Mr. Refky brings over 20 years' experience in the IT industry. Throughout his career he has fulfilled a number of general management, regional and country IS/IT management roles including corporate business development, Business and IT Consulting, project management and planning, systems analysis and design, programming, customer support, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations. Mr. Refky holds a B.Sc. degree in Computer and Automatic Control. Prior to joining Xceed, Mr. Refky was the Middle East regional IS Director for ABB (Asea Brown Boveri), a leader in power and automation technologies.
 
Xceed is a global provider of quality, multi-lingual Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) services. It offers integrated customer care, technical support and associated back-office processing to commercial and governmental clients worldwide.
 
Xceed was established in 2001 to serve as the IT arm of Telecom Egypt with a client base of more than 11 million subscribers. Since then, Xceed has developed into a global provider of BPO services, with multi-sites at multiple locations. Xceed is one of the largest contact centres in the Southern Mediterranean Region.
Xceed currently has four sites within Cairo: two of which are operating full time while the other two function as back up sites to ensure business continuity. Xceed’s main site is located in Cairo’s technology park, The Smart Village.
 
Xceed has an additional contact centre, geographically and culturally proximate to Europe, at Morocco's technology park, “CasaNearshore Park”. This site boasts a large, qualified Francophone talent pool.
Xceed also has representative offices in the US, Canada, the UK and Dubai.

Alvi Abuaf is the President and CEO of CPM Braxis USA, the leading Brazil-based global IT services and outsourcing company. Alvi is an executive with a proven track record. Formerly, he was the Managing Director of Global Strategy and Program Management division in Citigroup’s Operations & Technology. 

Mr. Abuaf brings more than 20 years comprehensive experience in IT, financial services, consulting, outsourcing and vendor selection.  Prior to Citi, he served as vice president and Managing Director of Americas Financial Services Industry Consulting at Capgemini.

Alvi holds a Bachelor degree from SUNY Buffalo and a Masters from Columbia University. He also published many relevant articles and was featured in top magazines and newspapers worldwide.
 

Amy O'Connor is Vice President, Services at Sun Microsystems. She is responsible for driving Sun's Services strategy and building a complete Services product portfolio that surrounds Sun's Systems and Software offerings with support, managed and professional services expertise.

Ms. O'Connor has over 25 years experience in Engineering, Marketing and Information Technology.  Most recently, Amy was a member of Sun's Software Marketing team where she served as Senior Director, Software Business Planning and Strategy. Prior to that, Amy worked in Sun Storage as Senior Director of Storage Strategy and previously as the engineering director for Sun's storage data services products. Amy holds Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degrees from the University of Connecticut.

Anna Smela-Kjellin is Vice President of Ericpol Telecom. She is responsible for sourcing strategies, serving managed and professional service expertise, developing client strategic initiatives. Ms. Smela-Kjellin has over  20 years' experience with international IT and telecom companies, has the necessary experience in building start-up technological companies operating within the Internet as well as network and telecommunications services. During her career, she has worked on many European markets, for example in Spain, England, Switzerland, the Baltic countries and Poland. She was a supervisory board member of several telecommunications operators. She also worked in the field of mergers and acquisitions; therefore, She is familiar with the processes of introducing companies to a stock. Ms Smela-Kjellin graduated from Stockholm University and holds a MBA.

Arjun Avtar Sethi is a Vice President with A.T. Kearney based in New York.  His work experience is across Consulting, Corporate Planning in the Indian IT industry and Sales. During his tenure at A.T. Kearney, Arjun has been engaged in providing Business and Strategic IT consulting support to companies in the Financial Institutions, Consumer Products and High Technology domains. Arjun currently leads A.T. Kearney’s Offshoring and Outsourcing practice.

An accomplished executive with exceptional skills in process orientation and organizational behavior.  Strong and effective catalyst for change with a deep rooted understanding of the human factor in services organizations.  Unique “seen it from both ends” IT outsourcing experience: as a buyer for seven years, and a seller for the same amount of time.

Ashish joined Citi Markets & Banking in May 2007 as a Global Resource Strategy relationship manager to one of the larger lines of businesses.  In his short time there, he has helped craft a sustainable long-term Global Resourcing Strategy with a mix of near shore and far shore captives and providers to leverage global skills, minimize operational risk and provide a framework for ADM outsourcing through strategic partnerships.

Prior to Citi and since 1999, Ashish was at Kale Consultants, an India-based niche IT Solutions company catering to Airlines & Travel sectors, as CEO of the US entity and President of the Parent company based in India.  Under his leadership, the company recorded 850% growth [CAGR 43%] from six customer and 75 FTEs to over 60 customers and 750 FTEs despite the industry’s condition post 9/11, through SARS epidemic and fleeing oil prices.  The division expanded beyond software to business process outsourcing, hosted solutions and significantly improved its brand positioning worldwide.  Kale’s flagship product was voted as an international industry standard by IATA member airlines, after tests, trials and testimonials; a first for Indian Software Industry.

Before Kale, Ashish was Vice President for the CIO at American Insurance Group (AIG) where he worked for the Senior Executive Team on imperative business and IT projects including IT Sourcing and Operational and Capital budgeting.

Ashish has spent five years at Verizon as Director of the Business Office for the CIO.  His responsibilities included defining, implementing and managing the international outsourcing program.  He is recognized as one of the early adopters of offshore outsourcing in the industry.  Ashish was part of pioneering efforts such as IT Portfolio Management, RITLAB and Leveraged Sourcing, still in use at Verizon.

Ashish began his career with the New York office of Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC) in 1989 where he worked on engagements across industries and as an IT Strategy Consultant to the Telecommunication Industry.

Ashish has an MBA in Finance & Marketing and BS in Information Technology & Economics, both degrees from Stern School of Business, New York University.

Introduction
Atul is a leading proponent and practitioner of globalization and futurizing enterprises.   He has two decades of global business expertise and co-founded neoIT in 1999 with the mission of helping enterprises grow their business and improve operations by capitalizing on services globalization.  This passion for globalization of services and a unique business model has helped neoIT establish itself as the leader in the services globalization advisory and management arena.  This has also led to Atul being recognized globally for his thought leadership and experience is the global services economy. In 2007, Atul founded NEOGROUP to help companies optimize major programs and governance. NEOGROUP provides best practices and resources to monitor, report and optimize major programs and governance. In 2009, Atul founded Best Outsourcing Jobs and Global Ability to further fuel the global services economy and develop a stronger global services supply chain.

Global Leadership
Atul’s opinions are valued by media and wall street analysts such as CNN, ABCNews, CNBC, ITAA, SIG, Outsourcing World Summit, HRO World, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Economist, CIO and other global organizations. Atul continues to be a vocal proponent of globalization and has taken on the critics, such as Lou Dobbs and his “Exporting America” segment on CNN.  He has co-authored a book published by McGraw Hill in January 2006 on services globalization titled, “The Offshore Nation” which focuses on the services globalization mega-trend and its economic and human impact on nations and firms. His next book, The 7 Secrets of Great Globalizers is likely to be published by Spring 2010.  Atul also writes an ongoing column for HRO Today, FAO Today and Outsourcing Malaysia. He is also a frequent contributor to other magazines such as CIO, Global Services and Business Finance.

Consulting Magazine named Atul as one of the “Top 25 Most Influential Consultants” in 2006 and “Top 6 IT Powerbrokers” in 2004.  HRO Today named Atul as a HR Outsourcing Superstar five years in a row from 2004 through 2009.  FAO Today named him a Superstar in 2007 and 2008.  Arizona State University honored him as a “Distinguished Alumni”.  

He serves on the Boards of IDEA, Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University, IAOP, Defense Business Board, NEOGROUP and neoIT. He is also active with the global non-profit network of entrepreneurs, TiE, Silicon Valley where he is a Charter Member and Chair of the “Cross Border Services CxO Forum”. Atul is also a member and board member of the Northern California chapter of YPO and a mentor to the Stanford University’s Reuters Digital Vision Fellow Program.

Prior to neoIT, Atul was at Cardinal Health (NYSE: CAH) as Senior Vice President of International, he led the international operations of the Fortune 25 Company.  Atul and his seasoned team at Cardinal expanded profitable operations to Australia, New Zealand, Spain, UK, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico, Japan and other global locations. More importantly, his in-depth international experience earned him the admiration and respect of global CEOs, business leaders and government officials.

Atul and his firms are redefining how nations create competitive advantage in global services and how firms and individuals can leverage this mega-trend to build better futures for all.  Further details can be found at www.google.com (search for Atul Vashistha).

Compass Principal Consultant Bob Mathers works with organizations in a wide variety of industry sectors to improve operational performance through the use of comparative analysis and industry insight gained over the past 15 years.

Bobs' areas of expertise include IT infrastructure, performance improvement, performance management, outsourcing strategy development, outsourced pricing benchmarking and organizational design.

HCL:  Bob joined HCL’s Infrastructure Services Division in November of 2008.  He has over 22 years of experience on all three sides of the outsourcing relationship: as a Client, a Service Provider and a Sourcing Advisor.

Sourcing Advisor:  Prior to HCL, Bob was with Technology Partners International (TPI) for 9 years and was responsible for joint project teams working on the preparation of RFP documents, reviewing responses and negotiating agreements, as well as governance training and advising after transactions were signed. 

Service Provider:  Bob was the Director of Contract Administration for the U.S. division of Cap Gemini’s Information Systems Management outsourcing group from 1995 to 2000. 

Client:  At McDonnell-Douglas Corporation, Bob was part of the team responsible for the governance of the $3 billion (USD) outsourcing agreement.  Bob’s focus was on contract interpretation, follow on negotiations, amendments and dispute resolution.

Cameron is Vice President and Service Line Leader for IBM’s Application Management Services. This includes revenue, profit and delivery responsibility for over 22,000 practitioners across the United States and multiple global delivery locations in India, China, the Philippines and Brazil.

Prior to his current role, Cameron was Director for Application Management Services for IBM Japan. His responsibilities included; establishing our Dalian, China delivery center, client relationships, revenue, profit and market share for IBM Japan’s Application clients. IBM Japan’s signings grew 8% YTY in 2007 to over $1B.

Cameron has worked for IBM for 13 years in various sales, delivery and executive roles and has attended the IBM Client Management Program at Harvard and the IBM Executive Program at Harvard.

His experiences and strengths include international deals, global delivery expertise, breakthrough thinking, a creative approach to clients, creating an effective management style through coaching and business transformation. His industry experience includes healthcare payers, providers and pharmaceutical firms.

Cameron and his wife reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They have two children Lucy and William.
 

Carl Lavin is Managing Editor, Forbes. He oversees day-to-day management of the Forbes newsroom, which serves an audience of more than 20 million people a month online at Forbes.com and through Forbes magazine.

Lavin works with editors, reporters and the video team to enhance the editorial quality on all platforms and he coordinates with business development and marketing to assure continued success across all channels.  He is responsible for staff development, daily newsroom operations and, with other senior managers, for overall editorial strategy.

Lavin joined Forbes.com in 2007 from The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was Deputy Managing Editor for online and multimedia.  At the Inquirer, he has also been responsible for foreign, national, metro, science, health and business news.  He joined The Inquirer in 2004, after 20 years at The New York Times, including six years as deputy Washington editor.  At The Times, he was also deputy metro editor, graphics editor, and an assistant national editor. Previously, he worked as an editor at The Chicago Sun-Times and The Los Angeles Herald Examiner.  He received his B.A. in biology from the University of Chicago.      
 

Carla is Associate Vice President at Allianz Life in Information Technology.  In her IT Governance and Controls role, she leads vendor management, process standards and compliance, portfolio management and financial analysis and reporting for Information Technology.   Most recently she assisted in the outsourcing of AZL’s application maintenance and development, IT infrastructure and operations business processing outsourcing.   These initiatives included development of vendor strategy, vendor identification and selection, contractual negotiations, vendor transition, organizational communications and risk mitigation.

Carla has extensive IT background with 28 years experience in the Insurance, Retail, Manufacturing and Government Contracting industry in the U.S.    She has a MBA from the University of St. Thomas and a BA from Metropolitan State University.

As a Director Offshore is primarily responsibilities is the delivery and management of all USA projects including application development and maintenance performed in Brazil or other Politec locations.  His 25+ years of technical and business leadership experience has helped shape the Politec methodology for Outsourcing Software Development. Prior to joining Politec, seven years with Sciences Applications International Corporation (SAIC), three years with The Harris Group, Inc., followed by five years with Synergy Imaging Systems. During his 7 years employment with SAIC, Mr. Ochoa as Senior Project Manager directed technical groups and software developers in the design and development of large-scale object oriented systems for government and commercial projects. He also lead the technical design and implementation of the software that converts OCR'd full-text files into VSAM Data Sets to be added to the current CTRACK/STAIR database on IBM-370 mainframe for the Executive Office of the President of United States. Mr. Ochoa co-founded Synergy Imaging Systems, which later merged into Politec, and was responsible for architecting, designing, and developing the company's software products.

Carrie supports UBS in organizational change, cost reduction, and transformation initiatives such as shared services, balanced scorecard, and sourcing strategies. Prior to joining UBS, Carrie spent more than 10 years working for leading financial services companies where she held a variety of roles delivering strategy, operations, organization and technology solutions.

Carrie studied Engineering at University of Michigan, Zoology at Michigan State University, and received her MBA from University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She holds a Web Commerce certificate from DePaul University. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and has obtained her Six Sigma Black Belt certification.

Chi Zhang, Principle of ITLogica Inc. Graduated from University of Florida with MBA majoring in Finance and Management Information System. Prior to joining ITLogica, Chi Zhang had worked for Capgemini, U.S. LLC (formally Ernst & Young, LLC) and Amdocs Inc. as Consulting Manager, and  engaged with various clients including Cingular Wireless, Coca Cola, American Express, JP Morgan Chase, and etc. Chi Zhang has more than 8 years experience in IT outsourcing consulting projects in both hands-on project delivery as well as in developing and implementing project management methodology with best practices on “balance cost with quality” in delivery to USA-based clients. Chi Zhang has been PMP certified since 2004. She had worked in China Nanjing International for several years as Sales and Marketing Manager before went to U.S.A.

Since October 2008, Ms. Donoso is in charge of the NYC office of InvestChile-CORFO (Chilean Government’s Economic Development Agency). The office is aimed to carry out the strategy to promote and attract US companies to Chile to invest in the areas of ICTs and international services.

Prior to her assignment, she worked at the CORFO headquarters in Santiago (2003-2008) working mainly to design and develop the investment attraction strategy in India, U.S. and Europe. She also worked to create the framework for the new government policy towards the implementation of productive clusters in the Chilean economy. In early 2008, she was assigned to work for the implementation of the global services cluster in Chile.

From 2001 to 2003, she headed CORFO´s overseas branch in Silicon Valley, where she launched the InvestChile program and created a network of potential investors.

She is a journalist and has post graduate studies with a strategic marketing diploma (Universidad de Chile), e-commerce management diploma (San Jose State University, CA) and MBA graduate (Universidad Diego Portales in Chile).

Dana Stiffler brings over 10 years' industry analyst experience to AMR Research. She is an acknowledged analyst and advisor on application services, particularly SAP and Oracle, advising on 100+ consulting, application services, and outsourcing service provider selections annually. Prior to joining AMR, Dana was a co-founder of IDC Financial Insights' Capital Markets Practice and also worked as a contributing analyst for the Economist Intelligence Unit, Ovum, and Pyramid Research.

Dana received her MA in Technology Policy and Development Economics from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University and BA in International Relations from Claremont McKenna College. She has been quoted in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Financial Times.

David Kline provides leadership, strategic management and technical guidance for Discovery's information technology infrastructure, software applications and facility services worldwide. His focus is on next-generation systems conversions and integrations in support of driving Discovery's overall brand-building and growth strategies.

Kline has an extensive background in managing the information systems strategy for some of the world's biggest entertainment brands. Before joining Discovery in July 2007, Kline was the Senior Vice President and CIO of Information Technology and Facilities for Rainbow Media, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp. Kline joined Rainbow Media in 1998 as Director of Information Systems and quickly became a key member of senior management.

Previously, Kline worked for Integrated Systems Group as Vice President of Pre- and Post-Sales Systems Engineering. Earlier, he served as Manager of Data Center Operations and Project Director of Clinical Applications for North Shore Health Systems.

Kline earned a Master of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science in management and marketing from Long Island University at C.W. Post.

David Wong Nan Fay is a business graduate (Honours) from the Dalhousie University, Canada.  He has more than 22 years of track record and experience in the Information Technology and Logistic Industry.

David’s dedication to the Association for over a decade and his farsighted vision on the Industry led him to be honorary elected as PIKOM Chairman in August 2007. PIKOM is the National ICT Association of Malaysia representing more than 80% of the total revenue of the ICT industry in Malaysia.  David is also the Co-founder and Chairman of Outsourcing Malaysia (OM), an initiation of PIKOM and a consortium representative of the outsourcing industry.

In 2000, he founded and embarked on his new start up, SnT Global Sdn Bhd, where he currently resides as the Group Chief Executive Officer.  SnT Global Sdn Bhd is Asia’s Leading Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Provider with offices in Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and China.  SnT’s core businesses are Contact Center Management, Lead Logistics Management, After-market Service Management, Training and Communication Infrastructure Provider.
Under his guidance, SnT has won several major industry awards, and is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of BPO in Asia. It was also recognized as a leading technology company in the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Asia Pacific Program for 2004 and 2005. In 2007, SnT was recognised by Global Services Awards as one of the top 100 most innovative outsourcing companies in the world as well as top 10 to watch in Asia.

He is currently a council member of the National Information Technology Council (NITC) chaired by the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Founder Member of Yayasan Innovasi Malaysia chaired by MOSTI Minister and Board of Directors of Pembangunan Sumber Manusia Berhad.

He also sits on various boards and committees in both private and government sectors.
 

Scott Mason heads Global IT Governance and Operations for Novartis Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland.  In this role reporting to the Global CIO, Scott and his team are integrally involved in setting and executing IT’s strategy, including implementing global shared services, directing IT’s investment portfolio, and expanding and maturing use of global sourcing (Offshoring).

Over the last 4 years Scott led Novartis’ IT Offshore program, helping build scale and achieve a performance that benchmarks highly within the Pharma industry. Over the last year he has also established programs to rationalize IT’s application landscape, and develop Healthcare IT opportunities and investments.

Scott joined Novartis in 2005 in the role of Head of IT Strategy & Finance in the Consumer Health Division.  Prior, Scott advised leading international companies in banking, insurance and utilities in Europe and South Africa with Accenture. He holds a doctorate in computer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and an MS in civil engineering from the University of Illinois.

As Editor, Ed Nair is responsible for upholding the brand values of Global Services, and creating credible content for its worldwide audience. Based in New Jersey, he manages a team of editorial staff spread across different locations in the U.S.A. and India, and oversees the U.S. operations for Cybermedia India Ltd., South Asia’s largest specialty media company. 
Ed has spent 17 years in technology research and media industries, handling a variety of functions that include industry research, sales and marketing, print and online content, and general management. In prior roles, he was the editor for enterprise computing at Dataquest, India’s leading IT publication and a senior analyst with IDC India. He won the Polestar Award for Best IT Journalist in India in 1998.
 
Ed has been tracking the global outsourcing industry since the early nineties when he was part of the World Bank funded study for the Department of Electronics, Govt. of India on software exports. His direct exposure to the outsourcing industry includes : A project at Tibco Software, Palo Alto, CA  where he worked hands-on at offshoring global marketing activities and advising First American Corporation, Phoenix, AZ on managing organizational change in large scale outsourcing operations. 
Ed holds a graduate degree with honors in electronics engineering from University of Mumbai and an MBA from Thunderbird School for Global Management, AZ.
 

Federico Jaramillo is the Senior Vice President of Commercial Sales for Allus, Global BPO Center.  He is responsible for the direction and control of all marketing and trade activities of the Allus Corporation in Northern Latin America and the US.  He has over 15 years experience in major account acquisitions, strategic alignment, implementation of new business and on-going client satisfaction.  Prior to Allus, Global BPO Center, Federico served as Country Manager for COTY Inc. and Finance Director for Kimberly Clark.  He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Systems Engineering from EAFIT University and post graduate degree in Financial Administration from the University of Colorado (summa cum laude).  Federico also serves as an EAFIT University Professor, Member of the Board of Directors of ACEF (Colombian Association of Executives in Finances), and a member of the Board of Directors of Teleccion S.A.

Frank J. Casale is Founder and CEO of The Outsourcing Institute (OI), a global marketplace
and community of 70,000+ executive members including leading practitioners,
service providers, advisors, thought leaders, industry observers and analysts.
The mission of OI is to leverage the collective wisdom and best practices of this evolving
outsourcing ecosystem along with the latest abilities of internet technologies to enable
powerful alternatives for learning, networking, career development, publishing, transacting
and relationship management for those in the outsourcing arena.
A pioneer and visionary leader with more than 15 years of outsourcing expertise, Mr.
Casale continuously monitors industry and business trends to better identify new ways to
increase the overall effi ciencies, speed and success of outsourcing transactions and relationships.
He is noted for designing innovative industry tools, such as The Outsourcing Index, the
premier state-of the-industry report on U.S. outsourcing, and for reliably anticipating
market developments, such as the emerging role of the Chief Resource Offi cer (CRO),
Outsourcing 2.0, and OI’s new Intelligence Network a virtual outsourcing community and
marketplace.
Featured on CNN and CNBC, Mr. Casale is a leading commentator on outsourcing issues
by major business and news organizations including The Financial Times, The Wall Street
Journal, Business Week, FORTUNE magazine and The New York Times.
An expert on the strategic utilization of people, processes and technology, Mr. Casale is a
leading advisor to hundreds of organizations in their efforts to leverage internal and external
resources effi ciently and effectively. As creator of the fi rst, largest and only neutral
professional association in outsourcing, Mr. Casale continually sets the standard for outsourcing
best practices.
A graduate of C.W. Post, Long Island University, Mr. Casale holds a B.S. degree in Business
Marketing, and is an active member of World Entrepreneur Organization, Social Media
Collective, Community Management and Marketing Council, The Center for Association
Leadership.

Mr. Mapp has more than 40 years of experience in the areas of information technology systems, applications, infrastructure support, customer support and consulting services. During that time he has held senior executive-level positions with companies such as IBM, American Express and InfoSpan as well as the position of Chief Information Officer for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Honeywell. In addition, Mr. Mapp served as CEO and President of the World Congress on Information Technology, a forum that is held every two years under the direction of the World Information Technology Services Alliance. He currently operates his own consulting company, Quality Service Solutions providing research and assisting companies with their IT strategy.

Fred has extensive experience developing and defining IT objectives and strategic plans and in the implementation of the necessary technology. He also has a strong background in outsourcing, data center efficiency, project and process management, six sigma, quality deployment and other critical areas of the business process. 

In addition, Mr. Mapp is an expert at aligning business processes and requirements with technology. As a result of the experiences he has accumulated working with and consulting a variety of Fortune 500 companies, Mr. Mapp has developed a seven-step process that maps information technology to business goals. He explains this process in-depth in the book he wrote, Mapping Information Technology to Your Business.

Gary Jia is the CEO of Open Sesame International, Inc., a Nevada-based service provider with its major operations in China under the name of Henan Open Sesame Digital Commerce Co., Ltd. Open Sesame is a CMMI3 and ISO27001 certified company, having presence in U.S., China and Canada with over 300 full-time employees. Gary has international experiences in North America and Asia. With experiences in ecommerce, web application, and international trade, he is seasoned in ITO & BPO for 10 years.

Gerard is the CIO for Avis Budget Group, Inc., the parent company of the well known brands of Avis Rent-A-Car, Budget Rent-A-Car and Budget Truck. In this role, Gerard is responsible for the management of all facets of Information Technology including Enterprise Applications, IT Operations, Networks, Architecture and IT Strategy. 

Gerard has held various management positions over the last 20 years working with Cendant Corporation, Avis Rent A Car, WizCom International LTD and Resorts Condominium International in the areas of application development, business systems management, project management, relationship management and IT Operations.

Mr. Guapo is a Partner with the consulting firm Avasant and has extensive experience assisting clients with all aspects of the information technology and business process sourcing lifecycle including strategy development, RFP development and vendor selection, contract development and negotiations and on going sourcing management. For the past 12 years Mr. Guapo has led a variety of management consulting engagements including sourcing engagements covering information technology infrastructure services, applications development and maintenance services, system implementation and business process services spanning a variety of industries and State and Local Government. Prior to joining Avasant, Mr. Guapo was a Director in Gartner Consulting’s Strategic Sourcing practice. Mr. Guapo earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering with a minor in business administration at the University of Southern California. He also earned an MBA, with an emphasis in finance and information technology, at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business.

Since July 2008 Jaime Echavarria has served as Director of Proexport USA (Colombian Trade Bureau), the Colombia Government entity responsible for promoting non-traditional exports from Colombia to the US and advocating Colombia for North American tourism and foreign direct investment.  Mr. Echavarria oversees the organization and its 30+ professionals, who are directly responsible for attracting a least US$350 million in FDI, US$170 million in nontraditional exports and 400,000 tourists a year to Colombia, one of Latin America’s most stable democracies and rapidly growing economies.

Prior to joining Proexport USA, Mr. Echavarria worked in the private sector as an entrepreneur. He is credited with the establishment of the first accounting software company in Colombia, which became one of the most successful IT companies in the region, MECOsoft.  He eventually sold the company to the multinational Spanish Holding Group, “Grupo Softland,” before coming to the US.

Other notable achievements include the joint venture Mr. Echavarria developed with Intuit USA to localize Quicken software in Spanish for sales in Spanish-speaking markets, such as Latin America and Spain, as well as numerous awards and recognitions. These include the 1996 National Prize for Entrepreneurship, the International Star from Spain, a 1999 and 2003 Innovation Finalist in Portafolio, among others.

Aside from his success as an IT leader and businessman, he has worked on several socially responsible initiatives (Pyramid-Solla Foundation, Rehab Committee of Antioquia), and is an active sportsman (Golf and Running), and academic lecturer (former professor of University of EAFIT). His multifaceted profile is well-rounded with an appreciation for art and fluency in several languages.

Mr. Echavarria holds a MBA from the University of Georgia and a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Kansas.

Jim is the CIO and Vice President of LexisNexis’ Risk Solutions’ insurance software vendor operation. He oversees the product management, delivery and operations of Personal and Commercial Lines software development and deployment for all products including policy and claim administration, tools solutions, billing and reinsurance systems. He is also responsible for the company’s strategic outsourcing initiative which is reshaping the way the organization delivers solutions to its clients.
 
Before his company was acquired by LexisNexis in 2003, Jim ran a successful claims software company built on his experience of more than 15 years in the property casualty and life insurance field including responsibilities for Strategy Development & Deployment for a multi-billion dollar carrier and as CIO for two others.
 
Jim is also an examiner for the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Baldrige National Quality Award with a focus on the definition and effectiveness of measurements and metrics in translating strategy into business results
 

Jan got his degree in Business Economics and Management from University of Economics in Prague. He joined CzechInvest (Investment and Business Development Agency of the Czech Republic) in 2008.  He works as an Investment Development Manager for IT and Software Development in Investment Division. His main responsibilities are setting up investment promotion strategy within the Czech Republic, managing investment campaigns, creating industrial marketing materials, presenting investment opportunities in the CR and respective CzechInvest’s services internationally, analyzing the current situation and future trends in the CR and in the Word and representing CzechInvest at international conferences and seminars.

Joann Martin created and leads the Global Strategic Outsourcing Sourcing team at Pitney Bowes. Her team is responsible for Vendor Landscape and Management of IT, Software Development, Back Office, and Call Center. By understanding business objectives and creating unique opportunities, she has improved efficiencies and reduced total costs.

Joann received her BS in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Connecticut and her MBA from Capella University. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Bridgeport. Joann is PMP certified, COP certified, and is a Six Sigma Champion. She has 2 patents, and has spoken at IAOP, XPLOR and Tawpi.

John Fafian leads the IT Strategic Sourcing unit at Arrow Electronics, Inc, a $16 billion dollar distributor of electronic components and computer products.  Mr. Fafian has extensive technology and non-technology sourcing experience including infrastructure, application development, and business process outsourcing on an onshore, near shore, and offshore basis.  He is a frequent lecturer on a broad range of areas related to outsourcing.

Prior to joining Arrow, he was a sourcing executive at Credit Suisse First Boston, and Head of Software Sourcing globally at Deutsche Bank.  Mr. Fafian holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

John contributes to Forrester's offerings for the Sourcing & Vendor Management professional and is part of Forrester's industry-leading offshore research team. With more than 20 years of experience at Forrester, John leads Forrester's research efforts on vendor management, supplier scorecarding, and alternative offshore geographies and the development of a global delivery model for IT services and product development.
 

To define their vendor management, offshore, and IT management/governance strategies, John has worked with leading-edge firms and governments in many countries, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the UK.
In his offshore and alternative geography research John has been to India more than 20 times and has visited the major alternatives ? Argentina, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Malaysia, Philippines, Russia, and Vietnam.
 

In a cover story, Time named John's report on offshore a "landmark study." In January 2004, The Economist stated, "The debate on offshore has been brewing since a study by Forrester and John McCarthy in 2002 claimed that 3.3 million white-collar American jobs (500,000 of them in IT) would shift offshore to countries such as India by 2015." In addition to writing the first report in the industry defining client/server computing, he has done groundbreaking research on the Internet, privacy, and the Net's affect on government.
 

He has delivered keynote addresses on the Internet and distributed computing at such premier industry events as Strategic Sourcing Interest Group, NASSCOM, COMDEX, the Milken Institute Global Conference, BusinessWeek CIO Conference, Interop, Politics Online Conference, and Unix Expo. He has also appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, CNN, CNNfn, MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and NDTV.
 

Jon brings over 20 years of private and public sector experience to his role as one of the Managers of Investment Attraction, with Business New Brunswick.

During his first years at Business New Brunswick, Jon was successful at providing location solutions for a number of Fortune 500 companies and start up companies, which chose New Brunswick to locate their business.  That experience, coupled with an extensive background in research, sales and marketing – speaks to Jon’s ability to guide his team of Investment Officers as they provide client-centric solutions to corporations considering expanding or relocating an operation.

Born, educated and living in New Brunswick, Jon is passionate when given any opportunity to speak about our province’s compelling business story.

Jordan began his career with Pfizer in 1996 as quality manager in Corporate Human Resources working on special projects for Pfizer's Executive Leadership Team before moving to his role in Organizational Effectiveness in Pfizer's Worldwide Pharmaceutical Organization in 2000. He served business units both in and outside of the US and most recently designed and successfully piloted Office of the Future (now pfizerWorks), an on demand, overseas resource to whom colleagues can delegate typical support work, data analysis and protracted research projects.  

The project won approval from Pfizer's Vice Chair, CEO and CFO and was launched company-wide in 2008.  He was recently recognized by BusinessWeek's Jena McGregor, in "Game Changing Management Ideas" (April 2009) and in a 2008 Fast Company article, "Scuttling Scut Work."

Prior to joining Pfizer, Jordan worked as a consultant for Deloitte & Touche and REL Consultancy and earned a BS in Administration of Health Service from Ithaca College and both a Masters in Health Administration and MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Judy Arteche-Carr is a strategic advisor to select global companies in the areas of management consulting and global sourcing. Judy drives business transformation and business/IT alignment initiatives with an industry focus. Previously, Judy held management positions at global techcnology and services companies Electronic Data Systems and Unisys Corporation in finance, account management and business development; and financial institutions JP Morgan and Salomon Brothers focused on information risk management, relationship management and capital markets business technology.

Judy has a Masters in Business Administration in Finance from the Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of St Thomas. She has been a speaker and participant in industry conferences and roundtables globally and an adjunct professor at Fordham University.

Karl covers the IT services and enterprise software industries. Prior to joining Kaufman Bros., L.P., he led the IT Services research effort at Lehman Brothers. Karl was the runner-up in 2003 and 2002 in the annual Institutional Investor Magazine poll, and he and his team were consistently in the top in the Greenwich Associates Poll. Prior to joining the equity research department, Karl spent two years in the investment banking and equity capital markets departments of Lehman Brothers. Karl also manages a charitable foundation, A Running Start Foundation, which assists young students and athletes in East Africa. He holds a MBA from the University of Western Ontario and a BCom from the University of Ottawa, both in Canada.

Kate Vitasek is a nationally recognized innovator in the practice of supply chain management.   She is the founder, faculty and lead researcher in the concept of vested (also known as vested outsourcing), which was developed in conjunction with the University of Tennessee based on researching large scale outsourcing contracts.  Vitasek’s approaches and insights have been widely published. She is the author of two books and has published over 75 articles in respected academic and trade journals.  

Vitasek’s storied career includes positions with P&G, Microsoft, RR Donnelly and Sons, and Accenture.   ARC Advisory Group has named her consulting firm one of the “Top 10 Boutiques” in supply chain management.   The Journal of Commerce recently recognized Vitasek as a “Woman on the Move in Trade and Transportation” for her leadership in the profession.   She has also been honored by DC Velocity, Logistics Quarterly and Supply Chain Digest, and Global Executive Women magazines for her vision in leading the profession. 
 

Keith Fiveson is the CEO of ITESA, a global consultancy providing "people convergence solutions" for clients; to brand, expand and optimize the customer experience globally.  The firms focus is on customer care, operations and cultural transformation. An energetic leader and insightful visionary, Fiveson has developed client strategic initiatives, enhanced performance, efficiency and the effectiveness of people, process and technology for clients.  Over the past 20 years he has worked with Apple, Microsoft, McGraw-Hill, CUNA, Citibank, Time Warner, Groupo Carso, CITIC and a host of other companies globally, in over 44 countries.

Published in trade industry journals, Fiveson has lectured at industry conferences in Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Guatemala, Netherlands, India, Mexico, UK and the USA. He graduated from St. Peter's College and attended the MBA program at Fordham University. He is a member of the ATA New York Metro Board of Directors.

Kevin Parikh is the CEO and Partner of Avasant. Mr. Parikh specializes in IT and business process (BP) outsourcing contract and service-level negotiations, strategic management, business risk evaluation and software licensing. His practice engages in both nearshore and offshore sourcing solutions. Mr. Parikh  is based in Los Angeles, California.  Prior to joining Avasant, Mr. Parikh led the Global Sourcing practice for Gartner Consulting.

His specialized experience includes network, desktop, voice, software, and application development and support agreements. As an attorney by training, he specializes in negotiating large and complex transactions where he works toward bridging the gaps between legal counsel and business team objectives.

Over his career, Mr. Parikh has been involved in more than 300 outsourcing deals. These transactions have ranged from US$20 million to US$2.5 billion, involving major Tier 1 and Tier 2 service providers (for example, IBM, EDS, ACS, Wipro, Infosys, Unisys and CGI).

Laurie Chipperfield joined Pfizer Inc. in 1989 and has held positions of increasing leadership in the areas of operations, supply chain, and strategic sourcing.  She is currently Director, API Strategic Sourcing & Planning and leads a global strategic sourcing Center of Emphasis based in Groton Connecticut USA.  The team’s mission is to leverage the global chemical and pharmaceutical market to source chemical raw materials and active ingredients for use in clinical pharmaceutical supplies.  The team manages strategy development, supplier selection, contract negotiation, project management, and supplier relationship and performance management in order to achieve excellence in clinical supply, quality, and delivery.  

Prior to her current role, Laurie had roles in operations and technical transfer at Pfizer locations in New York, NY and Puerto Rico and also supported Pfizer commercial manufacturing sites in Europe.  
 
Laurie received a Bachelors of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from Northeastern University and an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  She is a Certified Purchasing Manager (C.P.M.).  

As Senior VP of Global Shared Services for Kraft Foods, Lee Coulter implemented more than 100 shared
services across nine functions as a key leader of the company’s “Organize for Growth” operating
model. Lee has in-depth global leadership experience in technology, manufacturing, BPO services, financial services, and CPG sectors.

Lee’s functional expertise includes strategic planning, vendor management, large-scale global project management, service delivery, Six Sigma quality process, coaching, and mentoring.
 

Ontala Performance Solutions brings seasoned Advisors to accelerate your business and Sourcing strategies to achieve extraordinary results.

Prior to founding ONTALA, Linda Tuck Chapman was a senior corporate and public sector Strategic Sourcing and Procurement executive for over 10 years with U.S., Canadian and International responsibility.

As CEO at OECM she successfully turned around this start-up, launching the most comprehensive public sector eMarketplace and Strategic Sourcing organization anywhere.  As Senior Vice President and Chief Sourcing Officer at Fifth Third Bank, Vice President, Strategic Sourcing, at Scotiabank Group and Managing Director, Strategic Sourcing at BMO Financial Group Linda designed, implemented and led best practices organizations for Canadian and U.S. and International operations.

Linda earned an MBA from Dalhousie University, and has held senior leadership roles in Corporate, Commercial and Retail banking, and in Human Resources.

Lori Blackman is one of the foremost human capital consulting experts in global sourcing. For more than seven years, Lori and her team have successfully recruited global leaders and project managers across industry sectors throughout an incredible, evolutionary time in global outsourcing.

Much of Lori’s attention has been focused on competency research and analysis. She is viewed as a thought leader in the Global Services space focusing on the people and organizational challenges presented by the complexities of cross-cultural, virtual globalization. Lori has presented her methodologies and findings at leading conferences including the BITS Financial Services Outsourcing Conference, the Indian National Human Resource Development Conference, Global Workforce Leadership Forum, and Global Services - Strategies for Sourcing People, Processes, and Technologies.

In 2006, Lori co-founded the Global Human Capital (GHC) Executive Delegation, an exclusive international network of business executives brought together to facilitate the exchange of talent and leadership ideas and the pursuit of next global talent management practices. Annually, an international delegation is organized that focuses on the changing talent demands of globalization.

Lori is a member of the Human Capital Institute’s (HCI’s) National Advisory Board and a contributing expert panelist on HCI's Global Talent Management and “Virtual Global Workforce” eLearning series. Recently, Lori was appointed Vice President of the Board for CommunitiWorks, a non-profit organization spearheading development work at the grass root level in Northern India.

Marek Gajowniczek was born in Lodz, Poland, in 1959. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Technical University of Lodz in 1983 and 1993, respectively. From 1983 to 1994, he worked at the Institute of Automatic Control, Technical University of Lodz. He is an author or co-author of several articles, papers in conference proceedings and scientific reports. From 1993 to 1995 he worked as technical director of CAD Expert – consulting company specialized in computer aided design.

In 1996 he joined Ericpol Telecom where he worked  in several international software development projects (Sweden, Germany Italy). In 1997 he was appointed managing director of Ericpol Telecom and started from that date he is a member of top management at Ericpol. In 2008 was appointed CEO of Ericpol Telecom. During last 13 years he has contributed in development of Ericpol Telecom in Poland and Ericpol Group in Sweden, Ukraine, and Belarus. Today Ericpol Telecom is the biggest Polish exporter of IT services.
 

Marjorie Thomas is the Corporate Controller and Senior Vice President of Sony Electronics Inc.  She was appointed to the position in August 2006.

As Controller, Thomas oversees SEL’s accounting, financial analysis, processing and reporting, and corporate governance and compliance for SEL.

She is also a member of the Sony Electronics Executive Committee, which consists of top management and oversees the company’s strategic direction. 63

Thomas is a twenty-year veteran of Hewlett Packard, where she held a variety of finance and accounting positions. Her international experience included serving as a board member for HP Globalsoft – a public company headquartered in Bangalore, India at the time of her board membership.

In addition to her strong financial and managerial expertise, Thomas is currently Co- Chair of Junior Achievement of San Diego and Imperial Counties.  

Thomas holds a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting from Boise State University.
 
 

Mr. Jones has founded and run three significant outsourcing businesses during the past 17 years. The functional work of his businesses has been positioned at the top of the value chain, and has included financial regulatory activities, finance and accounting processes, and debt collection activities.

As Senior Managing Director with RSM McGladrey, the 5th largest accounting/consulting firm in the United States, Mr. Jones led the firm into an extensive outsourcing relationship with the Federal Government. Between 1990 and 1996, Mr. Jones built contractual relationships with the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). During this period, a staff of approximately 250 professionals provided outsourced services associated with the meltdown of the banking industry. Pioneering work included management and administration/compliance functions in support of failed banks and distressed assets, a multi-year contract to run the FDIC’s national financial service center, and a variety of reconciliation/financial reporting functions.

In 1998, Mr. Jones founded RSM’s Financial Process Outsourcing (FPO) business to provide integrated accounting and financial reporting services to the private sector. By 2005, this business had grown to employ approximately 600 people in five US locations and Mumbai, India Significant clients included American Express, Napa Auto Parts (Genuine Parts Corporation) GE Capital, YUM Brands, Fleming Foods, and Burger King.

Mr. Jones first came to Jamaica in 1998 to direct an outsourcing team engaged to manage and operate 4 failed banks taken over by the Jamaican Government. Over the next several years, he traveled frequently to Jamaica and made a variety of investments in the financial sector. Retiring from RSM, Mr. Jones established an outsourcing company, IAS to offer debt collection services in the domestic Jamaica market. Today, IAS provides professional asset management and debt collection services to Jamaica’s financial and business sector and has approximately 25,000 accounts under management.

Mr. Jones resides in Kingston, Jamaica with his wife and 11 year old son. He is a co-founder and director of Teens for Technology (TFT). TFT has donated computer labs to approximately 350 schools in Jamaica, and is the single largest source of donated computers to schools in Jamaica over the past six years. TFT has expanded beyond Jamaica, and has donation operations in 7 countries, including Haiti, Peru, Congo, Thailand, Pakistan, and Vietnam. World-wide, approximately 500,000 children are learning essential technology skills on TFT computers.

Meeta Patel is the senior director of Strategic Services & Resource Optimization within SAP’s Global Pre-Sales Organization. Over the past several years at SAP she has worked to accelerate and standardize the use of low cost global delivery models with a focus on evolving new models specifically for sales and marketing. She has deep expertise in offshoring and vendor management and has defined best practices and governance strategies that have been adopted and leveraged to help SAP increase its efficiency and effectiveness.

In addition to strategy and governance, Meeta has also launched and run shared services organizations within SAP, applying her expertise in practice by overseeing demand and capacity management, vendor selection, business case development, and location management.

Meeta has more than 10 years of experience in the business operations arena, with the last five years focused on global delivery.  Prior to joining SAP, Meeta was a CRM strategy and transformation consultant with PriceWaterhouse Coopers where she advised global clients across several industries.

Mr. Gligo is the Executive Director for the US branch of the Chilean Economic Development Agency (CORFO). As a representative of the Chilean Government, he is responsible for defining and implementing the promotion strategy of CORFO’s InvestChile program in the US, and for providing information, assistance, and facilitation services to support the evaluation and implementation of US investment projects in Chile. Between 2000-2005, as a member and then Director of CORFO’s InvestChile program, Mr. Gligo was responsible for promoting foreign investments in the technology sector. Mr. Gligo has also served on the board of director of various utility companies, and as an international consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) of the United Nations.

Mr. Gligo is an industrial civil engineer from the University of Chile and holds a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the same institution and a master’s degree in Management of Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
 

Olle Jonsson is responsible for IT within SKF, focusing on delivering business value with IT as an important enabler. The case at SKF is to capitalize on the next generation outsourcing (cost efficiency, higher quality and more flexibility) and at the same time strengthen the customer market initiative.

SKF as a company has started an important transformation - from a manufacturing company to a future knowledge company.

Some of the topics that Mr Jonsson has been focusing on this last year are mergers and acquisitions, IT Governance, mobilization/preparations for a concept called the "one face to the customer approach". The CEO-CIO interaction has also been a very important and successful topic.

Before Mr Jonsson joined SKF he worked as a CIO for an international life science company within the private equity environment, for 4 years. Prior to that, as a consultant within the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Management Consultancy, with business unit responsibility (ERP) with a staff of more than 50 consultants. He has also been working as a financial/accounting manager for a Swedish company within utility.

Mr Jonsson has broad international experience of information technology, business administration and of HR related questions. With almost 20 years of experience within the IT area he is also a popular and well established speaker within EMEA, especially in the Nordic countries.

Peter Miscovich is Managing Director of Jones Lang LaSalle’s Strategic Consulting Group and he serves on the JLL Global Corporate Solutions Consulting Board. Since 1985, Peter has developed and executed comprehensive workplace solutions for global Fortune 500 companies involving corporate real estate, enterprise sustainability, human resources, finance, technology, operations, procurement, security, outsourcing and strategic planning functions.

As organizations transform and evolve either through growth, acquisition, consolidation or merger-related activities, Peter has developed corporate strategies and implementation programs that maximize and leverage the opportunities that are presented through change.

In his prior roles, Peter developed and executed corporate real estate strategies, operational cost reduction programs, workplace mobility programs, change management programs and enterprise sustainability solutions for Fortune 100 clients. He served a partner within the professional services firms of Andersen, Deloitte Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Long term corporate client relationships include the following: Accenture, American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Barclays Capital, Bloomberg, British Telecom (BT), CISCO, Citigroup (CITI), Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, General Electric (GE), Goldman Sachs, Hewlett Packard (HP), IBM, JPMorgan Chase (JPMC), Merck, Pfizer, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Time Warner, UBS and Viacom.

Peter is a highly accomplished Financial Services Management and Strategy Executive with a successful track record of defining direction and driving execution in both expanding and contracting business environments. In 2002, Peter successfully led Wall Street’s biggest outsourcing deal. He has advised multiple Investment Banks on their global operating models across business divisions and managed their operations.  Recognized as the globalization expert with over 22 years of experience, Peter chairs forums representing the Financial Services sector in consortiums, conferences and investor calls worldwide (Google: Peter Nag).

As the Global Head of Citi GWM’s Right Placement (RP) Program based in New York, Peter transformed the Program to a Managed Services Model. Simultaneously he led Citi’s transformation initiative across front, middle, and back office functions to generate a potential run-rate savings of $165mm.

Previously, in his capacity as the ‘mastermind’ behind Lehman Brothers’ globalization strategy, Peter led Lehman’s Captive Site & Global COE strategy and its successful execution to generate economic gains of over $150mm annualized.

Peter holds an MBA and graduate degrees in management and engineering from Wharton/ Penn Engineering, University of Pennsylvania and Rensselaer (RPI), Troy, New York.

Mr. Cong spent 7 years living in Europe and had his first IT project in 1985 when he was  a third year student in former Czechoslovakia. Back to Vietnam he founded in 1999 Young E-commerce Solutions J.S. Company, a pioneer in e-commerce business in Vietnam at the time.
 

In 2002 he and Vietnamese IT business leaders founded Vietnam Software Association (VINASA), a leading national IT association of software companies in Vietnam. Today VINASA has the membership of 175 leading software companies in Vietnam that represent 60% of software  revenues and 50% of software workforce of Vietnam.
 

Mr. Cong is in charge of management of VINASA from its very first days and is well-known person in Vietnam for his contribution to the success of VINASA and Vietnam software industry. With extensive experience in IT and software industry he helps to form different strategies for software and IT development in Vietnam, including the Japan market strategy that made Vietnam now the 3rd biggest partner of Japan in outsourcing business, and the Vietnam HR strategy that now prepares Vietnam to become the world’s leading supplier of IT HR by 2015. Mr. Cong also gives advices on software development to the government leaders and government relevant bodies.

 

Phil is an acknowledged industry analyst, advisor and blog-master across Outsourcing and IT services, having worked extensively in Europe, North America and Asia across Business Process Outsourcing, IT Outsourcing, and Shared Services transformation areas. During this time, Phil has served as an advisor on over 100 major outsourcing and shared services engagements.

Phil is focused on advising AMR’s buy-side clients on executing best practices when determining outsourcing strategy, vendor selection, post-transaction governance and the intersection between IT and business process strategy within an outsourced business model.  He previously served as BPO Marketplace Leader for Deloitte Consulting, where he led numerous outsourcing and offshoring advisory engagements with FORTUNE 500 enterprises. Prior to Deloitte, Phil served as Vice President, BPO Research & Advisory, for Everest Group, an outsourcing strategy firm, leading a team based in India.
He was named both an "FAO" and "HRO Superstar" by FAOToday and HROToday Magazines for 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009 and was featured as the cover story for the December 2006 issue of FAOToday as one of the outsourcing industry's most prominent advisors.  He was also nominated for “Advisor of the Year” at the FAOSummit 2008.  He speaks regularly at industry conferences, which have included The Conference Board, NASSCOM, IQPC Shared Services, the Sourcing Interests Group and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.  He is also a regular columnist for several industry publications, including Global Services Media, SSON, FAOToday, Information Week and Finance Director Europe.

Philip Peters is CEO, author, researcher, and developer of new business development and executive transformation models. His thinking intersects with creativity, economics and spiritual philosophy. He has added fifteen new words and term to the contemporary lexicon. He is writer and editor of nine global research reports on service globalization outsourcing, two white papers – the TIg Protocol and DigitalGNP™, and edits his company’s NearshoreJournal.com blog.

As chief executive of Zagada Markets, a Business Development Analytics firm. He principally sets the company’s strategy and executes partnership and alliances. Peters has developed mastery in the practice of business development analytics. He is the author of the Tig protocol™ and Digital GNP™ White Papers which systematize business development growth theory as strategic management practice on par with marketing, operations and finance. In his DigitalGNP™ White Paper Peters outlines the new business and economic development model required for accelerated socioeconomic transformation in developing markets. He’s the author of four books.

Prior to his current Chief Executive role with Zagada, Peters was Dow Jones Markets senior Business Development executive managing the Caribbean Basin and the Atlantic markets. He subsequently held positions of Senior Vice president of Business Development at Equity One’s broadband MyshoppingCenter.com unit and was Director of Business Development at MyCity.com, the first U.S. city portal. Peters studied Journalism at the University of the West Indies, Business Management at Florida Memorial University, and Graduate Studies in Jazz Voice at the University of Miami. He was a first year Fellow in the PhD Econometrics program at Carnegie – Mellon University.
 

Raj is currently responsible for planning and coordinating Google’s engineering growth across its 50 plus engineering centers worldwide.

Prior to joining Google, Raj was Vice President of Engineering at Ketera Technologies, a KPCB funded start-up. Ketera Technologies is the leading provider of on-demand spend management and eprocurement solutions.   Raj was also responsible for the creation and oversight of Ketera’s Indian subsidiary in Bangalore which provides development, product management, marketing, support and client services to the parent company.

Prior to Ketera, Raj was founder and CEO of 123Signup, a leading provider of on-demand event registration and membership management services.   Raj continues to be Chairman of the Board of 123Signup.

In 1994 Raj created and managed Informix India Development Center. He pioneered the Build-Operate-Transfer model for this operation. 

Raj was also VP of Engineering at Independence Technologies.  This company brought Tuxedo out of (then) Bell labs and made it a commercial product.  The Company was successfully sold to BEA.

He has worked in various leadership roles at GRiD Systems and Intel

Raj holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay and a Masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is continuing his education in leadership at the Aji Network.

Raj is an active charter member of TiE, and has served on many committees.  He is serving as Director on TiE’s Silicon Valley’s Board for the 2007-2008 term, and was  convener for TiEcon 2007.   Raj is also active in Pan IIT Alumni affairs, and served on the board of Pan IIT Alumni Association (US) in 2002-2003.  He has been recently appointed as Trustee for Foundation for Excellence - Gujarat.   He was a member of the Alliance of Chief Executive and a Charter Member of the World Entrepreneurs Organization Silicon Valley Chapter.   In past Raj has served on executive committees of the Jain Center and Chinmaya Mission San Jose.

Ravi Mohan is the Global Head of Strategy and Initiatives for Citigroup’s ICG Operations division covering over 18,000 employees in over 60 locations.  Ravi and his experienced team set strategy and execute against plan to deliver benefits from revenue enhancement to cost and efficiency saves within ICG Operations. Previously Ravi was the Global Head of FX, Loans and Derivatives Operations at Citigroup.

Ravi joined Citigroup in 1988 and has worked in global, regional and in-country roles in India, Canada, Europe and North America. He has held diverse roles within capital markets managing operations for FX, Loans, Derivatives and various strategy groups.  His expertise includes operations management and technology reengineering, change management, outsourcing, client service and extensive product experience for various capital markets products. Ravi is a key member of the Citi O&T Management team and is a key member of the ICG Operations reporting into Citi O&T.

Ravi holds an engineering degree from India’s Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Management. He is married with 2 sons and lives in Long Island, New York.

Rhoda joined The StrataFusion Group in 2008 as a Strategic Advisor for BPO/ITO projects.  StrataFusion’s focus is to drive value to the bottom line by enabling businesses to focus on core competencies and achieve operational excellence.

Prior to StrataFusion, Rhoda  was with Johnson & Johnson for 14 years.  Based in New Jersey, she built & led the Global Center of Excellence (Professional Services Group), leveraging the talent across the globe, managing multiple ERP implementations while driving global standard data, processes, technology and outsourcing for J&J Consumer.  She was accountable for capturing business value as well as service improvements to ensure continued growth across the company’s key markets.

Before moving back to the United States in 2005, Rhoda was based in Singapore for eight years as the CIO/VP Information Technology for J&J Consumer - Asia Pacific. Outsourcing key IT & Business processes was one of the overall company strategies.

She has won a number of awards and accolades – and in 1996, was named of the Top 100 Women in Computing (USA) by McGraw Hill.  In 2005, she has been acknowledged in the new Cisco publication “Net Impact” for her work in China.  She is also frequent speaker at industry conferences and forums.  Rhoda is a mentor for Woman’s Unlimited.

Robert J. Camastro is Chief Executive Officer and Board Member of VAS Holdings, Inc. dba Virtual-Agent Services (VAS), a worldwide, high quality contact center solutions provider, based in Schaumburg, IL.

In 1999, Robert Camastro co-founded VAS after a highly accomplished 25 year-career in the contact center industry. During that time, Camastro directed Planning and Development for United Airlines where he was responsible for the airline’s worldwide call center network involving over 7,500 agents and 45 domestic and international centers. During his tenure at United, Camastro developed and implemented the Distributed Workforce Concept. This unique business model allows contact center operators to source labor in multiple geographic locations while maintaining the economies of scale of a single center operation. Robert left the airline in 1995 to become Vice President of Call Center Consulting for The Graycon Group, Inc., a leading travel industry consulting firm. Robert earned a bachelor’s degree from Northeastern Illinois University.

Under Mr. Camastro’s leadership, VAS has experienced tremendous growth since its establishment with only 35 employees and one call center. At present day, the company employs over 1,400 people at twenty-one locations in North America.
 
Additionally, Robert is Chairman of the Board for ABJ Center of the Arts, a not-for-profit community services organization providing after school arts programs for at-risk teens in Chicago’s inner city.

Robert is currently an International business consultant for SOFTEX– Brazilian’s National Software Promotion Program. As a dual citizen of Brazil and United States, he has lived 20 years in both countries and 5 in Europe. Has coordinated market development strategies for making Brazil a market and investments destination for several governmental agencies such as:  US Department of Commerce,   Enterprise Ireland, ICEP – Portugal,  CETRA – Taiwan and  KIPPA  – South Korea. He has given more than 250 presentations, in Brazil, United States, Europe and the Far East on how to penetrate international markets and how to address cultural diversity in the implementation of market entry strategies.

Roxanna Wall is Executive Director, Global Outsourcing & Offshoring at UBS AG.   She leads a team responsible for outsourcing and offshoring strategy supporting Group Shared Services and the Investment Bank.

Before joining in UBS, Roxanna spent five years at American Express, where she held multiple leadership roles finance, change management and new business development.  As Vice President in Finance Operations & Business Transformation, Roxanna spear-headed the company's strategy to monetize its finance shared services assets. She also led development and commercialization of new BPO and procure-to-pay offerings for the commercial market.

Prior to joining American Express, Roxanna held leadership roles in strategic initiatives, business development, marketing and process excellence and change management with firms in corporate consulting, global investment banking, IT and engineering software.  She was also co-founder of a technology venture development start-up.

Roxanna has an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics from the University of Maryland.

 

Russ Finney has spent fourteen years as the Vice President of the US operations of Tokyo Electron, one of the world's largest semiconductor production equipment manufacturers supporting chip makers in Asia, Europe, and the US. In 2006, he was named “Austin IT Executive of the Year” by his peers at the annual Innotech technology conference. Russ currently serves on the high tech advisory board of the Austin Chamber of Commerce’s AusTech Alliance. In the past, he served on the National Board of Directors of AITP, and was president of both the Houston and Austin AITP Chapters. Before TEL, Russ was an IT Consultant with Ernst & Young. Russ is a graduate of Oklahoma State University.

Dr. Sasi Pillay serves as the Chief Information Officer at the NASA Glenn Research Center.  He is responsible for advocating, managing, and implementing Information Technology investments and infrastructure.  His responsibilities include managing administrative telecommunications, desktop computing, administrative applications, computer graphics and visualization, computer modeling and simulation, and high-end computing and networking.  Under his leadership, NASA Glenn serves as lead for the development of Agency-wide standards and architecture for desktop systems and servers.

Dr. Pillay is the recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal, Outstanding Leadership Medal, and Presidential Rank Award recognizing him as a Meritorious Executive in the U.S. federal government.  He was recognized as the 2008 Northeast Ohio Software Association’s CIO of the Year.

Dr. Pillay received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University, and a Master’s degree in Management of Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Seth is the founder of Eleven Canterbury LLC, a firm that partners with senior financial services executives to develop business for companies with innovative products and services.

Prior to founding Eleven Canterbury, Seth spent 24 years as a banker before retiring from the Group Managing Board of UBS AG in October 2008.

While at UBS, Seth founded and headed Group Offshoring, the global business unit that built and ran UBS's offshore operations in India and Poland and facilitated offshore outsourcing arrangements with third parties. UBS recently announced the sale of the India Service Center to Cognizant.

Prior to Group Offshoring, Seth held several sales management roles in UBS Investment Bank's Foreign Exchange unit including Head of Sales for the Americas (based in NY), Head of Sales for Asia Pacific (based in Singapore) and Global Head of Bank Marketing (based in London). 
 
Seth holds a BA in Economics from Brandeis University and is a member of the Dean’s Global Business Council at the Brandeis International Business School.   He, his wife Dorie and his children hail from Upper Saddle River, NJ.

Shailendra Kumar is Senior Director at GMAC Financial Services responsible for Business Process Outsourcing and Offshoring.  He is responsible for establishing GMAC’s strategy, identifying opportunities for O&O within different business units and then transitioning that work to onshore or offshore vendors.  Prior to this role, he was Director of Offshoring and Outsourcing at Hewlett Packard Company.  During this time he started an HP owned offshore center in India and grew it to 650 FTEs (full time equivalent). He also managed a pool of offshore vendors who provided another 2000 FTE for HP projects.

Shailendra brings a unique blend of expertise both as a client manager who managed strategy and implementation of offshoring and outsourcing initiative for a $27B business group within Hewlett Packard Company and also as a hands-on manager who started and managed a large offshore center in India between 2005 and 2007.  

Shailendra has an MBA from Columbia Business School and an undergraduate degree in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology.
 

Shameem Ahsan is Vice President & Board member of BASIS, the national association for Software and IT enabled services companies of Bangladesh. Shameem has received “Best Young Entrepreneur of Bangladesh” award from the Prime Minister of Bangladesh for his company’s outstanding performance. Shameem has lectured at many international conferences and seminars organized by Sweden IT Industry Association, Danish Federation of Small & Medium Enterprises, Denmark IT Industry Association, Syntens Netherlands, Global Sourcing Forum NY, Paris Chamber of Commerce, University of Bremen, Aalborg University, Denmark, UK Trade & Investment etc. He is also the Founder & CEO of eGeneration, one of the leading Software services companies based in Bangladesh. Shameem is a graduate from University of Central Oklahoma, USA.

Sharon is Vice President of Amazon Mechanical Turk, an online platform for outsourcing work. In this role, she works with organizations of all sizes to leverage technology and the “crowd” on the internet to get work done faster and at lower cost.   She has 20+ years of experience developing and managing innovative high-technology products and businesses with over 15 years focused on Internet technologies. Prior to joining Amazon Mechanical Turk, Sharon served as Vice President of Product Management and Business Development at Presto Services, a Kleiner Perkins funded startup.   Preceding Presto, she created and ran businesses at Yahoo!, Microsoft and Kodak.  

Mr. Rathod leads the IT Outsourcing initiative of The McGraw-Hill Companies, by defining a structured strategy for the organization, in a multi-sourced IT environment.  Since 2004 Mr. Rathod has helped the corporation in evaluating and determining the most cost-effective and efficient means of sourcing, acquiring and delivering IT services.

Prior to joining The McGraw-Hill Companies, Mr. Rathod worked with Tier 1 and mid-tier IT organizations providing products and services using global delivery models. Mr. Rathod has been in the IT industry for 19 years, and holds an undergraduate degree in accounting, and an MBA, both from the University of Bombay.

Srini Krishnamurthy heads the Global Sourcing function at a large diversified financial services organization.  The scope of his responsibilities include outsourcing and offshoring programs across the enterprise multiple lines of business for IT, BPO and back office.
Srini had previously managed vendors for Capital One's offshore customer service program (across India, Philippines and Costa Rica.) At Capital One, he was in multiple leadership roles in the company's outsourcing and offshoring efforts.  He helped the company identify sourcing opportunities, led sourcing strategy development and implementation for multiple large, complex projects and institutionalized vendor governance programs.  He also led the sourcing efforts for Capital One's IT offshore program.

Prior to joining Capital One, Srini spent a couple of years at Bain in their Chicago office, as a member of teams advising clients on profit improvement, organization redesign and market entry strategies.

Srini also has significant sales and marketing experience in Asia (India, Singapore and Japan) and Africa with a Japanese equipment manufacturer and in his last role with them was regional sales manager for South Asia and Africa.

Srini has a MBA from the Harvard Business School in General Management. He also earned a Masters Degree in Economics and International Business from a leading institution in India.

Mr. Lepeak is a Managing Director of Global Research at EquaTerra, the leading global sourcing advisory services firm, and at EquaSiis, an EquaTerra company providing enterprise software and service provider services.  Mr. Lepeak has followed the business and IT services and IT marketplaces for more than 20 years. He is a noted commentator and frequent speaker on business and IT services, business process and IT outsourcing, globalization, and enterprise IT applications and systems.

Prior to joining EquaTerra Mr. Lepeak spent eight years at the META Group, a market research and advisory services firm, as Vice President and Research Lead for the business and IT services marketplaces He was also an executive at Elance and Ajunto. From 1986 through 1994 Mr. Lepeak held various management positions in finance & accounting, operations and IT in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, banking and transportation industries. He holds a degree from the University of Michigan.

Sushma Rajagopalan is a global business leader with more than 20 years of experience in IT services, outsourcing and technology business. Her career has been an eclectic mix of corporate and entrepreneurial ventures.  She recently re-entered the IT industry as a Chief Strategy Officer after spending 5 years in building her own growth consulting and M&A advisory firm.  In her current capacity as the Head of Global Strategy and Corporate Development at L&T Infotech, she is responsible for positioning the company for continued growth and the associated  strategic initiatives M&A, Sales and Marketing Operations and Corporate development.

Prior to joining L&T Infotech, she was the Chief Strategy Officer of Zensar Technologies and the CEO of Zensar ThoughtDigital, a subsidiary of Zensar in New York. Her other past positions include Co-Founder and General Partner of Threshold Partners, CEO of Carnegie Speech – a spin off from Carnegie Mellon University,  Head of Global consulting and training at RedHat, President of Planning Technologies (an infrastructure services firm), a Senior Management Executive and Officer of iGate, and a variety of senior management positions in Citibank India and CMC.

Sushma holds an M.A in Personnel Management from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University with a focus in entrepreneurship and strategy. She is also a Certified M&A Advisor.  She has taught business courses at Penn State University.

Sushma has been living in the United States for over 17 years and she currently lives in Devon, Pennsylvania – a suburb of Philadelphia and is in Mumbai every other month.

She is passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and is a co-founder of America’s first minority angel investor network.
 

Tarek El-Sadany is Advisor to the Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt for technology policies. He has over 23 years of experience in the technology industry and has held numerous executive management and leadership positions.

Before joining the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Dr. El-Sadany was chief technology officer and senior vice president of operations at Iris Financial Solutions, a leading provider of front- and middle-office solutions for tier-one global institutions. In this role he was responsible for engineering and development, product management and business development, client solutions and professional services, support, and training. Prior to Iris, Dr. El-Sadany was vice president, global product support for Oracle Corporation, managing a $5 billion business with more than 4,000 employees in 55 countries serving more than 240,000 enterprise customers in 19 different languages. Under his leadership, Oracle Product Support margins grew by over $400 million year on year by streamlining operations and processes through globalization, automation, consolidation and offshore manufacturing.

Before joining Oracle Corporation, Dr. El-Sadany founded Datacme Corporation, a visionary Silicon Valley startup offering products that automate the creation and building of J2EE mission-critical applications, where he was chairman and CEO. Prior to this, he was senior vice president of kernel and server technologies at TenFold Corporation, where he worked for over seven years. Dr. El-Sadany helped TenFold Corporation grow from a five-employee startup to a 1,200-employee public company with a market cap of over $2 billion. Before TenFold, Dr. El-Sadany spent over five years in various leadership positions at IBM research centers.

Dr. El-Sadany has also worked in the field of software engineering at various international companies. He serves on the board of directors of SafeHarbor Technology Corporation and the board of advisers of several private technology companies and nonprofit organizations. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, panels, conferences and colloquia.

Dr. El-Sadany holds a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering from the University of Louisville, USA, and Master’s degrees in computer science and electrical engineering.

Tina is vice president, human resource global operations, for Best Buy, a Fortune 100 company and North America’s No. 1 specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and major appliances.  She is responsible for creating and executing strategies to ensure human resource excellence to support the financial growth goals of the company.

Decker graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Texas at Dallas majoring in Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience.  She has a Masters Degree in psychology and also received her Doctorate (PsyD) in Clinical Psychology from Florida Institute of Technology.

Tom Hoffman is the former Editor-at-Large who has spent more than two decades covering IT management issues at Fortune 2000 organizations. Until recently, Hoffman was a National Correspondent at Computerworld where he was responsible for driving the publication's IT management coverage, including business alignment, budgeting, staffing, careers and IT governance. Hoffman has written for a variety of media outlets, including CIOZone.com, CFO Magazine, Securities Industry News, BizTech Magazine, InformationWeek, VARBusiness, Inform and IntellectualCapital.com. Over his career, Hoffman has won a number of editorial awards from the Computer Press Association and the U.S. Business Press Editors Association. A frequent speaker and conference moderator, Hoffman has been interviewed on IT management topics by CNN, ABC News and The Wall St. Journal.

Tsvi Gal was a managing director and Chief Technology Officer for Deutsche Bank Capital Markets (Asset Management and Investment Banking).

Tsvi is responsible for constructing an industry leading, state of the art, evolutionary architecture which has competitively positioned both the buy side (Asset Management) and sell side (Investment Banking) for future growth through innovation, processing scale and efficiency.

Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Tsvi was Chief Information Officer at Time Warner Music Group (WMG). Under Tsvi’s leadership, WMG introduced the mobile ring tones to the USA and was the first partner of Apple’s iTune/iPod drive. Among his accomplishments was the transformation of WMG’s web assets into a full fledge eCommerce site with over 14 million unique users.

From 1999 to 2002, Tsvi was President & Chief Operating Officer of AT&T’s ATT.COM. In this position he was responsible for AT&T’s E*Business and E*Commerce activities. His efforts in this area led to the revitalization of AT&T’s image and grew the revenue of the group threefold to $390M per annum, enjoying a net profit of $95M. Tsvi also led the consolidation of AT&T data centers from seventeen to six as well as leading the global sourcing and vendor management effort for all of AT&T – resulting in a net savings of $145M per annum.

Starting his IT career in the Israeli army in 1976, Tsvi also served in executive management roles as CIO & CTO at Merrill Lynch (heading global infrastructure), Wells Fargo (heading investment banking, global infrastructure and the on-line bank), ABN AMRO Bank (CIO of North America) and Bank of America (CTO and head of Infrastructure and Capital Markets).

From 1996 to 2001 Tsvi served on the USA technology delegation to the G7 conference of leading economy nations. He is credited with developing the first Internet bank while at Wells Fargo Bank and initiating the first major brokerage on-line trading system at Merrill Lynch. As a result of these achievements and others, in 2001, he was presented with the Einstein Award for achievements in Science and Technology by the State of Israel President, Moshe Katzav.

Tsvi is a Computer Science graduate of Rutgers University and holds an MBA form Golden Gate University. He is the author of Distributed Computing Management and serves on the Board of Directors at Expand, Cardean University, MobileSec and Dati and as an advisor to Rutgers University president.

Liberal MLA Victor Éric Boudreau was elected to represent the constituency of Shediac–Cap-Pelé in the 55th Legislature in a by-election held on October 4, 2004. He was a member of the following standing committees: Standing Committee on Crown Corporations and Standing Committee on Estimates. He was a member of the Select Committee on Health Care. As a member of the official opposition, he was critic for areas of interests relating to health and wellness.

He was re-elected in the provincial election held September 18, 2006. On October 3, 2006 he was sworn in as a member of the Executive Council and appointed Minister of Finance, Minister of Local Government (he served in this capacity until October 31, 2007), Minister Responsible for the New Brunswick Liquor Corporation, the New Brunswick Investment Management Corporation and the Lotteries Commission of New Brunswick (now the New Brunswick Lotteries and Gaming Corporation). He is a member of the Legislative Administration Committee. In January 2008 he assumed responsibility for the Regional Development Corporation.

Victor Boudreau was named Minister of Business New Brunswick, Minister responsible for Service New Brunswick; Minister responsible for the Population Growth Secretariat; Minister responsible for Communications New Brunswick; Minister responsible for the Regional Development Corporation; and Minister responsible for Red Tape Reduction June 22, 2009. He remains Minister responsible for the Regional Development Corporation.

Formerly the manager of the Village of Cap-Pelé, he served as executive assistant to Bernard Richard during his tenure as Minister in the provincial Cabinet (1995-1999). He was also riding assistant to Senator Fernand Robichaud while the latter was Secretary of State in the federal Cabinet (1993-1995).

He is a graduate of Louis-J.-Robichaud High School (1988) and holds a Bachelors Degree in Social Sciences (major in Political Science and minor in Business Administration) from the Université de Moncton (1992).

Over the years he has been involved with the Shediac Lions Club, Beauséjour Family Crisis Resource Centre, Cap-Pelé Regional Chamber of Commerce, Cap-Pelé Watershed Association and Hospice Shediac.

Mr. Boudreau lives in Shediac with his wife, Michelle Arsenault, and their two daughters, Dominique and Gabrielle.