Fox IT Symposium Panelists

Is cloud computing the next big thing?

Lauren C. States
Vice President
IBM Software Group

As Vice President of Cloud Computing at IBM, Lauren leads a global team responsible for establishing market presence while driving overall Cloud and Utility computing strategies at IBM. Her team engages directly with early adopting customers to partner for joint success, delivering leading edge capabilities to forerunners while integrating their requirements into IBM strategy, offerings and plans.

As a senior executive on IBM’s Integration and Values Leadership Team, Lauren jumpstarted a company-wide initiative called the Client Value Initiative (CVI). CVI is a strategic reshaping of IBM’s external profile testing and deploying innovative techniques for supporting globally integrated enterprises.

In a previous role Lauren led worldwide Technical Sales and Sales Enablement for IBM Software Group. She was responsible for IBM’s sales force enablement, technical sales support and customer software deployment across IBM’s total software business, and achieved this by providing business direction to an organization of almost 20,000.

Lauren joined IBM in 1978 as a systems engineer in New York City, and has held a variety of strategic positions since that time. In 1991, Lauren joined IBM’s e-business initiative, taking responsibility for developing new markets and laying the ground work for the world wide web. Later she led IBM’s Midwest sales territory, delivering e-business and early web solutions to all types of customers.

In 1998, she was named technical assistant to Nicholas Donofrio, IBM’s executive vice president for Innovation and Technology. Subsequently, Lauren was named Director of Technical Sales for the Americas.

Lauren graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School with a Bachelor of Science degree. She is a member of the IBM Integration and Values Team which is comprised of IBM’s top 300 executives. She is also a member of the IBM Technical Leadership Team which is responsible for the development and advancement of IBM’s 200,000+ technical workforce. As a role model and mentor to women and minorities around the world, Lauren co-chairs the IBM Black Executive Network and the IBM United States Women’s Council. She is a member of the Board of Visitors for Northeastern University College of Business.

In 2003, Lauren received the Multicultural Women in Technology Award from Career Communications Group, Inc., in recognition of outstanding managerial leadership. In 2006, she was recognized as one of the 25 Most Influential Black Women in American Business by The Network Journal. She was also named one of the Top 100 Blacks in Technology in 2006 and 2007 by Career Communications Group, Inc. She and her husband Kenneth J. Creary have served as IBM co-chairs of National Black Family Technology Awareness Week. Their daughter Rachel is an avid technologist, and a student at Northeastern University.

Jazz Tobaccowalla
Vice President
Wyeth

In his role Jazz is driving the R&D information technology strategy to meet the goals of Wyeth’s global R&D productivity model and the aggressive plans for regulatory filings and approvals. He is also accountable to integrate the R&D systems strategy with Supply Chain and Commercial Systems to bring significant improvements in productivity and enhance compliance. In addition, he has responsibilities for the Document Management Center of Excellence, the Wyeth Web Development Center and the Business Process Management and Application Integration group.

Prior to this he held the position of Vice President, International Information Services and Global Systems, where he directed the information technology program for Wyeth affiliates in Europe, Mid-East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Canada and was also responsible for three Centers of Excellence for Business Intelligence, Global Document Management Systems and the Web Development Center.

Previously, he led the e-Business technology group at Wyeth and served as the program lead for a Pan-European ERP system implementation.

He holds a Masters in Business Administration from the Stern School of Business, New York University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Ramapo College, New Jersey.

 

Ed Sullivan
CEO and Founder
Aria Systems, Inc.

Ed Sullivan, Aria Systems’ Founder, has been the CEO since the company’s inception in 2003. As CEO, Ed offers his vision, innovative ideas and valuable insight to the needs of the marketplace to bear on Aria’s strategic direction. Under his leadership, Aria has been established as the market leader in on-demand billing and customer lifecycle solutions and currently supports over 1 million customer accounts in 236 countries.

Ed’s entrepreneurial spirit and innovative ideas have led him to build several successful companies. Prior to Aria, he was the Founder and President of LaserLink.net, the World’s first and largest Virtual Internet Service Provider. LaserLink provided billing and Internet services to over one million end users and operated the Internet Services for several ISP’s including American Express, Compaq, Gateway, Amway and IBM. LaserLink was acquired by Covad Communications in March 2000.

Ed serves as a Director of NetQOS, an Austin Texas based IT company which offers end to end network management solutions. NetQOS was recently ranked the number one fastest growing technology company in Texas by Deloitte and Touche. He also serves on the advisory board of Covad Communications (DVW) a publicly traded provider of voice and data services. Ed has a BS in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University. 

 

Yair Greenbaum
Executive Vice President
ekkoTV, Inc.

Yair is a Co-Founder and EVP of Product Development at ekkoTV. Yair co founded ekkoTV at the end of 2006.

Prior to founding ekkoTV, Yair worked as a project manager at SeaPass Solutions Inc. - a leading provider of connectivity solutions to the insurance industry. SeaPass is based in Manhattan with offices in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Previously, Yair was a project manager at Medcon Telemedicine - a world leader in Cardiac Information Systems, based in New Jersey and Tel Aviv. Medcon was recently acquired by McKesson Inc NYSE:MCK

While in the Israeli Defense Forces, Yair served as an officer in the paratroops and later as captain in one of Israel's top commando units.

Yair holds a B.A in computer science from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel.

In 1999 Yair received the "Efi Arazi Scholarship." He was one of seven scholarship recipients selected nationwide by Mr. Efi Arazi - founder of Scitex and EFI. This highly competitive fund is the largest undergraduate award in Israel. It aims to identify exceptional young leaders, provide them with a challenging curriculum, and prepare them to be the next generation of high technology leaders.

 

Charles D. Wallace
Chief Technology Architect
Rohm and Haas Company

Charles D. Wallace is Rohm and Haas Company’s Chief Technology Architect and Executive Director for the Global IT Infrastructure group, a position he has occupied since 2005. He is responsible for over 300 IT professionals charged with developing and executing the processes for IT strategy, architecture and governance, with the primary goal of marrying business need to IT services. Those services are presented in an IT roadmap of projects and programs used to implement technological innovations, technology lifecycle changes and business/IT strategies.

Charles has been with Rohm and Haas since 1992, and has held positions of increasing responsibility since joining the company. At various times he has served as an AS/400 security consultant, managed operational support areas for AS/400, Mainframe, NT servers, Unix, DB and infrastructure applications, and managed infrastructure, deployment and site readiness for end-user access to all computing platforms as well as high-availability hosting of all ERP related applications (SAP, Manugistics, CRM, Hyperion). Immediately prior to his current combined role he was Corporate IT Chief Technology Architect.

His career also includes several years as an IT consultant in the banking, retail and manufacturing industries. Charles completed his Executive MBA at Villanova University, and has participated in professional workshops and certification programs at M.I.T., Duke University and Wharton School of Business.

Outside work he is an active supporter and board member of a number of NGOs, contributing his time and talents in particular to United Way of Southeastern Pennsylvania, African-American Museum of Philadelphia and to NPower. Inside the organization Charles was 2007 United Way Campaign Chair, he currently is executive sponsor for the AALN, and is a participating member of the Chairman’s Diversity Council.

Charles was named one of the Top 50 Under 50 African-American MBA’s for 2007. He also is a 2008 recipient of the BDPA Epsilon Award in the Professional Achievement category, and recently was named in CIO Magazine’s 2008 Ones to Watch list.

 

Munir Mandviwalla
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Management Information Systems
Executive Director, Institute for Business and Information Technology

Associate Professor Munir Mandviwalla, founding chair of the Management Information Systems department, and Executive Director, Institute for Business and Information Technology, Fox School of Business, Temple University holds a BSc in Systems Engineering from Boston University, a MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, and a Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the Programs in Information Science at Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Mandviwalla has published articles on collaborative systems, virtual teams, software training, peer review, and globalization. His most recent work includes identifying and defining the concept of municipal wireless networks (Communications of the ACM) and a case study of global integration (Ivey Publishing). He is currently working on a social computing project with a large electronics and manufacturing firm and on a model to explain wireless technologies. His publications have appeared in Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Decision Support Systems, Small Group Research, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Public Administration Review, and Information Systems Journal. His work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Bell Atlantic, IBM, Microsoft Corporation, CIGNA Corporation, Advanta Corporation, Lotus Development Corporation, and Lilly Endowment, Inc. In 2000, IBM selected him for their Faculty Partnership Award in recognition for contributions to E-Business teaching and research. In 2002, The Claremont Graduate University recognized him with their Alumni Hall of Fame award.

As executive director of the Institute for Business and Information Technology, Mandviwalla leads a full service institute that engages with industry at multiple levels including research and human capital development, and provides faculty and students with funding, scholarships, contacts, and professional development. As the founding chair of the department of Management Information Systems, Mandviwalla leads the research and teaching activities related to information systems for the Fox School of Business.