Becklar Safety and Monitoring
Becklar Safety and Monitoring

About Becklar

Experienced Leaders. Passionate Teams. Continuous Innovation.

Our History​

Becklar’s history is steeped in innovation, caring, and helping others. Located in Ogden, Utah, we’re proud to call Utah’s silicone slopes home! Our connection to the West runs deep, even in our name. Our name, Becklar, is derived from the Bechler River in Yellowstone National Park, where our founder, Josh Garner, enjoyed peaceful days fishing with his father.

Becklar’s journey goes back 40 years to when monitoring company ‘AvantGuard’ began operations in Ogden, Utah. Our pioneering spirit has guided us ever since, from acquiring Freeus, the leading North American provider of mobile personal emergency response systems (PERS), to establishing Becklar, to uniting the complimentary Freeus and AvantGuard businesses – and future acquisitions – into one entity. In 2020, BV Investment Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm, became Becklar’s majority shareholder. Their guidance has fueled our rapid growth and enabled Becklar to provide enterprise-scale solutions based on industry-leading technology.

What We Do

Becklar creates industry-leading connected safety solutions for enterprises and individuals, delivering a world class comprehensive suite of lifesaving and life-enhancing technologies. Becklar leverages its platform of innovative technology and award-winning services to create customizable and comprehensive solutions to meet the connected safety needs of their enterprise and individual customers across diverse industries, including video monitoring and remote guarding, personal emergency response solutions, workforce safety, personal health & safety, vitals monitoring and event response monitoring. 

Our Mission

We bring together innovative technologies and caring people to enhance our customers’ freedom, confidence, and peace of mind. We envision a future of a safer, more connected world.

Our Core Values
We Care FIRST

At Becklar, we strive daily to show our customers, partners, and employees that we care by living the following values.

Becklar employment poster

Fun

We love what we do at Becklar. We are individually and collectively energized, upbeat, and positive.

Innovation

We are visionaries focused on constantly improving our products and services to provide industry-leading, revolutionary solutions to your customers.

Relationships

We value our relationships with our customers and each other and aim to strengthen them continuously. We are authentic, friendly, respectful, and professional.

Service

We focus on providing the highest level of service in every interaction we have, and helping you grow your business is our North Star.

Trust

We recognize that trust and teamwork are critical to our business and yours, and we foster both daily.

Our Leadership Team

Steve Richards

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Steve Richards is a seasoned CEO with over three decades of leadership at numerous publicly traded and private companies. A skilled leader known for systemically driving growth via organic and acquisition-driven initiatives, his track record includes experience across technology, media, communications, business process outsourcing, and recurring services firms, all marked by a consistent history of driving transformational growth and exceptional client service.

Josh Garner

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN & FOUNDER
Josh Garner founded Becklar and launched his career as the founder of AvantGuard. He built the company from a small mom-and-pop central station to a national leader in the wholesale monitoring space. This 3rd generation alarm guru led AvantGuard to become one of the fastest-growing wholesale monitoring companies in the United States. He saw the opportunity to expand the markets served by acquiring Freeus and forming Becklar.

Ray Langhaim

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Ray Langhaim is an experienced CFO with numerous publicly traded and private companies. Leadership and our We Care First core values are rooted within him. Ray has worked with companies from $40m to $3B. He started his career after graduating from Fresno State in 1990 with Ernst and Young in San Jose, California and received his CPA. During his assignment as an expat in the Philippines he learned to SCUBA dive. He also enjoys football and being a husband, father, and grandfather.

Tyler Tribe

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCT OFFICER
Tyler Tribe is a seasoned technology executive with almost three decades of experience in creating software solutions. He is passionate about helping organizations develop world-class customer and employee experiences, building strong teams, and collaborating on vision and strategy for global corporations and small and medium-sized businesses. Before joining Becklar, he spent twenty years at IBM.

Clint Halverson

CHIEF PEOPLE & ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER
Clint Halverson is a people and culture leader with an HR heart and a business mind—a strategic leader with broad and diversified business experience. Clint has extensive experience leading organizational design and effectiveness, human resources, culture and engagement, talent acquisition, total rewards, and talent development. Before joining the Becklar team, he spent 15 years with a publicly traded real estate company, ultimately spending his last six years as their head of people.

Kirsten Kelley

VP OF MARKETING & NEW
OFFERINGS
Kirsten Kelley brings over two decades of enterprise software offering management and marketing experience to the Becklar team. Kirsten spent most of her career at IBM in various roles, including sales, channel management, product and offering management, and marketing. A proven leader, she worked with cross-functional teams and partners to improve customer retention and analyst recognition for IBM products and services.

Brock Winzeler

PRESIDENT, FREEUS, BECKLAR WORKFORCE SAFETY, BECKLAR CONNECTED WELLNESS
Brock Winzeler is President of the Freeus, Becklar Workforce Safety, and Becklar Connected Wellness businesses. He joined Becklar in 2015 to lead the newly acquired Freeus business. Since then, Brock has assembled and led a world-class team responsible for Freeus' accelerated growth and award-winning platform and services. Brock is known for his ability to drive accelerated growth through caring relationships with internal stakeholders and industry partners.

Justin Bailey

PRESIDENT, AVANTGUARD
Justin Bailey is President of AvantGuard and has led the company through dramatic growth and evolution. Beyond expanding the customer base, he developed hybrid partnership models that leverage AvantGuard’s technology. He joined AvantGuard in 2010 as VP of Strategic Development, leading their IT team in software development and developing and implementing various technological advancements, such as AI monitoring.

Terri Bendixsen

VP OF ACCOUNTING & CONTROLLER
Terri Bendixsen is a driven financial leader with 15 years of accounting experience for various companies in Nutrition, Manufacturing, Retail, Real Estate, and Healthcare. Her background working with public and private companies provides a diverse skillset in financial reporting, process improvement, and team leadership. She thrives at implementing processes to facilitate growth and drive financial success.

Richard Watts

VP INFORMATION SECURITY
As an information technology and cyber security leader Richard Watts brings over two decades of IT experience to Becklar as the Vice President of Information Security. He is a strategic leader with a clear track record of building and managing teams responsible for enterprise-scale projects, including data center design, redundant network connectivity, enterprise telephony, and cyber security initiatives for privately held and large, publicly traded companies.

Aaron Britton

VP MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
Aaron Britton has advised companies on capital raises, mergers, acquisitions, and strategic initiatives throughout his career. Before joining Becklar, Aaron gained significant transaction advisory experience at three different middle market investment banks — serving clients in the Consumer, Manufacturing, Food & Beverage, and Financial Services industries throughout the United States.

Spencer Moore

VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Spencer Moore is a market-aware revenue and commercial strategy executive with a strong reputation for delivering results. In his quest to translate brand promise into true power for the company and real value for its customers, he always challenges the status quo thinking with a fresh analysis of market trends. Spencer brings diverse business and new service development experience to the Becklar team and is passionate about developing lasting business relationships.

Jeffrey Bradford

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF MARKETING
Jeff Bradford brings 25 years of extensive marketing experience and insights to the Becklar team. Jeff worked with a national tech company in the healthcare arena where he created a new brand and go-to-market launch strategy for their new Products and Services Division. Today Jeff leads the Becklar Marketing Team, orchestrating all marketing activities for Becklar and its subsidiaries, AvantGuard Monitoring Centers and Freeus.

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Our Clients & Partners​

It’s an honor to serve our loyal customers and partners.

Steve Richards

Steve Richards is a seasoned CEO with over three decades of leadership at numerous publicly traded and private companies. A skilled leader known for systemically driving growth via organic and acquisition-driven initiatives, his track record includes experience across technology, media, communications, business process outsourcing, and recurring services firms, all marked by a consistent history for driving transformational growth and exceptional client service.

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Josh Garner

Josh is the founder of Becklar, and launched his career as the founder of AvantGuard where he built the company from a small mom-and-pop central station to a national leader in the wholesale monitoring space. This 3rd generation alarm guru led AvantGuard to become one of the fastest-growing wholesale monitoring companies in the nation. He saw the opportunity to expand the markets served through the acquisition of Freeus, and the formation of Becklar. Josh’s accomplishments have led to him being recognized as the Standard-Examiner’s Forty Under 40 in 2015.

Aside from his success in business, Garner is known for his kindness and charitable nature. In 2014, he organized the AG Cares foundation to help employees who experience unexpected financial difficulties. The foundation has raised tens of thousands of dollars and helped hundreds of employees during their time of need. Despite how much the company has grown, Josh takes the time to get to know employees across all three organizations by name. He recognizes that the success of a business depends on its employees and he believes it is critical to ensure that his team members know they are appreciated.

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