Academics:   Master of Science in Information Management

Joe Barrett is President and CEO of Quantum Art Inc., www.quantumart.com, an established Web Content Management System (WCMS) provider working with commercial enterprises, governments and nonprofit organizations. A seasoned entrepreneur and executive, Barrett has more than 20 years of corporate strategy, marketing and sales experience.

Prior to joining Quantum Art Inc., Barrett was the co-founding CEO of GoGo Images, a multi-cultural stock photography provider serving advertisers, publishers and marketers around the world. At GoGo Images, he directed corporate development, sales, marketing and technology.

Barrett has also served as Senior Vice-President of Marketing at Corbis, where he led teams responsible for all aspects of marketing and communications, advanced technology, Web site customer experience, and customer and competitive market intelligence. During his tenure, Corbis and its creative agency partners won over 100 awards, including the prestigious Lion D'Or at Cannes.

Previously, Barrett was Vice President of Sales and Marketing at R.R. Donnelley driving $200MM in annual business from Fortune 500 enterprise and creative clients; and served as a strategy consultant at Alliance Consulting Group.

He is a graduate of the M.B.A. program at Harvard Business School.

Andreas Braendle has been leading organizations and business transformations as Consultant, Director and CIO, predominantly in the financial services industry. In the past 20 years he has been employed by Credit Suisse Group, Moss Adams LLP, VMC and Russell Investment Group.

Braendle's focus has been on spearheading organizational transformations and building business and technology environments, especially during M&As, spin-offs and turnarounds. He has helped companies like VMC and Winterthur Insurance Group (a division of Credit Suisse Group) develop their service and product strategies. As Managing Director at VMC he was also responsible for global business development and the delivery of outsourcing services. Braendle had a longer career with Credit Suisse Group: as an Internal Management Consultant focusing on organizational design and process engineering and as Head Strategy & Systems and later Regional CIO with their North America insurance unit.

He started his latest role at Russell Investments in mid 2009. In this capacity he helps Russell's Operations technology environment meet and exceed technology standards and expectations in the global investment management industry.

He is a Trustee with the Society for Information Management in addition to his role as Advisory Board Member at the University of Washington Information School. He holds a Master of Science in Psychology and an executive MBA both from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. He lives with his wife and daughter on a horse ranch an hour’s drive east of Seattle, WA.

Christopher Cavnor joined the Institute for Systems Biology in May 2003 and serves as the Information Systems Architect for the Center for System Biology's Informatics Core group. His work focuses on the modeling of information resources and the incorporation of Semantic Web and traditional modeling and search technologies to enhance the integration and findability of biological data and information.

Cavnor received his Master of Science in Information Management (MSIM) from the University of Washington Information School in 2005. He has over 10 years of experience in the software development and information management fields.

President and Management Consultant
Information Systems Management, Inc.
Focused on business transformation and building economic value
www.ismigroup.com

President and CEO
CoreConnex, Inc.
Providing software solutions to outsourced IT service providers www.coreconnex.com

Frank Coker is a professional management consultant, specializing in business strategy and information technology and is a founder and CEO of a new start-up called CoreConnex. He has been a management consultant for over 25 years. He generally works with CEOs and executive teams in developing business plans and strategic initiatives. He has co-founded six start-up companies and has served as president and CEO, chairman of the board, COO, CFO, and CIO in numerous companies. He has directed numerous business turn-arounds, participated in mergers and acquisitions, supported new business development and has assisted venture capital organizations in assessing investment opportunities. In 1994, he founded Health Systems Technologies (HST), and raised $22 million in venture capital; the assets of that company are now part of WebMD. His prior work experience includes five years with Price Waterhouse as a Senior Manager in consulting, and five years with IBM in sales and marketing, and more than 20 years as president of his current consulting firm, ISMI.

Coker holds a master's degree in Business Administration and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science. He is a board member and past president of the Institute for Management Consultants, Pacific Northwest Chapter, and board member and past president of the Society for Information Management, Seattle Chapter. He teaches at the University of Washington Information School in the Master of Science in Information Management program.

More information can be found at:
www.ismigroup.com
www.coreconnex.com
www.linkedin.com/in/frankcoker

Ken Deering is a seasoned technology executive. He is a partner at Ramp Technology Group, which specializes in the design and development of high-volume consumer applications, internal business applications, ad management, content management and business intelligence.

Prior to Ramp he was co-founder and VP Storefront for HomeGrocer.com, where he was responsible for the online consumer experience. He has over 25 years experience in high technology companies and has held senior management positions including VP Business Development, VP Operations and General Manager for online services, software and hardware companies.

Deering is a graduate of the Executive Marketing Program of the University of British Columbia.

Lee Dirks is the Director of Education & Scholarly Communications in Microsoft's External Research division, where he manages a variety of research programs related to open access to research data, interoperability of archives and repositories, preservation of digital information as well as the application of new technologies to facilitate teaching and learning in higher education. A 19-year veteran across multiple information management fields, Dirks holds an M.L.S. degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill as well as a post-master's degree in Preservation Administration from Columbia University.

In addition to past positions at Columbia and with OCLC (Preservation Resources), he has held a variety of roles at Microsoft since joining the company in 1996—namely as the corporate archivist, then corporate librarian, and as a senior manager in the corporate market research organization. In addition to participation on several National Science Foundation task forces, Dirks also teaches (as adjunct faculty/guest lecturer) at the iSchool at the University of Washington, and serves on the advisory board for the University of Washington Libraries and the Digital Futures Alliance.

Michael Fors is Director of Strategy in Microsoft's Mobile Division, where he works with vice presidents to set business and engineering strategy. He also manages a P&L worth over $100m. Fors has been leader of a business performance team at Microsoft that, at the request of vice presidents, assessed and improved the performance of their divisions, worked with senior product leadership teams to create viable business plans, and partnered with technologists to create business plans for innovative new technologies deemed to have potential by Bill Gates via his ThinkWeek Program. Fors has been at Microsoft for five years.

Prior to Microsoft, Fors was at Intel Corporation for 12 years, where he was leader of Intel University. There, his 200 person organization developed programs that created benchmarked best practice programs in the areas of strategy & performance improvement, leadership/management development, and employee performance. He worked with Intel's executive staff and Andy Grove (CEO) to design and develop Intel's culture and values programs, including programs required of every employee.

Fors has had a Fellowship at the United Nations for 10 years. He consulted at the United Nation's New York Headquarters with ambassadors from countries around the world on leadership, strategy, Internet governance, cyberterrorism, and security. For five years he has helped to rebuild Afghanistan, by driving a leadership and strategic planning program for new Afghan government, business and nonprofit leaders.

Fors is a Certified Management Consultant. He is a lecturer at the University of Washington. He is also a Baldrige Business Performance Examiner, where he judges high performing organizations. The prestigious Baldrige Award is awarded by the President of the United States to selected organizations.

Fors has extensively worked in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Fors has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University, a master's from George Washington University, and a bachelor's from the University of Washington. He is the recipient of 19 scholarships and 4 fellowships.

Vanessa Fox, called a "cyberspace visionary" by Seattle Business Monthly, is an expert in understanding customer acquisition from organic search. She shares her perspective on how this impacts marketing and user experience at ninebyblue.com and provides authoritative search-friendly design patterns for developers at janeandrobot.com. She is an entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners, Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land, and host of the weekly podcast Office Hours.

Fox previously created Google’s Webmaster Central, which provides both tools and community to help Web site owners improve their sites to gain more customers from search and was instrumental in the sitemaps.org alliance of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live Search. In 2009 she was named one of Seattle’s 2008 top 25 innovators and entrepreneurs. Her book Marketing in the Age of Google is forthcoming in early 2010.

Mónica Guzmán is the P-I's first online reporter and the main contributor to the Big Blog, covering the conversation around the news and exploring new directions in digital journalism.

She joined the P-I in January 2007 with a weekly column and a blog about youth, technology and culture called Net Native. She took on the P-I's Big Blog in July 2007.

Guzmán gives a weekly radio round-up of the week's most talked about stories Wednesday afternoons on KOMO 1000 and hosts weekly meet-ups for readers. She's also what you might call an online news evangelist—giving talks about the future of journalism and emerging trends in the field.

Guzmán has worked previously at the Houston Chronicle, the Midland Daily News in Michigan and Foster's Daily Democrat in New Hampshire, covering police and breaking news, higher education and arts and entertainment. She holds a bachelor's degree in sociology from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Ernie Hood is the former Vice President and CIO of Group Health Cooperative, one of the nation’s largest consumer-governed health care systems. He has worked in information services for 30 years and the health care industry for 19 years. In his role as CIO, he successfully implemented leading-edge technology solutions that increased the quality of care, improved patient outcomes, and lowered costs. His focus has been to seamlessly integrate information technology with the work and goals of the organization. Group Health is well known for one shining example of this approach, its leading-edge patient portal, MyGroupHealth, which was one of the first to enable patients to email their doctor and get their lab results online. Patients also use this website to order their prescriptions, make appointments, and even view their medical records. Connecting these features to the normal practice of medicine helped Group Health to earn a JD Powers Award in 2008 and 2010 and to become one of the most highly rated health plans in the country.

As a consumer owned and governed organization, Group Health has eagerly embraced the Lean movement in Health Care. Hood, seeing this as a perfect fit with his strategy to seamlessly integrate technology in the processes of the organization, was among the first to apply these techniques to information services.

In 2010, Hood took on a new mission to encourage the effective use and integration of information technology throughout the Health Care industry. To that end he has taken on new roles in the Washington State Health Care community to enable the adaption of electronic medical records and the exchange of health information so that medical records can be available wherever the patient seeks care. He plans to apply the same concept of seamless technology and process integration in his new roles with WIREC, the lead organization for enabling the adoption of electronic medical records in Washington and Idaho and with OneHealthPort, the organization designated by the State to enable health information exchange.

Education has been a passion for Hood who has been a lecturer in the Health Information Management Program at Bellevue College since 2009 and has supported education and knowledge sharing through the Washington chapter of the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS). Hood has served on the Board of HIMSS Washington since 2005 and was elected president in 2010.

He is a graduate of the University of California and holds an M.B.A from the University of Houston.

As Chief Information Officer, Jim Ratchford directs IT services for the largest K-12 school district in Washington State. In this role, he provides vast experience and leadership to develop and implement information technology initiatives in support of academic programs. Improvement of student achievement is his top priority.

Since his arrival in 2008, Ratchford’s accomplishments include the delivery of an all-fiber Wide Area Network, the transition to a server virtualization architecture, the design/deployment of a data warehouse, and the over-haul of a problematic SAP implementation. His plans for the district include desktop virtualization, student information system enhancements, web site redesign, off-site diaster recovery capability, and an electronic records management system.

While serving as Director, Technical Services, with The Walt Disney Company, Ratchford was instrumental in providing core IT Infrastructure services for all websites including flagship properties like Disney.com, ESPN.com and ABCNews.com. He lead major initiatives to redesign network architectures, establish Storage Area Network systems, and expand data center capacity in Seattle and Las Vegas.

At BECU, the fifth largest national credit union, he lead the delivery of critical IT systems. Focused on quality support and positive customer experience, he set strategic direction for a data encryption plan and deployed a sound encryption solution to safeguard all sensitive data, and was recognized as an industry leader for using this technology to protect credit union members from identity theft.

For more than 28 years, Ratchford served the U.S. Air Force. He received multiple decorations for his service including the Defense Meritorious Service Medal and Meritorious Service Medal.

Ratchford holds a Master of Science degree in Information Systems Management from Bowie State University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Management from the University of Maryland. He is actively involved with the Council of the Great City Schools and he serves a board member of the local chapter of the Society for Information Management.

Gary Robinson began his career as a member of the Committee staff of the Washington State House of Representatives and then the Senate. He next joined the administrative staff of the Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission before serving as Assistant Director and Deputy Director of the Washington State Office of Financial Management. Prior to his retirement in 2008, Robinson was the Chief Information Officer and Director of the Washington State Department of Information Services.

He has also been a member of the Executive Committees of the National Association of Chief Information Officers and the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council.

Robinson received his bachelor's degree from Pitzer College, Claremont, California and his master's degree from The Evergreen State College. He has also completed the Program for State and Local Executives at the Kennedy School of Government.

Agueda Sanchez is an information professional with over 17 years experience developing strategies, products, systems and information solutions for Fortune 500 companies. She is a member of the American Society for Information Science and Technology and the Information Architecture Institute.

Recently Sanchez worked as a Lead Enterprise Architect for Starbucks Coffee Company and was responsible for the company's information strategy and compliance. She delivered the enterprise content strategy for all of its Web properties, a data stewardship program for master data management, and an eDiscovery strategy plan. She also developed the information architecture practice for the company.

Prior to Starbucks, she held a number of roles at Microsoft, where she worked for 14 years. She contributed to the company's continued viability by leading development of 10 major software products, grew Tablet PC handwriting recognition business by 30 percent and saved $1.2 million by negotiating more advantageous vendor contracts. She also contributed to 4 percent sales increase by developing innovative product demonstrations and marketing solutions.

Sanchez has published two articles and is participating in a national study on the social, economic, personal and professional value of free access to computers at public libraries. She earned her Master of Science in Information Management from the University of Washington Information School in 2005 and received the Faculty Award for Student Excellence.

Bill Schrier is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for the City of Seattle and director of the City's Department of Information Technology (DoIT). Seattle has a population of about 560,000 residents and a City government of about 11,000 employees. DoIT has 215 full-time employees and approximately 600 City government employees work in information technology units.

As CTO, Schrier is responsible for setting standards and policies governing the use of information technology in City government. As Director of DoIT, Schrier's responsibilities include the city's data center, computing services, information security, Web site, municipal television station, community technology, electronic mail system, public safety radio system, telephone network and data communications network. Schrier has been working in information technology with the City of Seattle since 1982.

The City of Seattle's Web site www.seattle.gov, television station and technology projects have won a number of local and national awards, including "Best of the Web City Portal" in 2001 and 2006 and NATOA's "Excellence in Government Programming" in 2007 and 2008 for the Seattle Channel.

Schrier chairs the Regional Communications Board, which governs the operation of the 800 megahertz public safety radio network for King County. He is secretary of the Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX), a national association of City and County CIOs.

He writes a blog about the intersection of information technology and government, how they sometimes collide but often influence and change each other. It can be found at blog.chiefseattlegeek.com.

Schrier is a retired officer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. He is a graduate of Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, and holds a master's in Public Administration from the University of Washington. His past community involvement includes membership on the Catholic Archdiocesan School Board where he served as president, and the Washington City-County Management Association.

Kabir Shahani co-founded Appature in January 2007 with a vision of delivering bleeding edge software that provides tremendous business value while still being easy and fun to use. Their flagship product is an enterprise marketing suite that provides companies the tools to focus on their target customers, make more informed business decisions, and drive overall revenue while saving money on marketing campaign execution. Appature works with top brands in the healthcare vertical, and achieved profitability its first year. In recognition of the company’s success, Shahani was named one of BusinessWeek’s "Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs of 2009."

Prior to launching Appature, Shahani was the Director of Business Development at Blue Dot — where he helped raise a significant amount of angel funding, developed strategic partnerships, and managed public relations. Prior to Blue Dot, he served as project manager for Avanade, a global consulting firm and joint venture of Microsoft and Accenture, where he lead teams and executed software projects for Fortune 500 companies. Shahani has also been closely involved in sales efforts at Avanade and Zones, Inc.

Shahani holds a B.S. in Informatics from the University of Washington and a certificate in Usability and User Interface Design from the University of Washington.

Justine Trubey has almost 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, from operations and production through sales and business development. She is currently Senior Manager of Kindle Content Operations at Amazon.com, where she is responsible for end-to-end content ingestion of eBooks.

Most recently she was Executive Director of Operations for the Random House Audio Publishing Group, where she oversaw all aspects of operations, including audio production and manufacturing, as well as building the downloadable audiobook platform. Her previous roles have been centered primarily around digital content technology, from print on demand, custom publishing, and ebooks at Random House and Lightning Source, through business development and digital prepress at R.R. Donnelley's book printing division. Trubey started her career in design and production at W.W. Norton.

Trubey has a B.A. in Linguistics from Wayne State University in Detroit.