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Speaker Biographies
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Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems
Susan Couture
Vice President, US Region Customer Services |
Susan Couture is currently Vice President, Program Management/ Business Improvement/ Learning & Development for Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems (JJHCS). In 2006, she drove over $50 million of improvement in the company through various improvement and learning methodologies. Her ability to identify critical business needs, create vision statements, and complete correlation analyses to determine process improvement focus areas are well noted. Susan was a JJHCS Chairman’s Award Recipient in 2005 and 2006 and her leadership skills have also been recognized through her Standards of Leadership Awards in 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003 and 1999.
Susan has served as Johnson & Johnson’s Vice President of Managed Markets Strategic Initiatives. During that time she was responsible for the establishment of Program Management Office to develop and execute 25 concurrent projects redefining Johnson & Johnson’s approach to the marketplace. Susan also launched the Together Rx Access program in January of 2005, as chair of the Operations Committee. Susan’s use of the business approach to integrate Process Excellence tools in JIT fashion in this organization combined with disciplined use of change management, communication, sound personnel management and outstanding project management has been evident in all teams and enabled the corporation to achieve milestone targets.
Another contribution to Johnson & Johnson was Susan’s time spent as the Vice President of Strategic Planning & Process Excellence in Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical, Inc.- the largest pharmaceutical company within Johnson & Johnson. Responsible for the Strategic Planning Process, and geared towards producing increased business performance, Susan simplified templates thereby reducing man-hours by 50%. As Vice President of Quality Management, Susan focused on executive leadership development and managed training administration for Leadership, Black Belt, Green Belt and Train-the-Trainer programs. These programs educated 500 leaders and the new type of methodology has yielded over $700 million in benefits in its first full year of deployment.
Before joining Johnson & Johnson, Susan was the Vice President for POSTAGE BY PHONE® Worldwide, directly contributing $100 million in revenue, and was rated #1 Regional Technical Manager when she worked for AT&T before that. She obtained her Master of Business Administration from the University of Connecticut in 1982. Among other certifications, Susan is a certified Change Leadership Workshop Trainer, and Project Management Professional.
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Abbott Labs
Simon Goldberg
Director, Electronic Communications, Corporate Public Affair |
Simon Goldberg currently serves as the Director for Electronic Communications, within Corporate Public Affairs. In this role, Simon serves to provide the Corporation strategic direction in regards to Abbott’s corporate social media, internet/intranet, and search presence. Additionally, during 2006 he led development and launch of a brand new corporate intranet portal designed for use across the corporation. Prior to joining Corporate Public Affairs, Simon was the Director for Scientific Communications, Global Pharmaceutical Research and Development, within the Pharmaceutical Products Group at Abbott. In this role, Simon served to provide strategic communications support
for the Chief Scientific Officer. Additionally, he provided direct communications support for the COO, Pharmaceutical Products Group, both externally and internally. Simon has been at Abbott for 5 years.
Before joining Abbott Simon was an Investment Analyst focused in Biotechnology, and Director of Life Sciences at The Coates Group, an entrepreneurial investment group located in Lake Forest and Chicago, Illinois. Prior to that he worked at the American Medical Association (AMA), first as Director for New Science Policy, later taking on Scientific Marketing, as well as developing the Genetics and Molecular Medicine Group.
Simon was trained as a Medical Genetic Counselor, having practiced in California before moving to Chicago to work at the AMA. Additionally, he is trained as a Molecular Geneticist, and has completed an MBA.
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Dell
William Grunstrom
Head of Business Process Improvement (retired) |
William retired from Dell and is now leading the BPInnovation Group, LLC, a group of senior consultants that focus is on assisting organizations in identifying and achieving business process improvement quickly and effectively.
Having spent the last 11 year at Dell, William was one of the key founders of Dell’s BPI initiative. He developed and managed the Global Business Process Improvement Team to drive the BPI programs worldwide an effort that has achieved $11.5B in documented saving in 9 years. A Dell Black Belt, William has served as a Senior Program Manager for Dell’s Global BPI Team and managed, designed and implemented Dell’s BPI program for Suppliers administered by the Taiwan Government. He also established a BPI program focused on assisting Customers in driving business improvement within their organizations. Currently, William is serving as Acting Director of Global BPI.
Prior to joining Dell Inc., William was the President of WGI, Inc. of Henderson, Nevada, a consulting firm focusing on Benchmarking, Process Improvement, Quality Systems/Organization and Team Development. William served national and multinational organizations from 1994 to 1997 through WGI, Inc. From 1990 to 1994 William was a Senior Vice President with the American Productivity & Quality Center, of Houston, Texas and during that time, he worked within the areas of Quality Improvement, Benchmarking and Organizational Change serving both public and private organizations worldwide. During the 1980 to 1990 time frame Motorola Inc. employed him in Schaumburg, Illinois, working in Motorola University as a Product Manager implementing organizational improvement initiatives throughout the corporation.
Example of Organizations Served: Dell Inc and Dell Suppliers, General Instrument Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Ford Motor Credit Company, Motorola Inc. General Electric, Hong Kong Bank, Shell Oil, Finnair and numerous other national and international organizations.
William Grundstrom’s Specialties:
Strategic Planning (Hoshin), Enterprise Innovation, Black Belt BPI Applications and Consulting (Lean-Six Sigma), Change Management, Individual & Organizational Development, Process Re-engineering, Quality Systems Applications, Organizational Benchmarking and Resource Development
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Aflac
Teresa Robinson
Senior Manager, Business Process Excellence
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Teresa Robinson is a Senior Manager for Aflac’s Business Process Excellence Department. In her current role, she provides quality management and process improvement support to the Claims Division.
Teresa has more than 13 years of leadership experience. She joined Aflac in 1987 as a correspondence specialist is Client Services. Prior to her current role, she was the Senior Manager for the Best Practices division, which provided functional training, and knowledge management for Aflac’s internal operations: Client Services, Claims, Customer Service Center and New Business.
Teresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Management from the University of Phoenix. She is an ASQ Certified Quality Improvement Specialist and has a Certified Quality Manager/Operational Excellence designation. She is certified in Lean Office and is currently finalizing her Six Sigma Black Belt certification through Auburn University.
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Eli Lilly
Chad Hall
Virtual Sales
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Chad Hall is currently working on his seventh year in the pharmaceutical industry and has extensive expertise in sales/marketing and developing sales force strategies. He started off his career in field sales where he had the opportunity to launch three successful neuroscience products to market. Over the last three years, and through rigorous piloting efforts, Chad's been involved with understanding and communicating the learnings back to Eli Lilly and Company's US sales organizations the importance of including customer insights and channel preferences in their marketing mixes. Chad has championed, and has been recognized for his contributions in identifying on-line marketing solutions and telesales capabilities that allow sales representatives and marketing teams the ability to effectively conduct and monitor their business, while at the same time improve customer engagement.
Chad completed his undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, and received his MBA from The Ohio State University.
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The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center
Diana Oreck
Vice President of Global Learning and Leadership Center
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Diana Oreck is Vice President of Global Learning and Leadership Center. She is responsible for all internal and external training initiatives of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC worldwide. Diana oversees thousands of requests for information and all learning opportunities including internal and external classes and presentations. She brings over 25 years of experience in the hospitality industry to her role, and since coming to The Ritz-Carlton in April of 2004, she has already made significant improvements in processes directly contributing to customer satisfaction and thus profitability.
Diana was previously Senior Vice President of Franchise Services for Westin Hotels & Resorts – North America (parent company Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.) where she was responsible for all aspects of the Westin franchise portfolio including supervision of the New Build or Conversion Process for all Westin franchise hotels and monitoring quality assurance and standards consistency issues.
She began her hotel career with Hyatt Hotels in Orlando, then spent five years at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York as Director of Training, Quality Control Manager and Executive Assistant Manager. In 1990 she joined Interstate Hotels Corporation in Pittsburgh as Director of Quality Improvement, where she was responsible for all aspects of Guest Satisfaction and Total Quality Management for 200 hotels. Diana has also served as CEO for her own firm, The Quality Profit Control Company.
Diana was educated in Mexico, England and Switzerland and received her Degree in Hotel Studies from the Ecole Hoteliere in Lausanne, Switzerland. She speaks three languages and is a member of the National Association for Female Executives. She was inducted into The Waldorf-Astoria Distinguished Alumni Association in 1998 and the Academy of Women Achievers in 1985. She currently sits on the Board of The Washington Area Corporate University Consortium.
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Thomson Reuters
Jeff Heard
VP of Organizational Development |
Jeff Heard is Vice-President, Organizational Development for Thomson Reuters, where he works with sales organizations on a variety of sales effectiveness issues. As part of his role, he coordinates the activities of the Sales Best Practices Council at Thomson Reuters.
Before assuming his current position, Heard was Vice-President of Sales and Marketing for Media General’s newspaper division where he was responsible for driving the growth strategy for the company’s 25 daily newspapers and more than 100 weekly publications. Heard joined Media General as Vice-President and Group Publisher of the company’s community newspaper operations in North Carolina. Prior to joining Media General, he was Chief Operating Officer for Thomson Reuters Newspaper’s South Georgia operations. Heard held a variety of leadership positions at Thomson Reuters Newspapers including Vice-President of Marketing for Thomson Reuters South Georgia and Publisher of the Valdosta Daily Times.
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Boost Mobile
Dann Allen
Senior Manager, Customer Lifecycle Management – Customer Experience
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As senior manager of customer experience for Boost Mobile, the prepaid wireless division of Sprint Nextel Corporation, Dann Allen is responsible for all aspects of Customer Experience Management (CEM) within the company. Allen’s extensive career in CEM consulting lends to expert leadership, strategic and tactical direction for Boost’s company-wide initiatives that link and improve the overall customer and employee experience.
Prior to joining Boost in 2007, Allen served as the head of U.S. consulting and business development for Beyond Philosophy, a leading customer experience consulting firm based in London. While serving at Beyond Philosophy, Allen established the company’s U.S. presence in Atlanta, provided CEM counsel through various national and international speaking engagements and regularly consulted with Fortune 100 companies. These Fortune 100 companies represented key industries, such as telecommunications, financial services, technology and retail. Allen is also recognized as a published CEM industry leader with several contributions to books, webcasts, online articles and magazines.
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Teradata
Ronald Swift
Vice President of Customer Relationship Management
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Ronald S. Swift is an internationally known consultant, author, luminary, and strategist in the areas of Marketing and Customer Relationship Management, Financial Management Systems, Business Performance Management, Demand and Supply Chain Management, Enterprise Data Warehousing, and Electronic Commerce.
For more than 30 years, Swift has assisted hundreds of clients on six continents to achieve their strategies and goals. He is a popular and thought-provoking speaker at numerous conferences and specially designed forums for management of the world's leading corporations.
He co-developed the process model for NCR's and Teradata’s original "Data Warehouse Methodology" Model Process, and is one of the team of contributors for the "IBM Architecture for Managing the Information Systems Business".
Swift is Vice-President, Cross Industry Solutions for Teradata Corporation. Prior to joining NCR and the Teradata Division in 1996, Swift was a senior partner with an International Consulting Firm, following a successful 22-year career at IBM. At IBM his contributions included field and headquarters responsibilities that spanned many customer implementation projects, marketing programs, educational functions, executive conferences and institutes, end-user computing, decision support systems, executive information systems, Information Warehouse and Business Intelligence, along with strategy and business development roles in the USA and Europe.
His business, professional, and technical experiences cross numerous industries including Banking, Financial Services, Brokerage, Insurance, Retail, Communications, Transportation, and Government. Ron’s contributions also include many years of teaching and guest lecturing at colleges and universities in graduate, management, and professional educational programs.
He is also a frequent and popular speaker at major symposiums and executive forums, and in October 2002, was awarded the position of Life Senior Executive Lecturer at the University of Georgia's Terry Business School in Athens, Georgia.
Swift is the author of, "Accelerating Customer Relationships", and is currently working on another book about increasing business value and the economics of marketing through active customer, operational, strategic, and financial management analytics. In addition, he has authored a wide variety of articles for numerous publications and online forums.
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Satmetrix
Richard Owen
President & CEO
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Richard Owen is President and CEO of Satmetrix, responsible for all aspects of strategy and day-to-day operations. Prior to joining our team, he was Chairman and CEO of NASDAQ-traded AvantGo, Inc., the leading provider of Enterprise Mobility Solutions to Fortune 1000 companies. AvantGo was successfully sold to Sybase, Inc. Before running AvantGo, Richard spent eight years at Dell Computer Corporation in various executive positions, most recently as vice president of Dell Online Worldwide. He was responsible for all aspects of Dell's Internet strategy and online business revenues on a worldwide basis—building Dell's online business to cover 50 percent of the company's sales volume. Richard began his career as a consultant for KPMG Management Consultants, where he worked for European high-technology manufacturers in the EMEA region on marketing strategy and business development, including Hewlett Packard and Apple. Richard holds a Bachelor's degree from Nottingham University in England and a Master's degree from MIT Sloan School of Management.
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KDH Systems, Inc.
Susan L. Brown
CMO
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Susan L. Brown, CMO, KDH Systems Inc., has over 20 years experience in creating and implementing strategies to drive market share and branding for new technologies and web-based products. Her consulting career includes long-term assignments with Apple Computer, Intel, Sun Microsystems, as well as developing a Communications Plan for a $350M division of Cisco Systems. Her expertise includes using Web 2.0 tools for building and sustaining customer relationships.
Her Healthcare IT experience also includes Vice President of Marketing and Strategic Alliances for HealthCenter Internet Services, a software firm specialising in electronic cardiology applications. Ms. Brown created global marketing and communications strategy as well as successful strategic alliances and partnerships including the American Heart Association. She directed marketing for Promia Technology, an Internet healthcare portal tool set developer, as well as leading a team to launch and train physicians and staff in HealthConnect electronic clinical applications for Kaiser Permanente, the largest change from healthcare paper to electronic processes in the US. Ms. Brown holds a BS from Northwestern University, Certificate in Bio/Pharma Marketing Trends from UC Berkeley and graduate studies at Stanford University.
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