Management Team

Corporate Executives

Tam Le

Tam Le
Founder, CEO, and Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Le graduated with the MSEE degree from the Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL) at University of Central Florida.  His Masters Thesis emphasized on Thin Film Coating and Characterization on Infrared Optics.  He studied under the tutelage of Dr. Karl Guenther, one of the leaders in the area of Thin Film Coatings.  His career in Thin Film Engineering spans over 22 years. 

Joseph Kim

Joseph Kim
Founder, Executive Vice President Business Development

Mr. Kim graduated with the BS in Optics from Institute of Optics at University of Rochester. His career spans over 20 years of experience in Optics and Vacuum Industries.








Together, Mr. Le and Mr. Kim cofounded an optical components manufacturer in Colorado, now a $10 Million and a growing company in the Laser and Photonics Industry. Upon successfully selling the company, they cofounded Tecport Optics.


Passionate and eager to improve thin film coating processes, they started to research and to develop new evaporant chemicals and coating techniques for the Photonics Industry. Their commitment to innovation, cutting edge technology, and tenacious service mentality has taken Tecport to new plateau of manufacturing thin film deposition system. Tecport has now grown to be a leading provider of thin film technology solution and thin film deposition system.



Dr. Nabil El-Hag

Dr. Nabil El-Hag
Vice Chairman

Dr. El-Hag’s career spans more than thirty five years of entrepreneurial and Fortune 500, including thirteen years as a senior executive at Philip Morris' General Foods Unit, skilled in executive management, business development, strategic planning, business development, and capital formation. He was a founding partner of Pacific Rim Technologies Inc., where he facilitated strategic alliances between US companies and government and private industry in Indonesia, China, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia. As a founding partner of Shore Capital, he brokered a strategic relationship with a leading Middle Eastern financial advisory group to purchase US companies, and subsequently developed strategic business relationships across the MENA Region in the oil, mining, hospitality, construction and telecommunications industries. In addition, to these enterprises, he has founded and managed several businesses and non-profit organizations including Fresh ‘n Fit, Inc, American Family Brands, Kids 1st Resource Development Group, The Ronald McDonald House Charities Dividend Club Program, and The Knowledge Bridge Foundation. Dr. El-Hag currently serves as a business advisor to numerous public and private enterprises, holds a PhD, MPh, MSc from Rutgers University, an MBA in Finance and International Finance from Fordham University and a Diploma from The Advanced Executive Management Program at Columbia University. Dr. El-Hag is a recipient of many industry accolades, including a DuPont Award, a Clio and a National Food Processing Award, and has authored numerous technical patents and scientific publications. He is a member of Phi Tau Sigma Honorary Society and a former Olympian.

Chris Farnworth

Chris Farnworth
Managing Director, Special Projects

Mr. Farnworth is a business management and corporate finance executive with over 30 years of experience in the public and private markets, oil and gas, mining, industrials and technology sectors. Mr. Farnworth has extensive worldwide high-level business development and sales experience, specifically in Europe, MENA and Asia, sales and operational experience with large and small multinational companies focusing upon business development, project management, strategic planning and partnership development. Assisting in the planning of the business development policies, objectives, and establishment of medium to long-term goals for various multi national companies. Establishment of joint ventures, distribution channels and sub licensing agreements, identifying possible M&A opportunities, analysis of new market development and business opportunities. Financial feasibility studies and development of proposals. To date direct financings have included both debt and equity raisings in excess of $40 Million and have been placed in both private and public market companies. Mergers and acquisitions include stand-alone values up to and including $25 Million per transaction. Providing advice on SEC and Sarbanes Oxley compliance, audit and 10K and 10Q matters.

Operating Executives

Frank Helmes

Frank Helmes
Executive Sales Director

Mr. Helmes career spans over 40 years in the sales and marketing from electron beam welding to vacuum valve for nuclear reactor to shipyard manufacturing, and finally to deposition system. He has spent the last 30 years as “the most recognized” salesman for thin film deposition system industry.


Mr. Helmes spent the first part of his life in the US Air Force. He was honorably discharged after he fulfilled his duty to the country.


In the early 70’s, when the laser was in its infancy, Mr. Helmes pioneered the development of electron beam welding. He founded Fusion Labs and later Atlantic Valve to serve the specialty valve industry, where he founded the National Association of Valve Rebuilder, NAVR. After successfully sold both companies, he became part owner of Boston Shipyard, where he was directly responsible for the repair and upgrade of piping systems, boiler room, and engine room for the US Naval Destroyers. He was later appointed to the task of overhauling all US destroyers.


In the early 80’s, he joined Leybold Optics, the largest thin film deposition system manufacturer in the world, as their North American Precision Optical Division. He was responsible for cultivating the name of Leybold Optics in to the US industry for deposition systems. He increased the sales from $1.5 million to $18 million.


Upon recognizing the up and coming manufacturer, Tecport Optics, he decided to join and to establish himself as the salesman of the industry. He is leading the sales and marketing effort that has produced a remarkable upswing in sales and has pushed the company to the forefront of leading manufacturer of Thin Film Technology company worldwide.




Dale Flowers

Dale Flowers
Chief Financial Officer

Dale is a results-driven CFO with over 18 years experience in strategic planning and financial operations at large corporations, non-profits and start-up companies. His value proposition encompasses providing management with the tools necessary to measure operational efforts and growth initiatives effectively and timely. Industry experience includes manufacturing, chemicals, energy, distribution, marketing, land development and residential construction.


As CFO and Integration Project Manager for IFF Global Chemicals, Dale secured financing for expansion and growth initiatives, re-structured merged organizations, combined synergistic business units, rationalized inventories and negotiated divestiture of redundant facilities. Prior posts included CFO, Controller and Director of Administration.


Dale holds two Bachelor degrees in Management Science and Accounting from the University of North Carolina and performed graduate studies at Davis College of Business/ Jacksonville University.




Christer Saarikko

Christer Saarikko
Software Engineering Director

Mr. Saarikko joined Tecport in 2003 to lead the ground up development of the Symphony software platform.


A graduate of the University of Florida with additional studies at Moscow State University, he brings to the table 15 years of unique experience in both Industrial Automation/Software Engineering and Information Technology in a wide variety of industries. He has provided specialized consulting services to Fortune 500 companies as well as medium and small businesses.


Earlier in his career, at Surface Finishing Technologies, whose customers include Seagate, 3M, and DuPont, he was part of the Automation Systems Engineering Team that developed firmware for electroplating equipment. As an independent consultant, he was responsible for the development and startup of a complete Power Distribution, Power Quality, and backup generator failover system at the Coleman Federal Maximum Security Prison, using GE Industrial Systems. In 2002, he completed a project for British American Tobacco at their primary tobacco plant in Monterrey, Mexico to fully integrate the factory’s automation systems with their Oracle based SAP ERP systems for real time manufacturing.


Progress Energy Florida, the largest utility company in the state of Florida, was his last stop before joining Tecport. He developed custom software modules to run on their Areva SCADA system servers to integrate realtime grid events with the Oracle / Intergraph based outage management system. Some of his works have resulted in tremendous uptime saving during one of the worst hurricane season in 2004 that Florida has ever faced, where three major hurricanes hit Florida within 6 weeks.


In addition, some of Mr. Saarikko works include Network consulting for Chase Manhattan, EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) eCommerce consulting for Celotex Corp., Automation systems engineering for Nestle, Tropicana, Phillip Morris, GE, several municipal water and wastewater facilities.


Mr. Saarikko speaks fluently English, Finnish, Russian, and Spanish.