Connect with us

Technology

J.S. Held Expands Executive Leadership to Oversee Next Phase of Growth

Published

on

JERICHO, N.Y., Oct. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Global consulting firm J.S. Held, proudly celebrating 50 transformative years, announces Lee Spirer as its new President and Chief Operating Officer (COO), reporting to Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jonathon Held

Lee Spirer assumes the role of President & COO, working alongside J.S. Held CEO Jonathon Held.

Lee Spirer is a transformational leader with extensive experience creating value for investors in human capital-intensive businesses by focusing on developing innovative, high impact services for clients and building platforms which attract world class professionals to maximize their career success.

Over his 30-year career, Lee Spirer has been known for keen strategic insight tightly tied to successful plan execution, building and developing teams, tapping into innovation, and leveraging technology. His teams have balanced organic and acquisition-based growth strategies while driving operational performance.

CEO, Jonathon Held, commenting on Lee’s appointment to President and COO, reflects on his “extensive experience and proven ability to drive strategy focused on financial results and operational excellence.” Held continues, “I look forward to partnering with Lee to support all J.S. Held stakeholders – our team members, clients, and investors.”

Having started his professional career serving large complex clients as a strategy consultant, Spirer set the stage for his success in creating and cultivating human capital businesses including: 

Navigant, where he led the growth and transformation of the 6,000 professional company, more than doubling revenues and ultimately taking the company private and merging with Guidehouse.Kroll Risk & Compliance, where as President, he founded and built a new business intelligence division.IBM Business Consulting Services, where following the IBMs acquisition of Mainspring, a digital strategy/transformation company, he led global financial markets for the Fortune 100 company.

Over his career, Lee Spirer has operated in public and private companies, acquired and sold businesses, guided a company through an IPO, and interacted with a wide range of investors and boards. Most recently, he worked with several private equity firms to identify and evaluate potential investments. “Lee is a growth-focused business leader with a strong track record of success,” observes Steve Dutton, Partner at Kelso & Company, J.S. Held’s private equity partner. Dutton continues, “Lee’s proven ability to identify, evaluate, and drive value creation in the professional and technology-enabled services sectors makes him an ideal partner to support further growth at J.S. Held.”

Lee Spirer, commenting on what attracted him to J.S. Held, shares, “J.S. Held’s unique combination of a very strong market position on which to build, extraordinary human capital, a proven track record of organic growth, and ability to augment with acquisitions and successfully integrate those professionals presents the ideal platform for growth at all levels – presenting career opportunities for our professionals, value to our clients, and returns for investors.”  Spirer continues, “As president and COO, I am focused on further strategic growth, evolution, and scale through service innovation and technology.” 

Lee Spirer is now part of the dedicated and entrepreneurial team of experts who help transform J.S. Held. Explore our story and celebrate this momentous milestone, our 50 & Forward celebration, with us at jsheld.com.

About J.S. Held

J.S. Held is a global consulting firm that combines technical, scientific, financial, and strategic expertise to advise clients seeking to realize value and mitigate risk. Our professionals serve as trusted advisors to organizations facing high stakes matters demanding urgent attention, staunch integrity, proven experience, clear-cut analysis, and an understanding of both tangible and intangible assets. The firm provides a comprehensive suite of services, products, and data that enable clients to navigate complex, contentious, and often catastrophic situations.

More than 1,500 professionals serve organizations across six continents, including 81% of the Global 200 Law Firms, 70% of the Forbes Top 20 Insurance Companies (85% of the NAIC Top 50 Property & Casualty Insurers), and 65% of the Fortune 100 Companies.

J.S. Held, its affiliates and subsidiaries are not certified public accounting firm(s) and do not provide audit, attest, or any other public accounting services. J.S. Held, its affiliates and subsidiaries are not law firms and do not provide legal advice. Securities offered through PM Securities, LLC, d/b/a Phoenix IB, a part of J.S. Held, member FINRA/ SIPC, or Ocean Tomo Investment Group, LLC, a part of J.S. Held, member FINRA/ SIPC. All rights reserved.

Kristi L. Stathis | Global Public Relations | +1 786 833 4864 | Kristi.Stathis@jsheld.com 

Find Your Expert®.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/js-held-expands-executive-leadership-to-oversee-next-phase-of-growth-302266213.html

SOURCE J.S. Held

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

Changan Group Unveils Its In-house Developed ADAS — SDA Pilot

Published

on

By

CHONGQING, China, June 14, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — At the 28th Chongqing International Auto Exhibition, Changan Group showcased its full brand lineup including CHANGAN NEVO, CHANGAN DEEPAL and AVATR at Hall N8, and officially launched its self-developed Advanced Driver-Assistance System, SDA Pilot.

At the press conference, Zhu Huarong, Chairman of Changan Group, stated: “Changan will work together with partners and users worldwide to make ADAS better, more practical, and more accessible, protecting every journey with smart technology.” It is announced that the CHANGAN NEVO Q06 will come standard with SDA Pilot across all trim levels and hit its domestic market in the second half of 2026.

SDA Pilot Takes the Spotlight: Three-tier Safety Defenses Upgrade the ADAS Experience

As Changan’s latest technological achievement in smart mobility, SDA Pilot breaks the boundaries of traditional physical safety and establishes three comprehensive safety defense systems covering physical well-being, mental comfort and emotional interaction.

The entry-level SDA Pilot Pro comes standard with LiDAR, capable of identifying obstacles in low-light conditions such as at night or in tunnels two seconds faster than the human eye. Supported by the globally leading SDA Central Ring Network Architecture, the system cuts response time by an additional 150 milliseconds. SDA Pilot Max, leverages over 20 million high-quality real-world driving data segments for training, delivering exceptional perception and predictive capabilities to confidently navigate complex, high-frequency commuting scenarios. The top-tier SDA Pilot Ultra is integrated with the VLM (Vision Language Model), which greatly enhances the vehicle’s environmental perception and enables interactive advanced driver-assistance functions, turning the vehicle into an intuitive travel companion. In the future, an active driver incapacitation protection function will also be introduced to safeguard driving safety at the first moment.

While continuously evolving its ADAS user experience, Changan remains committed to its safety bottom line, clearly reminding: “Driver assistance is not autonomous driving. Drivers are still required to take on the core responsibilities of real-time monitoring and taking over control at any time.”

Advancing the “1445” Global Strategy: 17 Years of Intelligent R&D Build Solid Safety Foundations

Changan Group lives by the tenet of “Intelligence defines Changan.” As a core component of the “1445” Global Strategy that underpins four transformation priorities (The four priorities refer to: intelligent mobility, electrification, a unified ecosystem, and globalization), intelligent mobility stands as the primary driving force for Changan’s upgrading. The company is committed to building a world-class auto group with global competitiveness and independent core technologies, aiming to rank among the world’s top 10 automobile brands by 2030. The launch of SDA Pilot marks a landmark achievement of this strategy in the advanced driving-assistance sector.

Behind this technological breakthrough lies a solid intelligent foundation built by Changan over 17 years. Since establishing its intelligent R&D team in 2009, Changan has forged ahead in uncharted technological territories and built the China’s only national key laboratory dedicated to intelligent vehicle safety technology — CHANGAN SDA LAB. The lab supports round-the-clock global collaborative testing with more than 400,000 virtual simulation scenarios.

Over the past five years, more than 2,000 Changan engineers have completed over 5 million kilometers of real-road tests across Chongqing’s notoriously complex road conditions, covering 185 typical driving scenarios. Rich field experience has been embedded into the system, which keeps evolving based on user feedback and forms the unshakable safety strength of SDA Pilot.

Empowered by intelligent technologies, Changan continues to accelerate its global footprint. To date, the group has established 22 overseas manufacturing bases with an annual capacity of 350,000 vehicles, and 1,124 overseas sales outlets, covering 118 countries and regions, with 41 global models launched. In 2025, Changan’s overseas sales reached 637,000 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 18.9%.

Since the start of 2026, Changan has made successive moves in its globalization strategy: launching the Vast Ocean Plan 2.0 during the AutoChina 2026 in Beijing, establishing four core principles: long-term development, localization, systematization, and responsible ESG practices; and more recently, partnering with the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) to become the Official Global Partner of the Portugal National Football Team, using sports as a bond to deepen global user connections and brand engagement.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/changan-group-unveils-its-in-house-developed-adas–sda-pilot-302799729.html

SOURCE Changan Group

Continue Reading

Technology

Kakunin Announces Cryptographic Compliance Shield for Google Gemini and OpenAI Agent Ecosystems

Published

on

By

SaaS Compliance Leader Launches First-Class SDK Integrations for Google Antigravity, OpenAI Swarm, and OpenAI Assistants API to Meet Strict MiCA and EU AI Act Standards.

LONDON, June 13, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — Kakunin, the leading compliance infrastructure platform for autonomous AI agents, today announced the release of first-class SDK integrations for Google Antigravity SDK, OpenAI Swarm, and the OpenAI Assistants API.

Autonomous agents are executing high-value, real-world tasks—but without strict boundaries, they represent a massive security risk,” said Palash Bagchi, Founder, at Kakunin.

As organizations move autonomous AI agents from sandboxes to production, securing the tools they run has become a critical operational hurdle. The new integrations allow developers to cryptographically secure and audit agent actions in real time, meeting the strict requirements of upcoming regulations like the EU AI Act and MiCA.

Preventing Agent Drift at the Tool Layer

Instead of relying on prompt engineering or system instructions—which are susceptible to jailbreaks—Kakunin secures agent tool execution at the cryptographic layer:

Pre-Flight Scope Verification: Validates that an agent possesses the required permission scope (e.g., trade.execute, file.write) before executing local code.Active-Agent Enforcement: Dynamically halts execution if the agent’s underlying X.509 certificate has been revoked or suspended.Tamper-Evident Auditing: Automatically logs session starts, prompts, responses, tool successes, and error anomalies.

Ecosystem Compatibility out of the Box

The new releases bring seamless, code-first integrations to the industry’s leading agent frameworks:

Google Antigravity SDK: Hook-based runtime protection that automatically secures Gemini-powered tool workflows.OpenAI Swarm: A lightweight class wrapper (KakuninSwarm) that dynamically gates multi-agent handoffs and task executions.OpenAI Assistants API: A polling-loop helper (handle_assistants_requires_action) that streamlines safety checks and tool output formatting in a single call.

Beyond these core OpenAI and Google environments, the new releases also extend Kakunin’s cryptographic shield to the broader agent development community. Out-of-the-box templates and shims are now available for LangChain (KakuninToolGuard), LlamaIndex (KakuninFunctionToolGuard), CrewAI (KakuninCrewAgent), and AutoGen (KakuninConversableAgent), alongside native middlewares for Next.js API routes and raw client libraries for Go, TypeScript, and Python.

“Autonomous agents are executing high-value, real-world tasks—but without strict boundaries, they represent a massive security risk,” said Palash Bagchi, Founder, at Kakunin. “By bringing cryptographic X.509 validation directly to Google’s and OpenAI’s agent loops, we are giving developers the peace of mind to deploy agents in highly regulated environments like fintech and healthcare.”

Availability

The new SDK integrations are available immediately:

Python Package: Available on PyPI via pip install kakunin.Playground Notebooks: Developers can test the integrations in 1-click via the official OpenAI Cookbook and Google Gemini Cookbook.Reference Samples: Available on the public Kakunin Samples Repository.

To learn more about securing your autonomous agent workflows, visit kakunin.ai/docs. or visit Conversational GTM for more enquiries.

Media Contact
Palash Bagchi, Immortal Reality PA LLC, 1 4125437290, ai@kakunin.ai, https://www.kakunin.ai/

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/kakunin-announces-cryptographic-compliance-shield-for-google-gemini-and-openai-agent-ecosystems-302798798.html

SOURCE Kakunin

Continue Reading

Technology

District Taco Kicks Off The Summer’s Biggest Soccer Event with Free Delivery Offer

Published

on

By

App Users can enjoy District Taco at home with free delivery during the world’s biggest soccer tournament.

WASHINGTON, June 13, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — District Taco is bringing the excitement of the world’s biggest soccer tournament straight to fans’ homes with a special promotion designed to make game-day meals even more convenient.

This promotion makes it easier and more affordable to enjoy District Taco delivered right to your door so you don’t miss a moment of the action!

From June 11 through July 19, guests who order delivery through the District Taco app can use promo code ‘SOCCER26’ to receive $5 off their order, effectively offsetting the standard delivery fee and creating a free delivery experience.

Whether cheering on a favorite team, hosting a watch party, or enjoying the match from the couch, fans can enjoy District Taco’s fresh, made-to-order menu without leaving home or the extra delivery cost. “We know fans will be gathering throughout the tournament to watch some of the most exciting matches in the world,” said Osiris Hoil, CEO of District Taco. “This promotion makes it easier and more affordable to enjoy District Taco delivered right to your door so you don’t miss a moment of the action!”

The promotion is part of District Taco’s broader effort to drive digital engagement and app use. Here are the campaign details:

Enter Promo Code: ‘SOCCER26’ when placing the order in-appOffer: $5 off delivery ordersAvailable: June 11 through July 19Valid on: District Taco app delivery orders only (not third-party platforms)

Guests can download the District Taco app here for Apple users and here for Android users!

About District Taco

In 2009, two neighbors got together over some homemade chips, salsa and guacamole and decided to launch District Taco as a food cart. Since then, District Taco has opened multiple locations in Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Washington, DC. Their mission is to serve quality – Yucatán style – Mexican food that is fresh, simple, and healthful, with a fully customizable menu that includes vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options. At District Taco, food is made fresh daily from the highest quality ingredients. They strive to limit their impact on the environment by serving in environmentally friendly packaging where possible. For more information about District Taco or their menu, and to download the app, visit districttaco.com or follow @districttaco across socials.

Media Contact

Raquel Robinson, District Taco, 1 5712657573, raquel.robinson@districttaco.com, districttaco.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prweb.com/releases/district-taco-kicks-off-the-summers-biggest-soccer-event-with-free-delivery-offer-302799507.html

SOURCE District Taco

Continue Reading

Trending