Speakers

• Maria Azua
  VP of Technology & Innovation, Office of the CIO IBM Corporation
  
  

  Maria Azua is responsible for the technical implementation, deployment and operations of internal cloud computing offerings, as well as external development for cloud enterprise initiatives. She is also responsible for the creation of a vibrant and engaged community of ISVs, business partners, and technical community to foster cloud computing IT methodologies and applications.

  Prior to her current role, Azua was VP of Technology and Innovation for the IBM CIO Office. In this capacity, she focused on the development of innovative IT solutions and integration of new technologies, and managed the Technology Adoption Program. Her responsibilities included the creation of the first IBM Green Data Center and CIO IT infrastructure and productivity enhancements through innovation.

  Azua has earned worldwide recognition for her contribution to technology innovation and her business leadership. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame, and named one of the "100 Most Influential Hispanics" by People magazine in 2006. She has 48 patents and 41 pending patents that span a wide spectrum of technologies including telecommunications, web servers, Transcoder technology, Java implementation and enhancements, and data manipulation.

  Before joining the CIO team, Azua was the Director of Technology Evaluation at IBM, responsible for corporate assessment of new technology opportunities. She chaired the IBM Finance Sector Industry Solutions Architecture Board, and managed industry standards integration efforts for the Finance Sector within the IBM Software Group. She has developed IT solutions for the largest banks in the world and is well recognized for her technical leadership in home banking solutions.

  Azua is active in the IBM multicultural community and the technical community-at-large, and mentors a long list of proteges. The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) recognized her with The Star Award for her contributions and dedication to the Hispanic community. She is interested in the next generation and works with middle school students encouraging them to pursue careers in science and engineering.

• Thomas Doughty
  VP & CISO Prudential Financial, Inc.
  
  

  Thomas Doughty, Vice President and Corporate Information Security Officer for Prudential Financial, Incorporated joined Prudential in 1998 as an Information Systems Auditor. From 2000 until 2005 he assumed responsibility as Business Information Security Officer for Prudential Securities, Incorporated (PSI) in New York. His efforts during this period included technical risk management and transition related to Wachovia's joint venture with PSI.

  He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, and holds an MBA in Finance and Information Technology from New York University's Stern School of Business. Prior to joining Prudential, Doughty served as a Military Intelligence Officer specializing in Electronic and Information Warfare along and emerging intelligence processing technology platforms.

• June Drewry
  Global CIO The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies
  
  

  When June Drewry accepted the position of Global Chief Information Officer for The Chubb Group of Insurance Companies in 2005, she brought with her over 30 years of IT management experience, including 20 years in CIO positions. Drewry has particular expertise in change management, business/IT alignment, strategy implementation, and managing IT as a business within a business. Her current position at Chubb oversees a network that extends throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia.

  Drewry developed her leadership skills in all types of organizational models; federated, centralized and decentralized. Having lived on both sides of the executive management world, Drewry polished these skills running a third-party administration business, as well as all aspects of information technology organizations in medium and large-sized financial services companies, among them: MBL Life Assurance Corp. in Newark, NJ, Aetna Inc., in Hartford, CT, Lincoln National Corp. in Fort Wayne, IN, Aon Group in Chicago, IL, and Freddie Mac Corporation in McLean, VA. While Drewry's career has largely focused on information technology, she also had other strategic responsibilities such as corporate planning and knowledge management.

  Drewry also serves as Director on the Board of Click Commerce, an internet company that provides extranet solutions for channel management, collaborative commerce, and compliance automation. She is a Director on the Board of the Society for Information Management, having served in the past as a Chapter President, a Member-at-Large on the SIM International Board of Directors, and twice President of SIM International. Drewry also serves as a Board member for ACORD, a data standards body for the insurance industry.

  At this point in her IT career, Drewry chooses to devote a larger portion of her time to developing tomorrow's IT leaders both inside Chubb and in her larger IT network. She does this through mentoring, coaching, and supporting the development of leadership programs.

  Drewry earned her B.A. in Mathematics with a Business minor from Caldwell College and has received other awards:

  • Insurance and Technology Elite 8 Award 2001
  • Women in Technology International 2003 Excellence in Corporate IT Leadership Award
  • SIM One award 2005 for outstanding leadership and commitment to the Society for Information Management and the IT profession
• Tom Fountain
  VP & CIO Honeywell Specialty Materials
  
  

  Tom Fountain is currently Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Honeywell Specialty Materials, a position he assumed in April 2005. Previously he was the VP and CIO for the Engine, Systems & Services Business Unit of Honeywell Aerospace.

  Fountain joined Honeywell in July 2002 from Dell Computer Corporation where he most recently was the Director of Architecture for Dell Managed Services. In that role Fountain was developing innovative IT architectures to support a new business model for the lifecycle management of distributed computing infrastructures. Earlier, Fountain was Director of Product Management for Dell's Deployment Services where he led the product introduction of large-scale technology deployment services. Upon joining Dell, Fountain was Dell's first Director of B2B (business-to-business) integration and established Dell's industry-leading integration capabilities and cycle time.

  He also has extensive IT leadership experience at General Electric including Global CIO of the Silicones Division where he directed the initial deployment of e-Business and the integration of Silicones newly acquired European subsidiary. Earlier in his career, Fountain held various assignments at Hewlett-Packard, Martin Marietta, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

  In his current role, Fountain leads the development and execution of IT strategy to build out a "Smart Operations" vision, where organizational intelligence is leveraged via managed business processes that orchestrate internal and external assets utilizing integration with Suppliers, Customers and Partners.

  Fountain holds an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT and a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering and MBA from Duke University.

• Mark J. Halloran
  CIO Medco Health Solutions, Inc.
  
  

  Mark Halloran has served as Medco's CIO since September 2003, and is responsible for providing executive-level leadership to deliver IT services covering all aspects of Medco's business. His responsibilities include strategic planning, maintaining operational effectiveness and client servicing. He also serves on the Management Committee of Medco Health.

  Halloran joined Medco in 1993 initially as Director of Information Technology & Architecture. He later served as Director of International Information Technology and then as VP of eCommerce where he oversaw the product design and deployment of Medco's eCommerce services.

  Prior to joining Medco, Halloran held several IT-related positions at Dun & Bradstreet. He is an active chair of several CIO-related industry organizations and volunteers as a graduate-level mentor for several academic institutions.

• Barry Libenson
  VP & CIO Ingersoll Rand Company
  
  

  Barry Libenson is Ingersoll Rand's Vice President and Chief Information Officer. He joined Ingersoll Rand as Corporate Vice President, e-Business in May 2001 and has served as IR's CIO since 2003. Libenson plays a key role in the IR global enterprise as the leader and architect of the overall technology vision. His organization is responsible for the technical direction of Ingersoll Rand within the areas of CRM, Channel Management, ERP and Engineering.

  Libenson's career includes leadership roles at Visix Software, where he served as Chief Executive Officer and Corporate Director, as well as senior positions in Phoenix Technologies, Surety Technologies and Oracle Corporation. Libenson also sits on the board of Tavant Technologies, a California based technology firm.

  Libenson holds a degree in Computer Science from Colgate University in addition to an MBA from Duke University.

• Thornton A. May
  Leading IT Futurist
  
  

  Thornton May operationalizes Henry David Thoreau's aphorism, "It's not what you look at, it's what you see." Collecting data from all corners of the technology world, May synthesizes the insights of the top thinkers on the planet seeking to understand where we have been, where we are today and where we are going. He teaches at four business schools, writes for five magazines, researches at three think tanks and keeps in monthly contact with more than 1,000 C-level executives via the CIO Leadership Network.

• Jim Noble
  Managing Director, GIS Merrill Lynch & Co.
  
  

  Jim Noble was appointed Managing Director, GIS for Merrill Lynch & Co. in March 2007. Previously he had global responsibility for information technology at Altria Group, a Fortune 20 organization, which is the parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris USA, Philip Morris International and Philip Morris Capital Corp. Altria Group's operating companies' brands include household names like Planters, Maxwell House, Marlboro, Gevalia, Virginia Slims, Philadelphia, Miracle Whip, DiGiorno, Nabisco and many more. Noble is CEO of the in-house Shared Services company (TecWorks LLC). Prior to joining Altria in March of 2002, Noble was SVP and CIO at AOL Time Warner. Prior to that Noble had been with General Motors Corp., where he was based in Detroit as Chief Technology Strategy Officer, moving to that assignment from the role of CIO of General Motors International, where he was responsible for all IT activities outside of North America.

  Earlier in his career, Noble led the worldwide IT consulting practice at Cap Gemini, and prior to that he worked for GE on the design of aircraft systems. Noble is a Scot who has been based in the USA for the past ten years. He was trained as a military test pilot, and spent a couple of years as a professional race car driver. Noble holds four patents in digital signal processing, and is a visiting lecturer at Columbia University. Noble is President of the NY Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM), and is President-Elect of the SIM global organization.

• Mark S. Popolano
  Former CIO American International Group, Inc.
  
  

  Mark Popolano is global Chief Information Officer for American International Group, Inc. (AIG). He is also President of AIG Technologies, Inc. an AIG member company. In these roles, Popolano manages AIG's global information technology infrastructure, which includes the backbone of AIG's extensive Internet and Web-based capabilities, as well as domestic and international data centers. In his oversight of AIGT's data centers, Popolano is responsible for enhancing the global infrastructure, improving technology service levels and increasing coordination in software and hardware purchasing. Additionally, he is instrumental in developing business models that establish offshore IT captive service organizations.

  Popolano joined AIG in October of 1994. Prior to serving as global CIO, he held a number of leadership roles including divisional CIO for American International Underwriters (AIU) and global Chief Technology Officer. During his tenure with AIG, Popolano has pioneered new technological advancements and spearheaded a variety of special projects ranging from call center technology and data warehousing to Internet sales and services, and vendor management. He engineered the expansion of AIG's IT executive talent and focused the organization on global, scalable and common systems. Under his direction, AIG's IT community is focused on speed, reliability and integration – key elements that are helping AIG drive innovation and successful business models companywide.

  Popolano has also played a vital role in transforming AIG's technology organization into a more agile group that is better aligned with business goals. His implementation of a global program office and strict adherence to a governance model that incorporates worldwide technology standards and compliance continues to benefit the company.

  For more than a decade, Popolano has been a spokesperson for the insurance industry, and he has addressed audiences worldwide. Throughout his career, he has been recognized by a variety of technology organizations and media outlets, and past honors have included being named to the "Top 25 Financial Service CIOs in New York" by CIO Forum and being listed in Crain's New York magazine's "Tech-100" list.

  Popolano earned a Bachelor's of Science degree from Brooklyn College in New York.

• Dr. Venkat Ramaswamy
  Professor of Marketing & Director, Center for Experience Co-Creation Ross School of Business, University of Michigan
  
  

  Dr. Venkat Ramaswamy is the Michael R. and Mary Kay Hallman Fellow of Electronic Business, Professor of Marketing, and Director of the Center for Experience Co-creation at the Ross School of Business of the University of Michigan. He is a globally recognized thought leader, idea practitioner, and an eclectic scholar with wide-ranging interests in innovation, strategy, marketing, branding, IT, operations and the human side of the organization. He is a prolific author and has contributed numerous articles including the Harvard Business Review article "Co-opting Customer Competence", the Strategy & Business article "The Cocreation Connection", and the 2004 MIT-PriceWaterhouseCoopers award-winner "The New Frontier of Experience Innovation", published in the Sloan Management Review. He is co-author with C.K. Prahalad of the acclaimed book "The Future of Competition: Cocreating Unique Value with Customers" (Harvard Business School Press, 2004), chosen by Business Week as one of the Top 10 business books of 2004, and Strategy & Business as one of the best strategy books of 2004.

  Dr. Ramaswamy's eclectic interests span customer experiences, innovation, marketing, operations, information technology, human resources, and strategy. His current research focuses on exploring the "next practices" in value creation through experience co-creation, innovating experience environments around customer-company interactions, customer communities and nodal company networks, leveraging technology to enable human experiences, helping businesses create new sources of competitive advantage by building co-creation capabilities and processes, building the information and communications infrastructure to support experience environments and rapid knowledge creation, and developing strategy maps and balanced scorecards for organizations to compete through experience co-creation.

  His current global work with companies focuses on migrating them to the next practice of experience co-creation, how to innovate experience environments, how to leverage technology as experience enablers and communities of individuals and networks of firms for co-creating value, how to build the capabilities and processes for customer-company interactions and experience co-creation, how to build bridges between marketing, HR, IT, and operations around customer experiences, how to build the brand through personalized experiences, how to manage the quality of experiences, and how to build and lead the experience-centric organization for creation of new strategic capital and sustainable growth.

  Dr. Ramaswamy is currently working on a new book "Experience Co-Creation: Migrating Companies to the Next Practices of Value Creation".

• Peter Whatnell
  CIO Sunoco, Inc.
  
  

  Peter Whatnell joined Sunoco in November 2001 as Chief Information Officer. He is responsible for developing and leading the IT renewal strategy for Sunoco, a leading manufacturer and marketer of petroleum and petrochemical products with revenue of over $33 billion and 14,000 employees. Previously, he spent 17 years with Texaco in various roles, including Head of IT Europe in London. In 1995, Whatnell moved to the USA where he served in several Corporate Director positions covering IS, Telecommunications, Advanced Technology Services, ERP, the IT member on Texaco's global technology policy and strategy team, and General Manager IT in the shared services company for Texaco, Shell and Saudi Refining Inc.

  Whatnell is on the advisory councils for the IT programs at Villanova and LaSalle Universities, the Philadelphia Chapter of Black Data Processing Associates; he is a board member with Opera Company of Philadelphia and is the Chairman of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Society for Information Management.

• Wally A. Yosafat
  Former CIO & eBusiness Leader Trane Commercial Systems & Residential Systems, American Standard Companies, Inc.
  
  

  Wally Yosafat joined American Standard Companies (ASD), based in Piscataway, New Jersey, in June, 2001 as CIO / eBusiness Leader for TCS and RS, a combined $6B business. He also was responsible for Corporate Systems and the $2B+ global Bath & Kitchen business. Yosafat recruited a global, diverse IT organization, drove global strategy and program execution and initiated Six Sigma IT capability, off-shore outsourcing, and added eBusiness functionality.

  Before coming to ASD, Yosafat was Systems Integration leader for General Electric (GE) Aircraft Engines in Cincinnati, Ohio and CIO for the $6B+ Engine Services business. Before joining GE in April, 1997, Yosafat spent 14 years with Procter & Gamble (P&G), primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio. He spent 3 years in Kobe, Japan as P&G's Asia Region Technology Manager, leading expansion of region-wide China and India computing and network infrastructures.