Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Niels Lademark Heegaard is a senior consultant with Platon, an independent information management consulting firm.

Linhares leads Pfizer's BIS team and was a force behind the drugmaker's federated integration strategy to centralize R&D and eliminate "spreadmart" silos of information that were not updated or shared evenly. A newer challenge for Linhares is the implementation of a "scientific workbench" for common data capture that virtualizes lab information management systems, chromatography, eLab notebooks, data warehouse and outside information. Latulippe Smith & Nephew is a regulated provider of artificial hips and knees, orthopedic equipment and hospital and consumer wound management supplies. With three global business units operating on separate SAP instances, Latulippe was cited for her work to improve data quality and integration through governance and scorecards in the global MDM practice. While data quality varies across different endeavors and 300 legacy environments, data quality has reached 95 percent overall from an initial 25 percent across all three GBUs. It has also revealed many thousands of inactive SKUs and given new insight to the company's core mission.

It is very hard to categorize this physics Ph.D. turned data modeler. Or is it data scientist? Ontologist? Engineer? Suzanne Yoakum-Stover hasn't come up with a title herself beyond her small institute and consulting business. But she surely doesn't talk like the CIOs and architects we're used to.Yoakum-Stover was tapped for bringing ultra large-scale intelligence data to a private cloud computing environment and the use of columnar databases in lab work now used by the government. At the moment, most of her work is for the U.S. Army, but it's not her ultimate goal to work in government intelligence. Her driving ambition is an ultra-large, Internet scale abstract model for capturing data from any source in any data model without loss or distortion. With her research partner she's come up with a framework she'd like to share openly as a kind of Fermi Lab for scholars and scientists to pursue research."We have disciplines like physics, biology and less pure things like economics, that's sort of the closest one I can think of to where we're going," she told us. "I think we are on the brink of discovering something like that for intelligence."

Mr. Unrau is currently a manager in Customer Analytics Centre of Excellence division playing a central role guiding Canadian Tire’s  transition to becoming a more data driven and customer-centric organization.  He was very involved in assembling and selling the business case to do customer data integration and represented the business on the first phase implementation. Mr. Unrau is now working to enable customer-centric insights and analytics for retailing as well as having business ownership for the customer centric infrastructure and stewardship.  He has worked for Canadian Tire over 20 years in many different roles within Operations, IT, Finance, Modelling and Analytics, Credit Risk and Marketing.  Mr. Unrau has a degree in Economics and is a Certified Management Accountant (CMA).  

David Vasquez Following Nationwide's acquisition of Allied Insurance, Vasquez took a major role in integrating the companies' auto policy data in a hybrid model that could report across some 800 attributes and 100 metrics of product performance. Pricing and product departments use the reporting to track retention, minimize customer churn from rate increases and cross-sell across rate decreases. "We are seeing about a 0.1 percent increase in our retention in the places we've rolled this out to, an estimated $14 million savings across various projects and states," Vasquez says. "

An Architect by personality type and interest, I enjoy the challenge of creating a structured framework around that amorphous area most business folks refer to as "computer stuff." Simply put, Enterprise Architecture helps the business know whether or not the resources they're investing in process and technology improvements are actually delivering to them a competitive advantage in-line with their strategy. If not, it provides a means to achieve that transformation.I find many architects exist in a state of paralysis: either they want hard-and-fast rules for Enterprise Architecture (EA) and exist motionless until they find the one "right" answer; or they are so overwhelmed by the concept that they obfuscate their paralysis by constantly demanding more details from others.I relish complexity and understand that EA is as much an art as it is a science--a practice that requires equal parts experience, perspective, technical expertise, and judgment.

In December 2005, Rich Pollack became the Vice President and Chief Information Officer for VCU Health System in Richmond. For two years prior to that time he had been the Chief Information Officer (ad interim) for Clarian Health Partners, A 2 billion-dollar health system in Indianapolis.At VCUHS, Rich’s responsibilities include setting out the vision for IT, supported by effective strategic and tactical plans that define the best practice use of IT in support of patient care and operational excellenceAccomplishments to date, have included:Ongoing successful installation of the Cerner EMR with 100% CPOE and physician notes in the inpatient setting.Selection and initiation of a new hospital billing system (IDX HPA) and ERP system (Lawson).Contributed to the development of a new all digital 15 story acute care tower utilizing layers of integrated technology (everywhere wireless, VoIP phones, bedside device integration, mobile access,) to facilitate effective communication and high quality care.Teaming up with the CMIO to craft a unique and robust “Office of Clinical Transformation”From 1999 until late 2003, he held IT leadership positions at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDA) in Houston, Texas.  In this capacity, he oversaw a 500-person I.S. organization with projects totaling more than $100 million.  The Division of Information Services at MDA supported all of the clinical, academic, research and administrative functions. As such, Rich maintained close and effective oversight and working relationships with key leaders in these areas.  He joined MDA in June 1999 as Associate Vice President for Enterprise Applications and became CIO 16 months later. Rich has more than 30 years of health care management experience with 20 of those years working with clinical systems implementation and support.  Prior to moving to Houston, Rich served as Director of Information Systems for Nash Health Care Systems in Rocky Mountain, North Carolina.  In 1996 Rich and his Nash team successfully implemented a computer-based patient record system for the 450-bed, multi-hospital organization, which received special commendation as best industry-practice from JCAHO.  Rich holds an M.S. degree in medical biology.   He is a Fellow of HIMSS, member of CHIME, and a Certified Professional in Healthcare Information and Management Systems.

Ramaswami Mohandoss is a technology architect working in the systems integration practice at Infosys Technologies. He has been working in BI for more than 9 years, primarily researching and providing data integration solutions for varied customers in their key information changes. He can be reached at Ramaswami.mohandoss@gmail.com.

Mike Kerrigan is vice president of business applications for Laurus Technologies, an Itasca, IL-based IT services and business consulting firm. Mike can be reached at mkerrigan@laurustech.com.

Theresa Regli is a principal for The Real Story Group.