Company History

In 1963 Donald Mason, Jules Mason, and Frank P. Stancato, Sr. installed the first computer system in the business district of Hazleton, PA. The Leader Store's computer hardware and software allowed the store to produce and track monthly charge account statements and customer payments. To help support this computer system and make it cost effective for The Leader Store, services for “batch” processing of payroll and accounting data were offered to businesses in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

In 1968, LDP, Inc. was formed and we became known as Leader Data Processing. Our corporation began operation on May 8th, 1968 at a newly constructed site in the Valmont Industrial Park. Since then, three major additions have been made to our facility.

The original Board of Directors and officers of LDP, Inc. were: Jules Mason, Chairman of the Board; Donald Mason, President; Frank P. Stancato, Sr., Vice President; Robert Crawford, Secretary; and C. Jeffrey Mason, Treasurer.

Leader Data Processing began servicing business as a “batch” data processing computer service bureau and performing such functions as payroll, accounts receivable, accounts payable, general ledger, and inventory control. Leader was in its infancy when it began working for the ILGWU in Philadelphia, PA

In 1969 Leader purchased Computer Data Corporation (CDC) located in Allentown, PA. There is still one remaining employee, George Schneider, who came from Computer Data Corporation.

In these early years, Leader was an IBM house utilizing the IBM 360 technology. The computer room consisted of an IBM 360 computer, six 800/1600 bpi tape drives, eight 14 meg disk drives, a thousand-line-per-minute printer, and a card sorter.

In 1974 Donald Mason and Jules Mason became Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors, Frank P. Stancato, Sr. became President, Robert Crawford became Vice President, and C. Jeffrey Mason became Secretary/Treasurer of Leader. Then during the end of 1976, Jules Mason decided to retire. He and Robert Crawford resigned from the Board of Directors. The Donald Mason Family and Frank P. Stancato, Sr. became the owners of Leader.

Also in the mid 1970s, Leader moved to the next generation of computers (Hewlett Packard) which allowed Leader to offer on-line and timesharing services. Leader began servicing national and international corporations and began growing a national network for the ILGWU.

Leader wrote custom software for a wide variety of clients including quite a few of Fortune 500 companies. This pattern continued through the 1980s with Leader representing Hewlett Packard as an OEM representative.

In 1983 the Chairman of the Board, Donald Mason, passed away. Frank P. Stancato, Sr. assumed both the responsibilities of Chairman of the Board and President. C. Jeffrey Mason continued as Secretary/Treasurer of Leader.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Leader began selling PCs to commercial clients along with performing LAN and WAN network services. Leader opened a retail outlet and sold Hewlett Packard, Compaq, Apple, and OkiData.

In 1991, Leader acquired what became Leader Physician Services and began to provide custom billing services to medical practices. In 1992, this division was awarded a contract from the Pennsylvania Department of Education to obtain Medicaid reimbursements for school districts throughout the Commonwealth. This program became known as ACCESS. 1993 saw the addition of the State of Washington as our second ACCESS client.

In 1994 Frank P. Stancato, Sr., Chairman of the Board, suddenly passed away. The emphasis and direction of Leader began to change. In early 1995 C. Jeffrey Mason became President and CEO and Frank P. Stancato, Jr. assumed the position of Secretary/Treasurer.

In January 2001, the Mason Family purchased the Stancato's interest in Leader. Presently, C. Jeffrey Mason remains President and CEO and C. Jeffrey Mason, Jr. is Secretary/Treasurer. The board was reorganized and consists of C. Jeffrey Mason, C. Jeffrey Mason, Jr., George Schneider, and David Horn. The board also utilizes Atty. Henry Giuliani as a consultant to assist with the direction of Leader.

As we move into the future, more than a third of our employees have been with us for 15 or more years with many over 25 years of services. Capitalizing on this strong foundation, Leader continue to provide comprehensive information management services for government agencies and private sector companies, large and small, through our two active divisions: Leader Data Processing and Leader Services.