Speakers

• Bill Blaylock
  VP & Senior Tax Counsel Texas Instruments Incorporated
  
  

  Since 1973, Bill Blaylock has had various positions and responsibilities for all aspects of taxation and tax administration for Texas Instruments Inc., including state, federal and international tax compliance, tax accounting, audits and litigation, advice/planning on transactions, site selection analysis and public policy issues at the state and federal level.

  Blaylock was formerly a member of the Governor's Texas Tax Reform Commission as well as a member of the Tax Executives Institute. He has also held several tax committee/task force memberships with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and was previously chair of the Electronics Industry Roundtable and chair of the Tax Council II of the Manufacturer's Alliance. He is currently chairman of the Tax Committee, Semiconductor Industry Association. Blaylock has been a presenter for numerous continuing education programs on taxation for corporate tax organizations, AICPA, Tax Section of the Dallas Bar and for IRS agents and appeals officers. Blaylock was also formerly a reviewer for IRS Practice & Procedure, published by Bureau of National Affairs and was twice voted as one of the Ten Most Admired North American Tax Directors in a peer survey by International Tax Review magazine.

• Ron Domanico
  SVP & CFO HD Supply Inc.
  
  

  Ronald Domanico serves as senior vice president and chief financial officer for HD Supply. He joined HD Supply from Caraustar Industries, Inc. a leading manufacturer of recycled paperboard and converter of paperboard products, where he served as vice president and chief financial officer since 2002.
  Prior to joining Caraustar, Domanico was executive vice president and chief financial officer at AHL Services, Inc. From 1981 to 2000, he worked at Kraft Foods and Nabisco in progressively senior roles of increasing responsibility in financial management, operations, planning and business development. Domanico’s last 11 years at Kraft and Nabisco, including seven years living abroad, were in chief financial officer positions. When he left the company, he was senior vice president and CFO for Nabisco International and CEO for Nabisco Asia.
  Domanico was named to the Caraustar board of directors in 2006. He is also a board member of the Georgia Council on Economic Education, The Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University, the Georgia Amateur Wrestling Association and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes - Wrestling.
  Domanico holds an MBA with a concentration in finance from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

• Dave Drillock
  VP & CFO Cytec Industries Inc.
  
  

  Dave Drillock is responsible for Cytec’s worldwide accounting, tax and treasury functions as well as for investor relations. Drillock began his career at American Cyanamid Company in 1978 within the accounting organization. In 1986, he was appointed controller of Applied Solar Energy Corporation, a publicly held company, seventy-percent owned by Cyanamid. He became CFO for the Applied Solar Energy Corporation in 1988, and then was appointed as controller of American Cyanamid’s Industrial Performance Products Division in 1990, and he was named controller of Cytec in 1993. Drillock became a vice president in 2002, and in 2007 was appointed vice president of finance and CFO.

• Danny Ferry
  President of Basketball Operations & General Manager Atlanta Hawks
  
  

  Danny Ferry joins the Atlanta Hawks with 22 years of NBA experience as both a player and front office executive. In his first season with the Atlanta Hawks as president of basketball operations and general manager, Ferry is responsible for basketball operations, including coaching, player personnel, contract negotiations and salary cap management.

  Ferry was previously with the San Antonio Spurs serving as the team’s vice president of basketball operations from 2010-2012. In this position, he oversaw the team’s player personnel, coaching, officiating, on-court policy and procedures, as well as scheduling. Prior to the Spurs, Ferry held the role of General Manager for the Cleveland Cavaliers from 2005-2010, where the Cavaliers posted a 272-138 record, enjoyed the NBA’s best regular season record in both 2008—09 and 2009—10 and advanced to the 2007 NBA Finals, marking the franchise’s first, and only, trip to the NBA Finals.

  Ferry’s NBA career included playing for the San Antonio Spurs (2000-2003) and the Cleveland Cavaliers (1990-2000). In his 13-year NBA career, Ferry averaged 7.0 points and 2.8 rebounds in 917 career games. Shortly after winning an NBA Championship with and retiring as a player for the San Antonio Spurs in 2003, Ferry began his NBA front office career with the Spurs as director of basketball operations where he remained until 2005.

  He played four seasons at Duke (1985-1989) where he earned his degree in political science. He was named a First Team All-American as both a junior and a senior, received the 1989 Naismith Award after averaging 22.6 points, 7.4 rebounds and 4.7 assists and was inducted into the Duke Sports Hall of Fame in September of 2004.

  Ferry is a board member for Playing for Peace, a non-profit organization that uses basketball to unite and educate kids from around the world.

• Evan Hart
  SVP & CFO Mueller Water Products, Inc.
  
  

  Evan Hart has served as SVP and CFO of Mueller Water Products since 2008. He joined the company in 2006 as vice president of financial planning and analysis and was promoted to controller in 2007. Previously, Hart had been vice president, controller and treasurer for Unisource Worldwide, Inc. for four years. Prior to that he had been with Georgia-Pacific Corporation for ten years where he served as division controller, senior manager of financial reporting and internal audit supervisor. Hart began his career with Price Waterhouse where he served audit clients in the manufacturing health care industries. Hart holds a B.S. in accounting and economics from Birmingham-Southern College and is a C.P.A.

• Michael Healy
  VP, Cloud Computing IBM
  
  

  Michael Healy is responsible for IBM’s North America cloud computing growth initiative. Previously, Healy was responsible for integrated services business development and business analytics for the IBM east integrated management team. His solid business and financial expertise coupled with his deep technical knowledge of systems architecture, infrastructure design and software development allow him to bring unique value to IBM’s clients. Healy brings more than15 years of consulting and operational experience to his position as at IBM. He has expertise in a number of industries including financial services, communications, public, and distribution. Healy has held several assignments inside IBM including the general manager of IBM’s customer care business process outsourcing business, the vice president of IBM’s communication sector and public sector for business process outsourcing. He joined IBM from Mainspring. Prior to Mainspring, Healy worked for Ernst & Young LLP’s center for technology enablement integrating large-scale solutions.

• Carrie Jennison
  CFO Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of GA, Inc.
  
  

  Carrie Jennison is the chief financial officer for Kaiser Permanente of Georgia, a non-profit health plan with an integrated health care delivery system that serves over 240,000 members in 31 counties in Metro Atlanta and Athens.

  Prior to joining the Georgia team in 2011, Jennison was vice president of financial planning for Kaiser Permanente’s national offices in California. She has been with Kaiser Permanente since 2009.

  Jennison began her health care career in 1989 with Group Health Cooperative, a large non-profit health plan based in Seattle that provides integrated care and coverage similar to the Kaiser Permanente model. During her 18 years with group health cooperative she held a variety of roles, including assistant treasurer, executive director of delivery system finance and acting chief financial officer.

  Jennison holds a BBA from the University of Washington and an MBA from Seattle University. She is active in the Atlanta community and serves on the boards of the Piedmont Park Conservancy and Central Atlanta Progress.

• Bruce Levenson
  Owner Atlanta Hawks
  
  

  Bruce Levenson is an owner and the governor of the Atlanta Hawks, and an owner of the operating rights to Philips Arena. He was also an owner and governor of the Atlanta Thrashers until its sale in 2011. The teams and arena were purchased by Levenson and his partners in 2004. In the 1990s, Levenson also owned interests in the Washington Wizards, Washington Capitals and Verizon Center. He founded United Communications Group (UCG), a portfolio of professional business information companies, in 1977. UCG provides specialized information to more than two million clients in numerous business sectors, including healthcare, technology, energy, telecommunications, and financial services.

  Levenson is a graduate of Washington University and American University's law school. He is on the board of publicly-traded TechTarget and has served on the board of the Specialized Information Industry Association and the Community Foundation of Washington, DC. He is past-president of the ‘I Have a Dream’ Foundation of Washington and vice-chairman of Hoop Dreams.

• Mike McCracken
  Co-Chair CFO Council Georgia State University
  
  

  Mike McCracken has founded many companies including an Internet services provider, which sold in the late 1990s for several million dollars, and Tatum LLC, which became the first national professional CFO firm with annual sales of $200M and merged in 2010 with a $2B NYSE registrant.

  In 2010, McCracken launched McCracken Alliance, LLC, focused on using business-to-business networks to support companies undergoing change. One such alliance is One2World LLC, which employs brand management techniques to integrate social media with a company's performance management system.

  Earlier in his career, McCracken was a partner with Ernst & Young LLP in New York, where he oversaw the firm's initiative to develop an intelligence network among its top 200 multinational clients. McCracken served in regional, national and international positions at E&Y and his clients included manufacturers, high-tech companies, distributors, construction, real estate and health care. He served as coordinating partner on the team that designed the spin-off of Eastman Chemical Company from Eastman Kodak.

  He is chairman of the board of Georgia State University's CFO Council and chairman of the board of advisors for GSU's executive MS finance program. He often addresses university and community groups on topics of entrepreneurship, professional services marketing and financial services.

• Tim McGee
  Director of Macro Strategy & Research U.S. Trust, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
  
  

  Tim McGee is director of macro strategy & research at U.S.Trust, Bank America Private Wealth Management, where he serves on the investment strategy committee. Previously, he was chief economist at U.S. Trust. In his new capacity he manages a team that researches global economic trends and turns them into strategies for investment professionals and high net worth clients. Prior to joining U.S. Trust, McGee was a strategist and economist with UFJ and Tokai Banks. He is well known in Japan for his regular market column in the Nikkei Financial Daily. Over the years, he has been recognized by Bloomberg news, Business Week, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal for outstanding forecast accuracy, including being ranked the number one forecaster several times. He also spent three years at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and one year as a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies.

  McGee received his B.S. from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. He is a member of several economic and banking associations and committees.

• Alfred Mettler
  CFO Council & Clinical Associate Professor Georgia State University
  
  

  Alfred Mettler joined GSU in 1998. Previously he held positions at the Swiss Banking Institute at the University of Zurich, Switzerland; Thunderbird at the Garvin School of International Management; and at New York University. Mettler has won several teaching awards, including the faculty recognition award for teaching and the students’ Crystal Apple award for excellence in teaching at Georgia State University. His research focuses on equity/debt financing of corporations, enterprise risk management applications and the management of credit risk exposures.

  Mettler is active in several executive education programs in Europe and the U.S., and has consulted for numerous organizations including UBS, Morgan Stanley, Swiss Bank Corp., Nestle, Lucent and others.

• Rich Mills
  Partner & SE Divestiture Advisory Services Leader Ernst & Young LLP
  
  

  Rich Mills has provided transaction advisory services for 14 years and has nearly 18 years of public accounting experience. His divestiture experience includes providing carve-out financial statement preparation assistance and diligence support on a $4.1B sale of a consumer products segment in 45 countries; providing divestiture diligence support for a multi-billion dollar sale of a global industrial products manufacturer and for the $850M sale of a multi-entity industrial products company in Mexico; advising on carve-out accounting matters related to spinning off a segment of a services company; and advising on the carve-out of selected products in Brazil for contribution in a joint venture.

• Kripa Rajshekhar
  Principal, Transaction Advisory Services Ernst & Young LLP
  
  

  As a principal in the commercial advisory services practice, Kripa Rajshekhar focuses on M&A due diligence advisory and inorganic strategy development, including portfolio optimization and capital allocation. Over the past 15 years, he has assisted more than 150 private equity and strategic clients across industries, including technology, heavy engineering and industrial products. Rajshekhar’s experience spans strategic cross-border market assessments, portfolio and business plan reviews, and non-core asset monetization. He has helped executive teams and boards, with revenues of $500M to $60B, develop robust portfolio management and inorganic strategies to identify capital liberation and reallocation opportunities.

• Cy Wakeman
  Author & Thought Leader Author
  
  

  Cy Wakeman is a dynamic, well-respected national keynote speaker with an uncanny ability to quickly diagnose group interplay and tailor strategies to exactly fit the goals of the client organization. She is a well-known thought leader and is featured as an expert blogger for FastCompany.com. She is also a contributing author or featured expert to a variety of magazines, newspapers and online publications including Pink Magazine, Women’s Health and the New York Post. Her book, “Reality-Based Leadership,” is receiving rave reviews across the nation.

  Wakeman has a unique background that combines four successful business start-ups with 18 years working and consulting in a variety of arenas including manufacturing, government, high-tech and healthcare. With expertise in leadership and change management principles, she has ensured the business readiness for multimillion-dollar ERP and IT project implementations. She created management development programs, provided executive coaching and conducted business process re-engineering.

  Wakeman holds a bachelor’s degree in political science with an emphasis in international relations and a degree in social work. She also received an M.S. in health administration with an emphasis on organizational development.