SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Luciano Aprile, Director Data Center Operations Solutions, Schneider Electric

Lou Aprile is the Director of Data Center Operations Solutions. His responsibility includes offer marketing, strategy and sales Schneider Electric operates many of the largest datacenters in the world and delivers operational excellence through rigorous processes and discipline supported by a digital foundation.

A seasoned sales and marketing executive, Lou has deep domain experience in datacenter infrastructure solutions and managed services as well as skills ranging from relationship management, solution selling and leading cross-functional international teams. His previous position with Schneider Electric was Global Data Center Portfolio Manager for IBM. Lou earned a BEng in Electrical Engineering from Ryerson University and has held a Professional Engineer designation for 22 years.

Igor Arouca, Sr. Principal Consultant, Liferay

Igor Arouca joined Liferay just after earning a master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2013. He also holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and brings more than 13 years of experience designing and implementing enterprise-level applications. At Liferay, Igor works as a Sr. Principle Lead helping clients from various industries on their digital transformation journey. Many of those clients have been actively moving to the cloud and Igor is helping them design and implement scalable and performant architectures.

Patrick Cannon, VP, US Signal Company

Pat Cannon is currently the Vice President of Technical Sales at US Signal and brings over 15 years of IT Consulting and Leadership experience to the US Signal team. A seasoned professional, Pat has extensive experience architecting scalable, secure and resilient solutions for customers within a wide variety of industries. Pat’s experience as an IT consultant allows him to look at business objectives and technology options producing solutions that have a meaningful impact for customer operation.

Brendan Caulfield, Co-founder, ServerCentral Turing Group

Highly adept in complex processes and partner models, Brendan is a hands-on leader with a record of helping companies navigate challenges with calm confidence, and his easy manner makes for skillful collaborations and lasting relationships. He can shepherd ambitious initiatives from plan to implementation without a hiccup.

Kendra Karczewski, Manager, Stratosphere Networks

Kendra has more than six years of experience in the contact center and unified communication space, working with clients to consult on and provide solutions unique to every business environment. Based on how businesses interact with their employees and customers, she and our team of specialists design communication platforms by pairing different unified communication, contact center, and network/carrier solutions, including SD-WAN.

Alison Kassel, CIO, Workforce Management Group, TrueBlue

Alison Kassel is Chief Information Officer, Workforce Management Group, TrueBlue. She is a versatile business technology leader, with experience in developing strategies, transforming organizations, implementing portfolio management and governance models, and delivering solutions enabling organizations to achieve their strategic and operating plan objectives. Alison was CIO of Seaton before its acquisition by TrueBlue in 2014. Prior to that, Alison has held significant IT roles for highly respected organizations such as U.S. Cellular, McDonalds, Motorola, NutraSweet, and Andersen Consulting.

Alison is on the Board of Directors for Have Dreams, a non-profit organization which serves children, teens, and adults impacted by Autism Spectrum Disorder. She is also an advisory member to i.c. Stars, a non-profit organization that prepares inner-city youth for careers in information technology and dedication to community involvement and leadership. Alison has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the University of Iowa and has completed Executive Education programs at The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. She is Certified in the Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), and is a Certified Change Agent.

Patricia Kumpula, Vice President and Divisional CIO, Allstate

Patty Kumpula, vice president of Allstate Insurance Company, serves as the divisional chief information officer within Allstate Personal Lines Technology, responsible for Consumer Technology.

Patty joined Allstate in 1989 and held several key IT roles over the last 29 years within the Allstate Life & Retirement organization, where she provided strategic technology insights and collaborated with business partners to deliver cutting edge life and retirement advancements to improve the agent and customer experience.

She transitioned to the Consumer Technology organization in 2018 and currently leads the engineering organization for Allstate-branded consumer facing technologies, including mobile and web software products used by Allstate customers. Patty also manages policy document production systems and leads the Online Analytics and Search Engine Optimization team, which leverages insights from digital activity to improve the capabilities and discoverability of Allstate-wide digital assets.

Patty obtained her bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership from Dominican University and studied abroad while attending the Milwaukee School of Engineering University.

Kevin McGinley, Field CTO, Snowflake Computing

Kevin is currently a Field CTO at Snowflake Computing, focused on advising customers on the best way to integrate Snowflake into their Analytics architecture. He has designed and developed Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence systems for Fortune 500 companies since the mid-1990’s. Kevin also speaks at popular conferences, hosted a data-centric podcast, authored a vlog, wrote many blog posts, and was recognized in the Oracle space with the ACE Director distinction.

Ram Narain, Senior Vice President-Enterprise PMO; M&A; Business Transformation, Anixter

Ram Narain is the Senior Vice President of Enterprise PMO; M&A for Anixter Inc. He leads a global team focused on driving organizational change and transformation to deliver successful business outcomes. He has full enterprise accountability for the Technology Strategy & Planning; Portfolio/Project Management; Organizational Change & Business Process Management and M&A Integration functions.

Ram is currently the Program leader for Anixter’s multiyear Business Transformation Program that comprises of Digital; Process; full ERP Cloud migration and Workplace initiatives. This program will help drive Anixter’s organic and inorganic growth strategy by streamlining Anixter’s global processes and technology platform. 

Prior to joining Anixter, Ram was a Senior Director of Global Initiatives and Planning at Aon Plc. where he led the execution of the Transformation Office through a complex acquisition and successfully setup a $450M IT Portfolio. Prior to Aon he served as a Consulting Program Director at IBM Global Services where he worked with F500 Clients in the areas of Technology Strategy; PMO setup; Large Scale Program Delivery and M&A Integration.

Ram holds a Bachelors and Masters in Chemical Engineering and a Masters in Management from Northwestern University. In addition to CSM, PMP and ITILv3 certifications he also an IBM Certified Executive Program Manager.

Shaelyn Otikor, Senior Vice President | Global Strategy, Corporate & Institutional Services, Northern Trust

Shaelyn is a Senior Vice President and Global Strategy Specialist in the Corporate and Institutional (C&IS) business unit at Northern Trust, a financial services company headquartered in Chicago. C&IS is dedicated to servicing fund managers and asset owners with a broad range of products.

Shaelyn is responsible for developing and leading the business unit’s global workforce strategy for 9,000+ employees across 20 countries. Her position includes diversity and inclusion, talent management, employee engagement, location strategy, and digital technology.

During her 23-year career at Northern Trust she has held multiple positions related to business development, operations, software upgrades, client relationship management, global program management, European financial regulation post-economic crisis, and corporate social responsibility publishing three annual reports (2010-2012) located at www.northerntrust.com/csr. She has also relocated to London twice on multi-year assignments to lead projects across Northern Trust’s European offices.

Shaelyn obtained her bachelor’s from DePaul University where she majored in international project management with a minor in computer science. She received her MBA from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Jeff Roseman, Director IT Infrastructure & Security, Wilton Brands

Jeff is an experienced IT executive with over two decades of experience in both technology management and consulting roles. With experience in global business, marketing, sales, business process re-engineering, and as an IT director, CIO and consultant, he has worked both sides of the technology world. Mr. Roseman possesses an extensive background working with regional, national, and international businesses in a variety of industries including professional services, healthcare, distribution, manufacturing, legal, real estate, construction, and non-profit. He has a broad knowledge of IT strategy, networking, telecommunications, training & development, systems integration, mergers and acquisitions, facility relocation, and business continuity planning.

Mr. Roseman continues to be successful moving IT teams from a crises management mentality to predictive, proactive, disciplined organization. He has previously lectured on social media & networking, IT leadership, customer relationship management, endpoint security, and disaster recovery planning. Mr. Roseman has a bachelor’s degree and an MBA in Information Systems and Marketing from the University of Iowa. He mentors undergraduate/MBA students in the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business and serves on College’s SoMAC board. He lives in Wheaton with his wife and two teenage daughters.

Kirti Vaidya, Vice President, Business Architecture and Transformation, Gallagher Bassett

An IT executive with demonstrated vision and leadership in Business Process driven Application Transformation, Customer Engagement based enterprise-wide Agile Process Implementation, and Service-focused Integration Architecture. Leader and Product Manager of public API offerings. Author and practitioner of agile processes at scale. Subject matter expert and strategic partner for VPs, CTOs, and CIOs. Thought leading speaker and panelist at many industry conferences. Lived and worked in India, Germany, Australia, Japan, and USA.

Cor Winkler Prins, CEO and Co-Founder, 4me

Cor Winkler Prins is the CEO and co-founder of 4me, the first service management solution that enables seamless collaboration between enterprises and their external providers. He started his career in the service management industry in 1996 helping to set up the global consulting organization for, what later became, HP OpenView Service Desk. As a consultant, Cor has assisted many large enterprises over the years with their global ITSM deployments. These include Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and Roche.

His work had a major impact on the service management industry when in 1999 he developed the first comprehensive set of integrated ITIL-based ITSM processes. The model includes detailed work instructions for IT professionals. This set of process definitions and implementation practices was used by ITSM consultants in more than 20 countries when it was acquired in 2007 by BMC Software.

Cor’s main interests are the financial aspects of service management and helping managers optimize service levels while continuously driving down service costs.

Venu Yalavarthi, Global Head of Enterprise Architecture, Ingredion

Venu Yalavarthi is the Global Head of Enterprise Architecture at Ingredion, a leading global ingredients solutions company. Prior to current role, he led EA and Data Management practices in fortune 500 companies including Walgreens, Whirlpool, and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Venu established multiple EA foundations and successfully led several business and technology transformation initiatives in Digital Transformation, Customer Experience, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation, Big Data, IoT, and Application Rationalization.

He is a dynamic thought leader, and innovator focused on business transformation/optimization, technology strategies, roadmaps, IT-business alignment, IT powered business innovation, governance in realization of business strategies driving competitive advantage, sustainable growth and business value.

Venu holds Master of Science degree in Electrical & Electronics Engineering; and he was a member of SIM EA Working Group in advancing and promoting EA practice.