Speakers

• Sandy Carter
  VP, Social Business & Collaboration Solutions Sales & Evangelism IBM
  
  

  Sandy Carter is a recognized leader in social business and one of the most influential women in Web 2.0 technology. In her current role at IBM, she is responsible for setting the direction for IBM’s social business initiative, a $100B market opportunity.

  Previously, as VP Business Partner Programs, she helped grow IBM’s worldwide software business partner program to the leadership position it holds today. In 2010 and 2009 Everything Channels CRN magazine named her one of the most powerful 100 women in channels.

  She was recognized in 2009 as 'Brand Leader of the Year' by World Brand Congress and as one of the top 10 women in social media by Altimeter Group. She is the author of two bestselling books: The New Language of Marketing 2.0: Social Media and The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0. Her new book, entitled Get Bold: Creating a Bold Social Media AGENDA for Your Business is due out in Fall 2011.

  Carter holds an M.B.A. from Harvard and a B.S. in Math and Computer Science from Duke University.

• Ashley Ferguson
  Manager, IT Risk Management Energen
  
  

  Ashley Ferguson is the Manager of IT Risk Management at Energen. In 2009, she was hired to revitalize the business continuity program and ensure the corporation’s pandemic preparedness. As a part of that effort, she authored the Pandemic/Workforce Shortage Enterprise Response Plan for the company. She was recently one of 12 individuals selected to participate in the first class of Energen’s leadership development initiative that is actively developing measurements for the organizational redesign of one of Energen’s subsidiaries.

  Previously, Ferguson was the VP, Manager of Business Continuity at BBVA Compass where she was responsible for the business continuity program. Prior to that, she was an IT Auditor and Controls Specialist for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young. She is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and Certified in Risk & Information Systems Control (CRISC).

  Ferguson is involved with numerous community and professional organizations. She served on the Alabama Department of Public Health Advisory Council where she advised the ADPH on pandemic and other public health related issues as they relate to the private and public sector. As a result of her leadership and service, she was selected to be a member of the Birmingham MS Leadership Class of 2011 and received the 2011 ‘Golden Leadership Award’.

  She received a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Alabama and an M.B.A. with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Tennessee Technological University.

• Chris Filandro
  VP & CIO Meritage Homes Corporation
  
  

  As VP and CIO of Meritage Homes, Chris Filandro is responsible for delivering a comprehensive set of solutions to manage the homebuilding operations and financial management of the company. He is also responsible for managing the operations and strategic direction for information services. Filandro has been with Meritage Homes since 2004 where he has helped transform the IT group through significant changes in the way the organization manages technology.

  Filandro drives the strategic efforts at Meritage Homes to complete the comprehensive set of ERP tools including financial management, homebuilding operations management, sales contract management, lead and prospect management, design center options management, and BI. These solutions are delivered through a host of complimentary application sets all integrated to deliver the maximum benefit to the organization while maintaining strong cost effectiveness.

  Filandro holds an M.B.A. in Finance and a B.S. in Business from Western International University where he graduated cum laude.

• Jerry Fralick
  CIO State of North Carolina
  
  

  Jerry Fralick was named State CIO by Governor Bev Perdue in 2009. He retired from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as CIO for the Office of Justice Programs. During his 13 years of service at the Justice Department, he held senior executive IT management positions in the Antitrust Division, the FBI and the Justice Management Division. While at DOJ, he served as the first Chairperson for the Office of Management and Budget’s Grants Executive Board, which oversaw all grant making activities for the 26 federal grant-making agencies.

  Fralick also served at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as Director of the Office of Information Services and Deputy CIO at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF). He led the effort at HHS to consolidate 36 independent grants systems at ACF into a single application. The resulting GATES system is today the largest grant system in the federal government. Fralick was one of 15 of the 63,000 HHS employees to receive the department’s ‘Distinguished Service Award’ in 2004. He also owned a private IT consulting business that provided marketing support services to IT companies during his brief retirement from the federal government.

  Fralick earned a Master’s degree from American University, with a double major in Computer Science and Information Technology Management. He also holds a B.S. in Economics from LeMoyne College. Fralick is a Vietnam veteran who served in the U.S. Army Artillery.

• Joshua Jewett
  SVP & CIO Family Dollar Stores, Inc.
  
  

  Joshua Jewett has strategic and operational responsibility for all aspects of IT for this $8B national discount retailer. He is also responsible for assuring the IT department and its investments in technology align with, support and deliver the company’s vision to be the best small-format convenience and value retailer serving the needs of families in our neighborhoods.

  While in this capacity, Jewett has expanded the capacity of the IT function through multinational, strategic partnerships designed to augment both resources and skills, provide cost and process efficiencies through a global delivery model, and deliver several significant technological achievements for the company. He and his team have overseen the design, development and implementation of a new store systems architecture for all 6,600 plus retail locations and the variety of other solutions required to enable the chain to augment its store count and revenue considerably.

  Prior to his employment by Family Dollar Stores, Inc., Jewett served as Senior Director for Answerthink, Inc., an international management consulting firm. In a 10-year consulting career, Jewett’s extensive retail experience also includes the development and management of retail operations and information system implementations for a variety of national and international retail organizations.

  Jewett earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College.

• Paul Johnson
  EVP & CIO BB&T Corporation
  
  

  Paul Johnson has more than 30 years of IT experience in the financial services sector. His responsibilities have spanned the spectrum from entry-level programmer to CIO. His background includes developing, supporting and managing mission-critical systems; coordinating merger and conversion activities; and providing project management for large infrastructure initiatives. He has held senior management positions (spanning more than 18 years) with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Bank of America and BB&T Corporation. Johnson became BB&T’s first CIO in 2001. His primary areas of responsibility include managing the IT services organization which consists of IT business services, IT risk management, IT operations, IT organization strategy, BB&T project office, IT strategic planning & optimization, and IT application & data services. In addition, he has overall IT governance responsibilities for BB&T Corporation.

  Johnson is a graduate of the University of South Carolina with concentrations in Math and Computer Science.

• Kap Kim
  SVP & CIO CommScope, Inc.
  
  

  Kap Kim is CommScope’s SVP and CIO. He joined CommScope in 2000 as VP and CIO. His initial effort was on development of corporate IT function and capability, and strategy development and alignment with the business. Kim spent most of his time supporting CommScope’s growth strategy by managing business integrations and select divestitures.

  Prior to joining CommScope, Kim was employed with Wyeth Pharmaceutical from 1995 — 2000, International Specialty Products from 1993 — 1995 and Hewlett Packard from 1981 — 1993, holding progressively increased responsibilities in IT disciplines.

  Kim graduated from Rutgers University with a B.A. in Information Processing Systems and received an M.S. in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology.

• Kevin McGinnis
  VP, Product Platforms Sprint
  
  

  Kevin McGinnis is VP of Product Platforms within the Product and Technology Development organization at Sprint. He is responsible for developing platforms and product lines that support customer choice and service enablement. Sprint is recognized in the telecom industry for its leadership in supporting an open ecosystem, with products including Sprint ID, Google Voice and the Sprint Services Framework and the work of McGinnis and his team is at the heart of Sprint’s open initiative. In addition to mobile commerce, personalization, mobile Internet and voice product management, he is responsible for the Sprint Application Developer Program.

  During the past 17 years at Sprint, McGinnis has managed numerous emerging product lines in the wireless, long distance, Internet and broadband divisions. He has held a number of management positions in database management, marketing, sales and customer service. McGinnis holds a Bachelor’s degree in General Studies from the University of Kansas.

• Onyeka Nchege
  VP & CIO Coca- Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated
  
  

  Onyeka Nchege is the SVP and CIO at Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated (CCBCC), the largest independent Coca-Cola bottler in the United States. For the past three years he has had strategic and operational responsibility for developing the IT strategy and management of IT platforms and technical infrastructure at CCBCC.

  Nchege joined the CCBCC IT organization in 2003 and was accountable for application development of business delivery solutions, customer management systems, and Workflow applications. In 2006, Nchege assumed leadership of the IT Infrastructure organization where he was responsible for leadership and management of the IT platforms, services, system health, projects and activities of the overall technical infrastructure for CCBCC.

  Nchege began his career working for Wachovia, as a technical business analyst designing and implementing eCommerce solutions. He spent seven years in the banking industry working for Wachovia, Fleet Mortgage Group and Check Free Corporation. He then transitioned to the manufacturing industry where he provided strategic leadership to technical application software developers and business functional professionals in a multi-platform/multi-location environment for Pillowtex Corporation.

  A graduate of the Georgia State University J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Nchege currently serves on the Board of Directors for Charlotte NPower, Advisory Board for UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics, and Bethel Baptist Church Ministries.

• Gail M. Roper
  Chief Information & Community Relations Officer City of Raleigh
  
  

  Gail M. Roper has more than 28 years experience in the technology industry for both the public and private sectors. As the first Chief Information and Community Relations Officer for Raleigh — a city that Forbes magazine ranked as ‘America's Most Wired City’ in 2010 — Roper strategically aligns technology solutions for one of the fastest growing cities in the nation. Prior to joining the City of Raleigh, Roper served as CIO for the City of Austin, TX and the City of Kansas City, MO.

  Roper has received distinguished awards in the area of technology including the 'Distinguished Professional of the Year’ and the ‘Administrator of the Year’ awards from the American Association of Public Administrators. She was honored to receive the 2006 ‘Black Family Technology Present Day Technology Leader’ award, the ‘Technology Leadership’ award from the Public Technology Institute, the ‘In the Arena’ award from the Center for Digital Government, and the Government Technology ‘Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers’ award. She has also been noted as one of the top women CIO leaders in the nation.

  Roper is affiliated with various technology organizations that focus on providing technology solutions for community based initiatives. She is on the board of directors for Southeast Raleigh Assembly, Inc. and is currently the Chair for the Public Technology Institute’s Telecommunication Information Technology Council. Roper is a 2010 Public Technology Institute Fellow, recognizing her leadership and commitment to local government service.

• Randy Senn
  CIO SCANA Corporation
  
  

  Randy Senn is the CIO for SCANA Corporation where he is responsible for overseeing the technology services and strategies. He has been employed by SCANA for 31 years. He initially assumed his current responsibilities as General Manager of Information Services and Technology in 2001 and in 2003 he was named CIO. Senn currently has responsibility for leading SCANA’s Smart Grid efforts.

  Prior to his current role, he served as a manager in the company’s accounting department, customer billing department and shareholder services department. He has served as project manager for a general ledger system implementation for the company, project manager for the company’s Year 2000 compliance project and project manager for the IT consolidation project associated with the merger between SCANA Corporation and the Public Service Company of North Carolina. Senn initially worked at SCANA as a student intern from the USC Business School. After graduation, he started his full-time career with the company as a computer programmer.

• Jeff Stovall
  CIO City of Charlotte
  
  

  Jeff Stovall is Charlotte’s first CIO. He is responsible for the overall business planning of all technology systems relative to the city’s strategic goals. He oversees the formulation and evaluation of initiatives for eBusiness, IT portfolio management, information security, business process improvement, technology project management and strategic planning, as well as the application of new technologies to solve business problems.

  Stovall joined the City of Charlotte in 2008 from Sprint Nextel, where he was Director of IT Merger Integration Planning and prior to that served as Director of Transformation Program Management and Director of Network Systems Evolution. Stovall started his career as a project engineer for DuPont.

  Stovall is a member of SIM, the Metropolitan Information Exchange, the IT Senior Management Forum, the Project Management Institute and the National Black MBA Association. Additionally, he is a Fellow of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management. In 2010, Stovall was named one of the 50 'Most Important African Americans In Technology' by eAccess Corporation and one of the ‘Top 100 under 50 Diverse Executive & Emerging Leaders’ by Diversity MBA Magazine.

  Stovall received an M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration at the University of Virginia and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

• Richard Thomas
  CIO Quintiles Transnational Corp.
  
  

  As CIO, Richard Thomas is responsible for leveraging technology to grow Quintiles Transnational's business around the world. With an extensive portfolio of innovative internal and customer solutions, he is responsible for the company’s global technology strategy, development, operations and all aspects of IT for more than 22,000 employees in 60 countries. A 25-year veteran of the IT industry, Thomas joined Quintiles in 2005, serving as CTO until being named CIO in 2010. He has played a key role in transforming Quintiles’ technology group, which has since gone on to receive industry accolades for innovation and recognition as one of the best places to work in IT.

  Before joining Quintiles, Thomas held senior leadership positions across a variety of industries. Most recently he served as EVP and CIO for Telephia, Inc. — a startup which went on to become the world leader in marketing information and benchmarking for the mobile consumer and wireless industry. Prior to Telephia, Thomas was VP, Global Systems at Nielsen.

  Hailing from Wales in the U.K., Thomas has an Honors degree in Computer Science and serves on several boards and committees.

• Chris S. Thomas
  Chief Strategist, Director of Architecture, World Ahead Intel Corporation
  
  

  Considered one of Intel’s visionaries charting future directions for industry and computing, Chris S. Thomas directs a worldwide team of solutions architects establishing technology solutions for Intel’s ‘Next Billion’ customers. His team develops strategies and architectures for education, healthcare, small business and other areas. He engages governments, industry, NGOs and development agencies worldwide in effective use of IT for emerging markets and is an active participant in World Economic Forum IT, internet security and cloud computing activities.

  Thomas is well known for driving computer industry standardization and next generation solutions, including founding the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), directing Intel’s Distributed Enterprise Architecture Lab, and architecting core technologies behind the LANDesk Management Suite. He is also co-author of the book Mashup Corporations providing a very human perspective of the implications of web 2.0 and services oriented solutions.

  Thomas is a member of the Board of Directors of Agilix Labs Inc., developing the BrainHoney Learning Environment for occasionally connected and mobile learning, and a member of the advisory board of the Community Health Awareness Council. Thomas received a B.S. in Computer Science and a B.A. in Spanish from Carroll College in Waukesha, WI.

• Tony Vaden
  VP & CIO American Tire Distributors, Inc.
  
  

  Tony Vaden is the VP and CIO of American Tire Distributors, Inc. (ATD) and is responsible for all IT at ATD. Since joining the Company in 2007, Vaden has assisted in several acquisitions, Greenfield Distribution Center startups, successful conversion to Oracle 11i ERP and a complete infrastructure refresh of building out an internal cloud model. The infrastructure refresh project at ATD was successful in a near 100% virtualized model and a fully redundant failover/disaster recovery model all built to support an internal cloud. Vaden has also delivered several eCommerce applications to support ATD’s customers with ATDOnline, Tirebuyer and TirePros.

  Prior to coming to ATD, Vaden served as Director of IT Engineering and online systems for Dell Computer Corporation. He also served as Global VP of Infrastructure at Solectron. Vaden has been a leader in the global IT field for more than 20 years.
  Vaden earned a B.S. in Computer Science from Winston-Salem State University. He’s a past member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Electronics and Information Technologies Association and is actively involved in the Chamber of Commerce, IT Program of Charlotte.

• Rob Watkins
  CIO Compass Group, North America
  
  

  Rob Watkins joined Compass Group in 1994, moving from the UK to the North American corporate office in Charlotte in 1997 to assist with a major ERP implementation. Subsequent project and line management positions culminated in Watkins becoming CIO in 2001. He continues to have overall responsibility for leading and aligning the North American technology resources to enable Compass’ continued growth and change.

  Watkins obtained a B.S. with honors from the University of Wales, qualified as a Management Accountant and obtained an M.B.A. from Cranfield University. His career transitioned from finance to technology during his early years with Compass Group. Prior to joining Compass Group, Watkins worked for a number of blue chip organizations in the UK including Pirelli, Reuters and Somerfield.

  Watkins is Vice-Chair of NPower Charlotte’s CIO Council, a member of Charlotte Mecklenburg School’s Technology Advisory Board, a member of the CIO Forum Executive Advisory Council and Co-Chair of the Charlotte CIO Executive Summit.

• Dave Welch
  CTO, Chief Evangelist House of Brick Technologies
  
  

  Dave Welch is co-founder of House of Brick Technologies. He serves as House of Brick’s CTO and Chief Evangelist. He started working with Oracle technologies in 1994. Welch is an expert in Tier-1 product lifecycle compression, system stack architecture, hardware sizing and platform selection, performance, integration and operations, and troubleshooting. He has been a key facilitator in the on-going right sizing of millions of dollars of hardware and software. Welch pioneered the use of virtualization for the delivery of Oracle University Partner-provided RAC classes. He is certified in both Oracle and VMware technologies and speaks around the globe.