ACCESS Newswire Inc. Leadership

Graeme P. Rein has served as a director of ACCESS Newswire since 2021 and is Chairperson of the Audit Committee. He is the Managing Member and Chief Investment Officer of Yorkmont Capital Management, LLC, an Austin, Texas-based registered investment advisor that he founded in 2012. Earlier he worked as a research analyst at Bares Capital Management, Inc. from 2006 to 2012 and as an audit professional at Deloitte & Touche LLP from 2004 to 2006. He has served on the board of directors of Where Food Comes From, Inc. (NASDAQ: WFCF) since May 2016. Mr. Rein graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas with a Master in Professional Accounting; he holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) in the state of Texas, and brings more than 20 years of finance, accounting and investment experience to the Board.

Wesley T. Pollard has served as a director of ACCESS Newswire since 2024 (effective July 1, 2024) and serves on both the Audit Committee and the Compensation Committee. He is a finance executive who has been Chief Financial Officer of Primeritus Financial Services, Inc., a private-equity-backed company in the automotive-financing industry, since July 2023 and was also named its Chief Operating Officer in April 2026; he served as Primeritus's Chief Accounting Officer from November 2022 to July 2023. He was Chief Financial Officer of Get Spiffy, Inc., a tech-enabled on-demand car-care company, from April 2016 to November 2022, has served as Managing Partner of TechCXO RTP, and worked in the audit and consulting practices of PricewaterhouseCoopers. He received his BA in Business Management and Economics from North Carolina State University and his Master of Accounting from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is a Certified Public Accountant in North Carolina and Tennessee, and has approximately 30 years of accounting and finance experience across private, venture-backed and publicly traded companies.

Joseph A. Staples has served as a director of ACCESS Newswire since 2024 and is Chairperson of the Compensation Committee. He is an independent marketing consultant who, since September 2020, has provided marketing advisory and consulting services to technology companies in the U.S. and Europe, and he has been an adjunct professor of marketing at Utah Valley University since August 2023. He was Chief Marketing Officer of Motivosity Inc. from February 2018 to August 2020, of Workfront (sold to Adobe) from August 2014 to December 2017, and of Interactive Intelligence (sold to Genesys) from January 2005 to July 2014. He has served on the board of directors of Screen Dragon since February 2024 and previously served on the boards of Sharpen (2019-2022) and Textel (2020-2022). Mr. Staples brings more than 40 years of technology-business experience, including 22 years as a CMO/SVP of Marketing at both private and public companies.

Brian R. Balbirnie is the founder of ACCESS Newswire (formerly Issuer Direct Corporation) and has served as its President and Chief Executive Officer and as a director since founding the company in 2006; he is also Chairperson of the Board. He established the company in 2006 with a vision of creating a technology-driven back-office compliance platform that would reduce costs and increase the efficiency of the most complex tasks, and he is responsible for the company's strategic leadership and its day-to-day operations. Under his direction the company worked with over 6,000 customers in 2024. Before founding the company, Mr. Balbirnie was the founder and managing partner of Catapult Company, a compliance and consulting practice focused on the Sarbanes-Oxley Act; during 2002 and 2003 he served as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Mobile Reach International, Inc., a publicly traded company, and as President and Chief Technology Officer of IVUE Corporation, a private company. He is an entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience in emerging industries and brings over 19 years of business, finance, marketing and leadership experience in the communications and compliance industries.

Steven Knerr has served as Chief Financial Officer of ACCESS Newswire since September 2024, having served as the company's interim Chief Financial Officer beginning in March 2024. Mr. Knerr has a long tenure with the company: he was its Controller from August 2013 until May 2015, interim Chief Financial Officer from May 2015 until November 2015, Chief Financial Officer from November 2015 until January 2022, and Vice President of Finance and Controller from January 2022 until March 2024. He is the company's principal financial officer, and effective January 1, 2026 the Compensation Committee increased his annual base salary from $200,000 to $245,000.

Mark Lloyd has served as Chief Technology Officer of ACCESS Newswire since January 2023, under an executive employment agreement the company entered into with him on January 3, 2023. He is one of the company's named executive officers.