Alfred Ronald LaGarde is the executive director of GateWay Second Chance Foundation and former president and CEO of Forté Systems, Inc., an information technology and management consulting firm focusing primarily on project/portfolio management and business intelligence solutions. Mr. LaGarde is also a principal in RAS Analytics, LLC, a software development company focused on desktop, web, and mobile business intelligence applications.
Mr. LaGarde was born in Virginia Beach, VA, but spent his early childhood in Baltimore, MD. He moved with his family back to Virginia Beach at the beginning of high school. There he was a member of the first racially integrated high school class in the Virginia Beach school system. He received his BS in Industrial Electronics from Norfolk State University in Norfolk, VA and MBA from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg, VA. Mr. LaGarde has additional postgraduate studies in computer science at Fairleigh Dickerson University in Teaneck NJ, and management studies at the United States Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, CA.
After graduation from college Mr. LaGarde was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army signal corps. His first assignment was the development of a PERT (program evaluation and review technique) system to track the progress of U.S. Army communications projects in the continental United States and abroad.
Mr. LaGarde developed project management policies, procedures, and practices for the Defense Communications Agency (now the Defense Information Systems Agency) in Reston, VA, as a civilian employee. From there he joined Metier Management Systems as an account manager and later became their Director of Federal Marketing.
Mr. LaGarde held his current position at Forté Systems, Inc., for 30 years. During that time the company implemented systems for Fortune 500 companies and U.S. government agencies and departments. Some of these are: The U.S. Departments of Defense, Education, and Interior (U.S. Geological Survey); U.S. Courts; FDIC; Microsoft®; The Hershey Company; Carnival Cruise Lines®; Pitney Bowes®; Prison Fellowship; Mercy Medical Center; and Jarden Consumer Solutions (formerly Sunbeam).