Speakers

Prior to founding TechStrategyLabs, Sumitro worked in senior management positions in Thomson Financial and ThomsonReuters. His core background is executive management consulting rooted to firms such as Ernst & Young and Capgemini.

Sumitro has over 21 years of experience in technology strategy consulting and product strategy. His areas of interests are redefining technology value propositions, resolving bleeding-edge technology myths, technology adoption and alignment, using technology as a "game changer" and, assessing and predicting financial impacts of technology decisions.

Sumitro holds an MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University. He also holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics, and an MBA from India.

A founder and principal of Data Miners with twenty years of experience applying data mining techniques to business problems in marketing and CRM. With his colleague, Gordon Linoff, Michael has authored three of the most widely read and respected books on data mining, Data Mining Techniques, Mastering Data Mining, and Mining the Web (all published by John Wiley & Sons). These best sellers in the field have been translated into many languages.

A data mining educator as well as a consultant, Michael is in demand as a keynote speaker and seminar leader in the area of data mining generally and the application of data mining to customer relationship management in particular.

Prior to founding Data Miners, Michael spent 8 years at Thinking Machines Corporation. There he specialized in the application of massively parallel supercomputing techniques to business and marketing applications, including one of the largest database marketing systems of the time. He later ran a data mining laboratory for Naviant Technology Solutions.

Recent projects include clustering towns to create localized content editions of a major metropolitan newspaper and modeling anniversary churn for a wireless telephone company.

Richard Boire's experience in database marketing and data mining  dates back to 1983, when he received an MBA from Concordia University in Finance and Statistics. Immediately after, he joined Reader's Digest where he developed segmentation and modeling routines for all direct marketing programs.

Richard's progressive career path led him to American Express, where he pioneered predictive modelling technology for all direct marketing programs. He was quickly promoted to senior manager, responsible for credit risk and market behaviour segmentation. As a result of this expanded role, he pioneered the development of models which targeted the acquisition of new customers based on return on investment.

With this experience, Richard formed his own consulting company back in 1994 which is now called the Boire Filler Group , a Canadian leader in offering  analytical and database services to companies seeking solutions  to their existing data mining or database marketing challenges.

Richard is a recognized authority on data mining and is among a very few, select top five experts in this field in Canada, with expertise and knowledge that is difficult, if not impossible to replicate in Canada. He gives seminars on segmentation and data mining for such organizations as Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), Direct Marketing News,Direct Marketing Association Toronto and AARM. His articles have appeared in Direct Marketing News, Strategy Magazine, and Marketing Magazine. He has taught applied statistics and database marketing at Concordia University, Vanier College in Montreal, and  Humber College in Toronto and is currently a part-time lecturer at both George Brown College and Seneca College   in Toronto. Richard is currently  Chair at the CMA's Database and Technology Committee  where he  has chaired  sub-committees  responsible for  both the 2000 Database and Technology Seminar as well as the  2002 Database and Technology Seminar and has currently chaired the first-ever Customer Profitability Conference  which was  held on Nov.17/2005. He has co-authored  white papers on the following topics: ‘Best Practices in Data Mining’ as well as   ‘Profitability:  The State of Evolution among Canadian Companies’

Chris Bowman has been in education since 1969 as a teacher, an assistant principal, a principal, and a supervisor of transportation, technology, federal programs, and middle schools.  He is now retired after serving as the superintendent of schools in the City of Baker School System in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.   I have a picture for you if you choose to use it.  Please correct the fact that I am not the retired superintendent of The Lafourche Parish School System.

Dr. John Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington DC (www.datamininglab.com).  Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on Federal, commercial, investment, and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, stock selection, image recognition, biometrics, process optimization, cross-selling, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market timing, and fraud detection.

John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he’s an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining.  Prior to 14 years at ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice's Computational & Applied Mathematics department.

Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is a frequent keynote speaker, and was co-chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, in Paris.  John’s courses on analysis techniques -- taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs -- are noted for their clarity and effectiveness.  Dr. Elder was honored to serve for 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for National Security.  His book on Practical Data Mining, with Bob Nisbet and Gary Miner, was published in May 2009. John is a follower of Christ and the proud father of 5. 

Regina Gray is the Vice President of the Strategic Insight Services team for Experian Marketing Services. With proven results and expertise, Regina leads her team in providing consulting and analytical services to help facilitate clients in their efforts to acquire and retain customers, increase profitability and return-on-investment from marketing campaigns, and communicate effectively.  Regina oversees the teams delivering strategy and planning, customer insights and targeting, and campaign management services.  In addition, she supervises all phases of professional services and analytics projects including providing up-front client consultation, assessing business needs, analyzing complex internal and external data, model delivery, and post-campaign assessment of model performance.   

As a nationally recognized speaker at industry conferences and events, Regina informs and enlightens her audiences to the realm of possibilities in marketing strategy. Regina  has executed and supervised consulting and analytical projects for clients across all vertical markets, including, retail, catalog, publishing, financial, travel, fundraising, insurance, consumer packaging goods, telecommunications, cable and health care industries.

Graduating with honors from both, Rutgers University, where she earned her Bachelors Degree in Mathematics, and Montclair State University, where she earned her Masters Degree in Statistics, Regina brings a richly diverse analytical and mathematical view as Vice President of Strategic Insight Services.  Her previous experience teaching mathematics and statistics, both at the high school and undergraduate college level, and as a statistical consultant analyzing and reporting survey results for large university-based programs, has enabled Regina to apply innovative strategies and techniques in obtaining her goals and objectives.  Regina’s commitment and vision make her an admirable advocate with valued Experian clients in their pursuit of individual success.

Duncan is the leader of brand and communications research Hall & Partner’s Analytics Practice which is a leading in unlocking the analytical promise of brand research. Previously he held leadership positions in analytics at Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Experian and Simmons Market Research. He began his career in the UK working for Experian, working on marketing analytics for financial services and retail customers like Barclays Bank, HSBC and Discover Card.

Experian moved him to the US in 2000, where he led analytical product development and consulting, working with companies like Sears, Best Buy, American Express and Citibank. After a spell leading Simmons Marketing Research efforts to develop new analytical products based on their syndicated research data, Duncan took a senior position at IRI leading their analytical technology practice and delivering solutions built around marketing mix modeling and econometric analysis for the major names in the CPG industry such as Kraft, Campbell's soup and Sara Lee. A graduate of the University of Warwick, UK, with a masters degree in Marketing Research from Nottingham Business School and an Executive MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Mr. Isson started his professional career as a Statistician at Credit scoring department team at Credit Lyonnais Paris; A France leading Bank Company. When moved to Canada 11 years ago Mr. Isson worked as principal statistician at Universite du Quebec at Hull. Where he worked conjointly with several Professors for various publications including Youth Smoking Behavior Study utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen Fishbein).

Mr. Isson has a Master Degree in Mathematics and Applied statistics from Universite Pierre & Marie Curie Paris 6 France. He has several articles related to his successful implementation of Business Intelligence And Predictive Analytics solutions; (1to1 media, ItWorld Canada, SAS Magazine, CRM Magazine Scott directories, Direction informatique, It Business Canada): He gave several interviews on Canadian local business news magazines and TV to cover Business Intelligence and Monster Employment Index.

He has been speaker for SAS users groups and at IDC events like the most recent 2009 CIO of the year event in Denmark. He is member of conference board of Canada, and Canadian Statisticians Association interviews on Canadian local business news magazines and TV to cover Business Intelligence and Monster Employment Index. He is member of conference board of Canada, and Canadian Statisticians Association.

Bill Tuohig draws on nearly a decade of market research experience in his role as senior director of product management for J.D. Power and Associates’ Web Intelligence division. His expertise involves mining marketing intelligence from social media, which, in turn, is used by Fortune 1000 companies to drive their marketing programs and product innovation. Bill serves as the bridge between the business and technology sides of the business, contributing to both long-term product strategy and near-term development roadmaps, and providing guidance to the development and packaging of the company’s technological advances in machine learning and natural language processing.

Bill formerly served as the vice president of product management for Umbria, a company that was acquired by J.D. Power and Associates in 2008. Prior to Umbria, he oversaw voice-of-the-customer (VoC) solutions for Informative Inc., helping customers such as Bose, Sprint and Mars with product development, marketing and branding initiatives. Bill also spent several years consulting for prominent firms such as Deloitte Consulting, Coopers & Lybrand and Sapient.

Bill received an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a bachelor’s of science degree in systems engineering from the University of Virginia. He is the co-author of a patent on “Tribe or Group-Based Analysis of Social Media Including Generating Intelligence from a Tribe’s Weblogs or Blogs.”

Dave Wells is a consultant, mentor, teacher, and author in the field of Business Intelligence (BI). He brings to every endeavor a unique and balanced perspective about the relationships of business and technology. This perspective – refined through a career of more than thirty-five years that encompassed both business and technical roles – helps to align business and information technology in the most effective ways. Dave focuses on strategic, functional, and organizational alignment as the keys to building and sustaining valuable and high-impact BI cultures and systems.

Dave writes a regular column at B-Eye-Network (b-eye-network.com/wells) and is a contributor to other trade publications. He is a co-author of the book BI Strategy: How to Create and Document. Dave is a frequent speaker at industry events ranging from international conferences to local group meetings such as DAMA and CIPS.  His consulting practice focuses on areas such as BI program management, BI program assessment and revitalization, BI architecture, and applied business analytics.