paris, France, then Stuttgart Germany, then Brussels, Belgium). Growing up in Europe, he was immersed in different European cultures and languages. This helped to considerably broaden his understanding of the different perspectives and value systems that are not always aligned with traditional American life.

After graduating from High School in Colorado Springs, he attended the Colorado School of Mines for one year. During that year, he became aware of the power and desirability of the Gospel and began a life-long journey as a follower of Jesus Christ.

The following year, Routh accepted an appointment to the United States Military Academy and West Point, New York. He graduated in 1978 and began his military career as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Routh spent the first several years serving as a platoon leader, battalion operations officer, staff officer for the Army Communications Command (ACC), and as the executive officer for the Deputy Commanding General of ACC. During this time, Routh also worked evenings and weekends to complete his first Master’s Degree in Business Management.

After some standard additional advanced officer schooling, he spent several years at the Air Force Institute of Technology getting his second Master’s degree in Computer Systems, and a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). His dissertation was primarily in the A.I. sub-discipline of Natural Language Understanding.

The last three years of his 10+ years of Army career, he served as the founder and first Director of the Army’s Artificial Intelligence Training Center at Fort Gordon, GA. During this assignment, he supervised the development of over 150 Artificially Intelligent Expert Systems for use in various government organizations to include all four military services, and several three letter agencies. During this time, he also served as a part-time adjunct technical advisor on Artificial Intelligence issues to the Reagan cabinet at the White House.

In 1988, Routh resigned his commission to help build the GINESYS Corporation as its first vice president, and then later, president. GINESYS was created to provide Artificially Intelligent Expert Systems training, consulting, and implementation services to corporate clients. Its focus was on helping clients to use A.I. strategically for business advantage. During the next decade, Routh provided training and supervision for the development of over 100 expert system prototypes for various industry applications.

In 2003, Routh began what has been a 19-year career as a mentor and coach to C-level executives. He also published a popular business self-help book, The Power of Role, which is a guide for executives to better navigate and thrive in the political environment of a large corporation. During the second half of that 19-year span of coaching more than 80 C-level executives, Routh also served as the CEO and CTO of Victorum, Inc. Victorum is a company that uses artificially intelligent expert systems technology to measure and analyze the subconscious beliefs that form people’s worldview. Victorum operates under the trade name of b4worldview.com.

Routh has been married to his wife Edie for 44 years. Together they have raised 5 children to adulthood. They now also have 8 grandchildren.

Routh is a voracious reader. He also spends time nearly every day studying ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek. He currently lives on a ranch in the mountains of western North Carolina where he and his wife work together to maintain two horses and a small herd of cattle.

He is an avid Bible scholar preferring to read the Bible in its original languages. He is active in his church, and for the past couple years, he has also served as the CEO of Great Commission Training Ministries, a small non-profit 501(C)(3) company that specializes in helping church leaders revitalize their passion for ministering the Gospel.

Routh maintains a vigorous personal exercise program that includes aerobics, calisthenics, and weightlifting—in addition to a lot of ranch work like driving tractors, fixing fences, splitting wood, etc.

His favorite movies (currently) are The Martian (Matt Damon), Risen (Joseph Fiennes), Galaxy Quest (Tim Allen), and Knight and Day (Tom Cruise). Favorite foods: coffee, chocolate, Tex-Mex, pizza and honey. He reads a lot of Louis Lamour books.