Marty Sands

Martin 'Marty' Sands is co-founder, chairman or CEO of multiple companies, including Genesis Merchant Partners, Frozen Food Partners, Paleo Passion Foods - Just Real Foods, and Optmed. Martin began his career working at several leading investment banks, including Shearson Lehman and Oppenheimer and Company, until launching his own firm in 1990. Shortly after, the firm became a New York Stock Exchange member firm, and grew to develop both an international as well as a domestic full-service investment business. During this period, the firm was involved with hundreds of public and private transactions, including those the firm originated and syndicated. Some notables include: Conseco, Air Methods, Closure Medical, Wholesale Cellular, Brightpoint, and others. The firm grew robustly and by 2002 had approximately 400 employees domestically and internationally.

During the next 15 years, Martin and Steven chose to focus on direct investments as a manager and/or principal. Through entities they managed, they made direct investments or controlling investments in either debt or equity into many businesses, including Calgon, which was eventually sold to Yellow Wood Partners; Lev Pharma, which was acquired by Viro Pharma; Viactiv, which was purchased from Johnson and Johnson and sold to Texas Pacific Group; and Gourmet Dining, which was acquired through a structured transaction into a newly formed entity, Frozen Food Partners, after it fell into distress. This distress led to a restructuring opportunity which resulted in entities managed by he and his brother controlling the entire business today through Frozen Food Partners. To further expand this platform, he helped negotiate a strategic alliance with Hain Celestial to manage and hold a majority interest in Rosetto Foods, LLC., a licensee of Rosetto brand of frozen Italian foods.

As an experienced executive with knowledge in many areas of finance, capital structure and management/operations of basic business, Martin has continued to pursue many opportunities, coupled with his passion for performance, led him to focus on the food space. A healthy lifestyle drove him to consume low processed foods in his personal nutritional regimen. With his view that the food industry is in the early stages of experiencing a revolution towards wellness via clean healthy foods, which are transforming the grocery aisles in stores, Marty and his wife co-founded a healthy food endeavor, Paleo Passion Foods.

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