Zach Blumenfeld, Data Science Product Specialist, Neo4j
Zach Blumenfeld is a graph enthusiast who helps data scientists, engineers, and business leaders understand and implement Graph Analytics to solve challenging business problems.
He has experience with a wide range of analytical challenges, including criminal fraud detection, identity resolution, and recommendation systems. Serving in both data science and software developer capacities, Zach has applied graph computing for law enforcement and government entities in support of missions that counter drug trafficking, human smuggling, money laundering, and child exploitation. He has led the development and deployment of full stack graph systems designed to facilitate broad search and analytical query requirements.
Peter Chung, Director – Software Engineering, Wolters Kluwer
Peter Chung is an accomplished information technology leader with over 15 years of experience leading Business Intelligence (BI) and data architecture and strategies for global financial services, consumer products, and retail organizations. Currently Peter is the Director of Business Intelligence at Wolters Kluwer, where he is responsible for leading the global data and analytic strategy. He has extensive experience implementing data strategies and solutions to enable business insights and drive critical business decisions at all levels of the organization.
Peter holds a Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and an MBA from DePaul University. He and his family reside in the Chicagoland area.
Rob Fosnaugh, Sr. Manager – Enterprise Information Management, Brotherhood Mutual Insurance
Over the past 15 years I have grown BI (including enterprise data and reporting) from just me to a team of almost 20 IT folks along with partnering with over thirty business users who do the majority of all reporting and analytics of the company. This is across the entire company from Sales through Finance. We use SQL Server, WebFOCUS, and PowerBI to successfully support the business. The approach I take is organic growth through ownership and mentoring which builds the right solutions by the right people, not big projects that miss the mark when they don’t deliver because they lost sight, the target moved, or wasn’t built by and for those who know what they want.
Schafer Gizel, Senior Insights Consultant, 2ndWatch
As a senior consultant at 2nd Watch, Schafer architects and implements modern analytics platforms. He leverages six years of dedicated cloud database experience to provide creative, technology-agnostic solutions that support his clients’ strategic visions.
Nick Jones, Business Intelligence Analyst, Loyola University Chicago
Nick Jones has been working in higher education at Loyola University Chicago for twenty-one years and working directly with BI for the past eight. He started on the front lines as a data consumer in the School of Social Work, transferred to the Registration and Records Office to assist with the training and implementation of PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, and finally moved to the Business Intelligence team in IT. Nick serves as a liaison/translator of data needs seeing the final implementation of a trusted data warehouse at the university. During that implementation he gathered user requirements as well as coded operational reports in WebFOCUS and developed visual analytics in Power BI. Now, he applies his technical experience and knowledge of how the data is structured to work closely with users across the university. His approach is to encourage people to think of plain language questions that he then translates to the data architect/developers and facilitates a revision process.
In addition to BI work he is also a Chicago playwright and gigging electronic musician where he makes use of Mi.MU gloves to shape his music.
Greg Marsh, Principal Consultant, 2ndWatch
Greg Marsh has an extensive background in business strategy, software development and analytics. As a principal consultant at 2nd Watch, Greg combines over 15 years of technical experience with an MBA from Georgetown to help companies implement their strategic goals using technology and data.
Michael Scarpelli, Solutions Engineer, Sisense
Michael Scarpelli has been a part of every aspect of systems development, from programming to database design. He found his passion for data while at Disney/ABC Television. He also created the system which cataloged all the primetime shows there and used that knowledge to torment his friends. He earned his MS from Pace’s Seidenberg School of CSIS. Now hailing from Cincinnati, he leads an improv comedy group and does murder mysteries to keep his right brain engaged.
Volker Schulmeyer, Owner/Consultant at EAdvisory – Former Director of IT Strategy and Architecture at Caterpillar
Volker Schulmeyer currently consults at EAdvisory. He is a leader for Global Business and Application Enterprise Architecture. Prior to Caterpillar, Volker was at PepsiCo Inc. He held various leadership roles in development, technology to leading SAP Architecture globally for PepsiCo.
Prior to PepsiCo Volker worked at Deloitte Consulting and SAP Americas Inc. His expertise is in manufacturing and materials management, but Volker quickly moved into SAP transformation leadership roles.
He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Physics from UI Champaign/Urbana, a Master’s Degree in Physics from UCSD and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Volker was born and lived in Germany until his late 20s when he moved to the US.
Atif Usman, Global Director, Business Intelligence & Analytics, Zimmer Biomet
Certified chief data officer with a proven track record of leading enterprise-wide transformations involving business intelligence, strategy development and execution, data products, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning across multiple industries and verticals.
Expertise includes: Certified Chief Data Officer, Business Intelligence, Analytics Strategy & Governance, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Product Development, Enterprise Management, TensorFlow, Theano, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, SAP BI & BW, HANA, SQL, ABAP, JAVA, Python, MatLab