Smart Growth: High Performance and Sustainability Through Analytics
An Executive Conference
- David A. Axson - founder and President of the Sonax Group.
- Stephan Chase - Vice President of Customer Knowledge for Marriott International Inc.
- Keith Collins - Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for SAS.
- Linda Morrison Combs - former Controller of the US Office of Management and Budget.
- Alan Cullop - Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President for NetJets Inc.
- Thomas H. Davenport - President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College.
- Jim Davis - Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for SAS.
- Mary Driscoll - Editorial Director Emeritus of CFO Research.
- David Fogarty - Vice President of Global Customer Relationship Management and Decision Management for GE Money.
- Jeff Gilleland - Product Marketing Manager for SAS.
- Jim Goodnight - CEO of SAS.
- Dan Holle - Chief Technology Officer for Business Intelligence solutions for the global Business Information Optimization (BIO) team at Hewlett-Packard.
- Bill Laberis - Vice President of Custom Content Strategy at Computerworld.
- Thornton May - Futurist, Executive Director and Dean of the IT Leadership Academy.
- Robert Morison - Executive Vice President of nGenera Corporation and Co-Director of the Business Analytics Concours program.
- Don Parker - Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for SAS.
- David J. Reibstein - William S. Woodside Professor and Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
- Michael E. Thompson - Analytics Consultant and founding member of Waterstone Analytics.
- Bill Waszak - Vice President and Chief Information Officer for The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company.
- Susan Zankman - Senior Vice President of Information Resources Finance and Management Services for Marriott International Inc.
David J. Axson
David Axson is the founder and President of the Sonax Group, a business research and consulting firm based in Bath, OH. Axson is a noted speaker and author. His second book, Best Practices in Planning and Performance Management, was published in January 2007. Co-founder of The Hackett Group, Axson was responsible for developing a number of the firm’s market-leading benchmarks. He also served as Head of Corporate Planning at Bank of America where he was charged with a fundamental redesign of the company’s planning and forecasting processes.
Prior to moving to the United States in 1991, Axson was affiliated with A.T. Kearney, Deloitte, Haskins & Sells, and Lloyds Bank in London.
Stephan Chase
Stephan Chase is Vice President of Customer Knowledge for Marriott International Inc. He leads Marketing's analytics, automation and data warehousing efforts for Marriott's Lodging division, manager and franchiser of more than 3,000 hotels and timeshare properties.
Chase’s philosophy is that customer behavior is the ultimate litmus test of loyalty. So, quantitative analysis of customer propensities is the foundation of an effective approach to strategy development. This work has led him to identify traits that indicate future short- and long-term behavior and to estimate the incremental profitability of individual customers. His work has earned recent Best Practice Awards in Calculating Customer Profitability as well as Process Measures and Analytics. He was named a Customer Champion by 1to1 Media in 2007.
Before joining Marriott, Chase was a management consultant, first with Booz Allen Hamilton and then as a principal of his own firm.
Keith Collins
Keith Collins is Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at SAS and heads the Office of the CTO. Formed in 2006, the OCTO serves as a technical resource and adviser in peer-to-peer discussions with executives in IT organizations. Collins' team helps customers create effective business intelligence strategies through thought leadership, IT domain expertise, anticipating key technology trends that shape clients' needs and by providing IT executives with an architectural view of SAS. Collins is instrumental in developing SAS' industry-specific solutions that deliver the benefits of powerful analytic technologies into the hands of business users.
Collins joined SAS in 1984 as an R&D liaison for the Technical Support division. A graduate of North Carolina State University with a bachelor's degree in computer science, Collins is a devoted supporter of the university. He is the founding member of the strategic advisory board of the department of computer science. In 2003, the university named him a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus.
Linda Morrison Combs
Linda Morrison Combs is one of the most respected leaders in America today. She recently left her position as Controller of the United States, serving in the Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget. As Controller, Combs was responsible for almost $3 trillion in audits each year. She will soon publish her third book, L Is for Leadership.
During her career, Combs has served three United States presidents in five presidential appointments confirmed by the United States Senate. She has served as Chief Financial Officer and other executive level management positions at the Departments of Education, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury and the Environmental Protection Agency. Combs also served as the Operations Officer and Manager of National Direct Student Loans for Wachovia Corporation. For 10 years, Combs and her husband founded and grew their own highly successful private record label and music company.
Combs earned her Bachelor of Science and master’s degrees from Appalachian State University and a doctorate in educational administration from Virginia Tech. She is a graduate of the Program for Senior Managers in Government at Harvard University. She has been honored with several awards from the President of the United States, an honorary doctorate from Gardner-Webb University, and numerous other awards.
Alan Cullop
Alan Cullop is Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President with NetJets Inc., a multibillion dollar Berkshire Hathaway company and the world’s largest air carrier. He joined the company in 2005 and implemented a business-focused strategy that maximizes the return on IT investments. Through collaboration with business leaders, the business and IT teams have collectively delivered projects utilizing advanced analytics, business process reengineering and internal process optimization to significantly improve top- and bottom-line performance.
Prior to joining NetJets, he was Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Cendant Corporation. Cullop has also held positions with Equant NV, a $1.5 billion global technology company; Bass plc; and MCI Telecommunications.
Cullop has served on the Board of Directors of SITA, a diversified global company that provides technology services including applications development and networking in 200 countries as well as Tripeze.com, a Canadian e-commerce company that was acquired by Sears Corporation. He also serves on the governance committee of the CIO Symposium, the CIO Forum and the CIO Solutions Gallery.
Cullop earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1987 and was a member of the Leadership Forum at The DuPree College of Management at Georgia Tech from 1998 to 2000.
Thomas H. Davenport
Thomas H. Davenport is the President's Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College and co-directs research for the Business Analytics research program at nGenera Corporation. He is the former director of research centers at Accenture, Ernst & Young, and McKinsey.
Davenport is the author or co-author of 12 books, including the bestsellers Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know and Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology. His latest book, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, has become a best-seller and is being translated into 10 languages. He is also a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review and other leading journals. His recent article “Competing on Analytics” was Harvard Business Review’s most requested article reprint of 2006.
Davenport holds a PhD from Harvard University in organizational behavior and has taught at Harvard Business School, Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and the University of Texas at Austin.
Jim Davis
As Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Jim Davis provides worldwide marketing direction for SAS solutions and services. He is responsible for managing product direction, professional services, education, advertising and communications.
A respected thought leader, Davis co-authored the book Information Revolution: Using the Information Evolution Model to Grow Your Business.
Since joining SAS in 1994, Davis has pioneered many key initiatives, including global projects that incorporate customer feedback in the development process. Today, he continues to refine the model for continuous collaboration and innovation among engineers, marketers and customers, enabling SAS to meet the global demand for enterprise intelligence.
Mary Driscoll
Mary Driscoll is Editorial Director Emeritus of CFO Research. Previously, she was President of CFO Conferences and CFO Research, the executive education and research services arms of CFO Publishing Corp. The latter, a division of the Economist Group, produces CFO magazine, the information source for senior financial executives.
Driscoll has served in various positions within the Economist Group for 17 years. From 1990 to 1996, she was a Senior Editor of CFO magazine. In that capacity, she developed numerous cover stories on strategy, corporate finance, performance management and organizational change. During 1997, Driscoll was Editor of the nonaffiliated CFO magazine in Australia during its inaugural year. For three years, she was Research Director at the Economist Intelligence Unit, where she developed and executed global research projects on business strategy, technology and management.
Driscoll has written several business books, including Cash Management: Corporate Strategies for Profit, published by John Wiley & Sons. She has won journalism awards involving corporate finance and personal financial planning topics.
She received a BA (honors) in English from the University of Massachusetts and studied accounting and management at Harvard University’s CAS program.
David Fogarty
David Fogarty is the Vice President of Global Customer Relationship Management and Decision Management for GE Money in Stamford, CT. GE Money is one of the six divisions of the General Electric Company and is one of the largest international consumer finance businesses in the world with over $175 billion in assets and 150 million customers in 54 countries.
In his current role, Fogarty is responsible for championing and leading the implementation of global customer relationship management (CRM) initiatives to support analytic-driven cross-selling/up-selling, activation, acquisition and customer retention initiatives throughout GE Money. He leads a Global Decision Sciences team comprised of more than 650 quantitative analysts responsible for all database marketing, risk management and CRM activities throughout the GE Money business units.
Fogarty earned a BS in international relations from the Connecticut State University, a PhD in applied statistics from Leeds Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom, and obtained his MBA with a concentration in international business from Fairfield University. He holds a postgraduate qualification in industrial engineering and operations research from Columbia University and is a certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt in Quality.
Fogarty holds a part-time University Research Chair for Statistics position and is an instructor of Global Business Management and Statistics for Business Decisions at the University of Phoenix. He also teaches courses in statistics and global business management at various major New York metropolitan-area universities.
Jeff Gilleland 
Jeff Gilleland is a Product Market Manager at SAS. Gilleland has over 25 years of experience in building profitable customer franchises for FORTUNE 500® companies. He has held senior marketing positions within the consumer-packaged-goods and financial services industries. Before joining SAS in 2002, Gilleland was responsible for leading the development of Wachovia's customer strategy, which is regarded as a best practice in the financial services industry. Prior to Wachovia, Gilleland held executive marketing positions at RJR/Nabisco and Kayser-Roth Corporation, where he was responsible for building growth strategies based on customer knowledge for some of the largest consumer brands in the world. Applying his experience in 1-to-1 and classical marketing, he offers an informed view on how to build organizational capabilities that enable knowledge-based strategies to increase customer affinity and profitability.
Jim Goodnight 
Since he co-founded SAS in 1976, Jim Goodnight has served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer. A worldwide leader in enterprise intelligence solutions and services, SAS has more than 10,000 employees in 53 countries.
In 2007, the company’s revenue was $2.1 billion, its 32nd consecutive year of growth and profitability. In 2004, Harvard Business School named him as one of the "20th Century’s Great American Business Leaders," citing his impact on "the way people have lived, worked and interacted in the 20th century." Goodnight has a PhD in statistics and speaks internationally on leadership, education and innovation.
Dan Holle
Dan Holle is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Business Intelligence solutions for the global Business Information Optimization (BIO) team at Hewlett-Packard. He is responsible for accelerating revenue growth for the HP Neoview platform by driving innovation, collaboration and strategy around partners and analytical solutions that turn big data into big value.
Prior to HP, Dan served as the CTO of applications at Teradata where he was instrumental in defining aspects of the architecture and led critical data warehousing and architecture projects across the globe. Prior to that, he was involved in 2 startup companies in Europe. Prior to that, he was one of the first 10 employees at Teradata, wrote the Teradata optimizer, supporting launches in the U.S., Europe and Asia Pacific.
With more than 28 years experience in the DW/BI space, Dan has pioneered many aspects of high-end data warehousing architecture and implementations and has contributed to the creation of the SQL language. He is a patent holder in data mining, application architecture, and metadata. He received a BSc degree in Computer Science (summa cum laude) in 2.5 years from the University of Illinois, where he completed the academic requirements for the PhD.
Bill Laberis
Bill Laberis is Vice President of Custom Content Strategy at Computerworld, a new position he filled in October 2006. In this exciting role, Laberis works closely with Computerworld’s vendor clients to create highly individualized custom content programs that leverage the wide range of Computerworld’s media capabilities, including print, online, multimedia, and custom events.
Laberis held the position of editor-in-chief of Computerworld from 1986 to 1996. During his editorial tenure, Computerworld won more than 80 awards for editorial and design excellence, including the Computer Press Association’s award as Best Computer Newspaper an unprecedented three times. In the 10 years between leaving Computerworld as editor and rejoining as Vice President of Custom Content Strategy, Laberis was founder and president of Bill Laberis Associates, a custom publishing and media consulting company. His company produced special supplements, magazines, newsletters, Webcasts, content-oriented marketing materials, and other special customer publications for nearly all first- and second-tier vendors in the computer industry. His company’s work included all content and design creation for the quarterly Microsoft Executive Circle magazine, read by more than 120,000 business and technology managers in North America and produced from 2001-2005.
Thornton May
Thornton May is one of the premier communicators in the information technology industry today. He combines a scholar's passion for empirical research, an entrepreneur's capacity for identifying opportunities and a stand-up comic's gift for storytelling. He deftly uses all these skills to help executives figure out what comes after what comes next. May is responsible for sculpting executive education IT curricula at four major business schools: UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Arizona State and Ohio State.
From 1997-2000, May was responsible for designing and delivering the information technology portion of the curriculum at the University of Amsterdam's Controller's Institute. With James Robinson III, May founded the Director's Institute, a program to improve board-level technology decision making. May served on the doctoral review board at the University of Texas, Austin; he now serves on the advisory board at Comdex.
May's research has been acknowledged in such seminal business books as Seth Godin's Permission Marketing; Michael Schrage's Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate; Moshe Rubenstein's The Minding Organization; Bill Jensen's Simplicity; and Jeff Williams' Renewable Advantage: Crafting Strategy Through Economic Time. He wrote the preface for George Geis' Digital Deals and Marc Farley's Building Storage Networks.
He is the nontoxic behaviors coach at Lawson Software. May has a master's degree in industrial administration from Carnegie-Mellon University and a bachelor's degree in Asian studies from Dartmouth College.
Robert Morison
Robert Morison is an Executive Vice President and Director of Research for nGenera Corporation and Co-Director of the Business Analytics Concours program. He has been leading breakthrough research at the intersection of business, technology and human asset management for the past 20 years. Morison has worked with over 300 major organizations in North America and Europe and written or overseen more than 130 research and management reports on topics ranging from business re-engineering to electronic business to workforce demographics. He is co-author of Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent and two Harvard Business Review articles, one of which, “It’s Time to Retire Retirement,” was winner of the 2004 McKinsey Award.
Morison is a regular commentator on workforce issues on Nightly Business Report on PBS. Prior to nGenera, he held management positions with CSC Index and General Electric Information Services Company. He holds an A.B. from Dartmouth College and an M.A. from Boston University.
Don Parker
Don Parker is Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for SAS. Parker is responsible for the company's global financial operations, business analysis, financial and operational planning, and financial reporting, and oversees mergers and acquisitions. With an extensive and diversified financial background, Parker directs the finance organization in a way that serves as a testing ground for SAS' financial and business intelligence software suite, providing insights into what may be valuable to the CFOs and CEOs of current and potential SAS customers. Parker joined SAS in August 1993 after serving as Vice President and CFO of GESCAN International, a technology company acquired by SAS.
Parker graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor's degree in business administration with a concentration in accounting. Parker is a CPA and member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the North Carolina Association of CPAs.
David J. Reibstein
David Reibstein is the William S. Woodside Professor and Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. From 1987 to 1992, he was the Julian Aresty Professor of Marketing, Vice Dean and Director of the Wharton Graduate Division of the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute from 1999 to 2001 – a research institute that works with 70 leading companies bridging industry needs and academic research.
Prior to his appointment at Wharton, Reibstein was Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Harvard Business School (1975) and a Visiting Professor of Marketing at INSEAD at Fontainebleau, France (1983) and at Stanford University (1987). He was featured in FORTUNE magazine as one of the nation’s eight “Favorite Business School Professors” and was recently named by Business Week as one of the “pick of the B-school crop” of professors. He has received the Wharton School’s Excellence in Teaching Award every year he has taught since it was initiated in 1982. In the past year, he has co-authored two books, Marketing Metrics and Financial Performance and Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Manager Should Master.
Reibstein received his PhD in industrial administration at Purdue University; he was in the MBA program at Tulane University; and he obtained his BA in statistics and political science and BS in business administration at the University of Kansas. He received an honorary master’s from the University of Pennsylvania.
Michael E. Thompson
Mike Thompson is one of the founders of Waterstone Analytics, a firm that provides advanced advisory and implementation services to deliver advanced predictive analytics. Thompson brings analytical insight and practical experience to the process of identifying and implementing strategic initiatives to compete through analytics. Prior to helping found Waterstone, Thompson was a Partner with Ernst & Young management consulting, where he saved hundreds of millions of dollars for clients in the United States and Europe though programs using advanced analytic methods. He has also served as Senior Advisor, Private Sector, and Senior Management Scientist at the RAND Corporation.
Before moving to consulting, Thompson was Vice President of supply chain systems and operations for Office Depot during a period of explosive growth. As part of the turnaround management team at another large retailer, he led demand management, pricing optimization and micro-marketing initiatives that helped bring the company out of bankruptcy.
He earned a BA from Cornell University, completed the executive education program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and earned an MPhil and PhD with the highest distinction from the RAND Graduate School, where he also held a teaching fellowship in econometrics.
Bill Waszak
Bill Waszak is Vice President and Chief Information Officer for The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company. He is responsible for the company’s global information technology operations and services. Prior to this position, Waszak was Vice President of Business Development, which included support of worldwide supply chain, research and development and information technology strategic initiatives.
Prior to Scotts Miracle-Gro, Waszak held multiple executive positions with Nalco Chemical in Chicago, Limited Brands in Columbus, OH and the former Ernst & Young consulting organization for nine years, specializing in business transformation and information technology.
Waszak has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Arizona State University and an MBA degree from Cleveland State University.
Susan Zankman
Susan Zankman is Senior Vice President for Marriott International Inc.’s Information Resources Finance and Management Services department. Zankman joined Marriott in 2000 and is currently responsible for Marriott’s Information Resources (IR) finance, technology procurement, vendor relations, voice telecommunications and financial and strategic planning. Since joining Marriott, Zankman has developed value metrics for the company’s Information Resources division, working closely with internal business partners, IR leaders and external organizations to establish appropriate benchmarks for Marriott’s technology organization.
Prior to joining Marriott, Zankman worked for Georgia Pacific for more than 10 years. In her last position at that company, she was Director of Information Resources Financial Management Services. She has also held positions in finance and management with Equifax and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Zankman is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania, where she received a BS in medical technology and a BA in biology. She also holds an MBA in accounting and finance from Emory University.
