About Us​

Experienced Leaders. Passionate Teams. Continuous Innovation.

Our History​

Becklar’s history is steeped in innovation, caring, and helping others. We’re proud to call Utah’s silicone slopes home, and our connection to the west runs deep: our name is derived from the Bechler River in Yellowstone National Park where our founder enjoyed peaceful days fishing with his father.

Although Becklar was founded in 2017, our journey goes back 40 years from 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 complementary 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 us to provide enterprise-scale solutions based on industry-leading technology.

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, every day we strive to show our customers, partners, and employees that we care by living the following values.

Fun

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

Innovation

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

Relationships

We value our relationships with our customers and each other and aim to continuously strengthen them. 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 & Teamwork

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

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 for driving transformational growth and exceptional client service.

Josh Garner

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN & FOUNDER
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.

Ray Langhaim

CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Ray Langhaim is an experienced CFO with numerous publicly traded and private companies.  Also having an experience of an expat assignment in the Philippines where he learned to SCUBA dive.  Leadership and we care first core values is rooted within.  Ray has worked with companies from $40m to $3B.  Ray started his career after graduating from Fresno State in 1990 with Ernst and Young in San Jose California and received his CPA.  He enjoys scuba diving, football, and being a husband, father, and grandfather.

Tyler Tribe

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY & PRODUCT OFFICER
Tyler 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 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. Prior to joining the Becklar team, he spent 15 years with a publicly traded real estate company, ultimately spending his last 6 years as their head of people.

Kirsten Kelley

VP OF NEW VERTICAL OFFERINGS & BRAND
Kirsten 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 a variety of 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 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 that time, Brock has had the privilege of assembling and leading a world class team that is responsible for the accelerated growth and award winning platform and services of his companies. Brock is known for his ability to drive accelerated growth through caring relationships with internal stakeholders and industry partners.

Justin Bailey

PRESIDENT, AVANTGUARD
Justin serves as president of AvantGuard, and has led the company through a period of dramatic growth and evolution. Beyond expanding the customer base, he was integral in developing hybrid partnership models that leverage AvantGuard’s technology. He joined AvantGuard in 2010 as V.P. of Strategic Development, leading AG’s IT team in software development as well as 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 experience in the accounting for a wide variety of companies in Nutrition, Manufacturing, Retail, Real Estate and Healthcare. Her background working with both public and private companies provide a diverse skillset with 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
Throughout his career Aaron Britton has advised companies on capital raises, mergers, acquisitions and strategic initiatives. Prior to joining Becklar, Aaron gained significant transaction advisory experience at three separate 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 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 it’s customers he is always challenging status quo thinking with fresh analysis of market trends. Spencer brings a diverse set of 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 brings 25 years of valuable marketing experience and insights to the Becklar team. He has worked with a national tech company in the healthcare arena where Jeff created a new brand and go-to-market launch strategy for their new products and services division of the company. 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.