Raymond Anessi offers 30 years of practical, operational experience in all areas of IT Support, Technology Development, Training and Customer Service. His resume includes leadership and management of Hardware and Software development teams, Data Centers, Network Operations Centers and Service Desks, and IT organizations of 700+ personnel with working budgets of more than $100 million. Embracing ITIL Service Management principles in 1994, he has been an active proponent and architect of many ITIL based initiatives designed to bring strategic business objectives and everyday IT tactical and operational goals into alignment during each of these positions.

Mr. Anessi is an enthusiastic teacher with a passion for his subjects, and years of experience provide him with an enhanced set of relevant use cases for students to embrace, increasing his ability to bring the subject matter to students in practical and engaging terms. He is accomplished at all levels of ITIL instruction, including Service Manager lead, with class certification and satisfaction rates among the highest in the industry.

Steve Bell is a veteran Lean coach and educator. He serves on the faculty of the Lean Enterprise Institute and is a recipient of the Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence.

Steve enjoys helping his clients and workshop attendees to drive the waste out of business processes, improving speed, quality, cost, innovation, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction.

Steve has extensive experience helping IT organizations across a variety of industries, facilitating teams and helping enterprises to foster a culture of respect, quality, effective problem solving and continuous improvement of business processes and supporting information systems. He is the founder of Lean IT Strategies, a Lean IT management consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon.

In 2006 Steve authored Lean Enterprise Systems, Using IT for Continuous Improvement. This book applies Lean thinking to ERP and other enterprise wide systems. In 2010 he co-authored Lean IT: Enabling and Sustaining Your Lean Transformation. This book leverages Lean thinking to realize operational excellence in software development, IT operations, project management, and management systems .

For over 15 years, Alisa Blum, Principal Consultant at Alisa Blum & Associates, has combined an in-depth understanding of human behavior with innovative techniques to help organizations develop high-achieving employees. She has specialized in Attracting & Retaining Top Talent, Strengths-based Management Development, Cross-Generational Team Building,Customer Relations and Performance Optimization.

Alisa’s work has spanned numerous industries, with a passion for employee engagement whether it be in the technology sector or elsewhere. Some of her clients include: 3M, Hewlett-Packard, Computer Network Technologies, Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Providence Health Systems EAP, City of Portland and Tri-Met. Within the past five years she has been a featured speaker at the Oregon Employer’s Council Regional Conference, ASTD Regional Conferences, the Oregon Attorney Assistance Program Conference, the Professional Liability Fund Conference and the Western Regional International Public Management HR Conference.

Alisa has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology from Towson State University and a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Maryland. Her previous work experience includes being a training director, program manager, supervisor and psychotherapist.

Leslie Brunker is the founder and president of UNLIMITED POTENTIALS Consulting Services located in Portland, Oregon. She has been an organizational consultant for over twenty years. Ms. Brunker studied the areas of Interpersonal Communication and Organizational Development, receiving her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in these fields. Ms. Brunker is also affiliated with Marylhurst University as adjunct faculty.

Simulations and games are central tools in the facilitation and educational designs developed at Unlimited Potentials. These tools are active, innovative, educational, applicable, and fun. Ms. Brunker’s work has been published in local, national and international journals, training guides, and professional association newsletters. She is a published author of books, articles and training materials. Her work has also been featured in local and national radio, television and print media.

Ms. Brunker’s unique consulting, facilitating and training styles incorporate a balance of theory, technique demonstration, skill practice, group participation, and a joyful sense of humor. These combine to create a dynamic, integrative, and valuable presentation and learning environment. Participants can expect to learn practical skills that can be immediately applied, be challenged to perform at their very best, and at the same time find enjoyment in the learning process.

Sharon Buckmaster coaches and consults with organization leaders wanting to energize their workplace to achieve excellence. From her years as a leader in two Fortune 100 companies, as well as many years as a consultant across diverse industries, she has developed a clear perspective on organizational change that builds on individual and organization strengths to meet current challenges.

Sharon excels at working with leaders. All leaders.

Her long-standing interest in leadership for women led her to found the Women’s Center for Leadership as well as to her Ph.D. dissertation research called Standing Up and Standing Proud: Senior Executive Women Who Advocate for Gender-Equity. She is an associate of the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons College and currently teaches in the Master’s program for Applied Information Management at the University of Oregon.

Sharon sees the art of leadership as a creative endeavor shaped by context and character.

Duke Castle was part of a group that introduced the Natural Step sustainability framework to Oregon in 1997. The group’s goal was to show business and community organizations how they could move toward creating a sustainable society while maintaining a healthy economy. Since then he has been prominent in teaching organizations how to effectively integrate the Natural Step sustainability framework into their business planning and strategic operations.

He has conducted close to 400 sustainability trainings and briefings throughout the State of Oregon and other parts of the Pacific Northwest In 2000 he was asked to train Oregon state leaders on sustainability and The Natural Step as part of Governor Kitzhaber’s sustainability executive order.

Duke’s business experience includes ten years as a marketing manager at Hewlett Packard and fifteen years as a strategic planning and marketing consultant. He has a BS degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University and an MBA in marketing from Stanford.

Tom’s volunteering includes the City Club of Portland, where he serves on the Board of Governors.

Tom is the author of one book, countless articles, and he co-authored the chapter on Metrics and Performance Improvement for a textbook on Medical Trauma Care. Starting in 2010 his column runs twice a month in Oregon Business Magazine’s online edition.

Jeff Denning is an associate for O&A who trains and consults with O&A’s Fortune 1,000 clients across North America. His work spans numerous industries and varying roles that provide a diverse perspective about the human side of business.

Jeff is a published author with a forty-five year background in IT with broad experience in management, marketing, leadership, education, facilitation, consulting, and coaching/mentoring.

As an executive for a major computer manufacturer, Jeff had extensive exposure to a variety of industries including government, healthcare, manufacturing, entertainment, transportation, and finance. His knowledge of industry makes him conversant across numerous business segments.

Kenneth Emery is a senior facilitator and consultant for O&A. He has been recognized as a highly skilled senior executive with strong strategic planning and change management experience in diverse industries. He has effectively leveraged IT to enable organizational growth, change, and profitability. Mr. Emery has had responsibility for a Purchasing Department with $1Billion in annual expenditures for goods and services. He has sourced services directly for Information Systems & Technology, Telecommunications, Facilities, Environmental Services, Fleet, Security, and Logistics.

Most recently, Mr. Emery was Senior Vice-President of Information Management & Shared Services for the largest municipally-owned utility in the United States. At CPS Energy he had responsibility for Information Systems & Technology, Purchasing, Fleet & Facilities, Security, Process Improvement, and Strategic Planning. In this role, he led a management team to develop a strategic plan for the entire company. He also designed and implemented a corporate-wide process improvement program. In addition, he sponsored a management-coaching program.

Gabe Fasolino has been getting results for over 35 years. He took over a $10 million company that had lost $2.4 million in the prior 3 years. By engaging the employees through High Involvement Strategic Planning, he had the company operating at 11% profit in one year. The bank that intended to cancel the company’s line of credit instead extended additional credit of $600,000.

Gabe’s executive clients respond to the work they do with him with comments such as this: “A magnifying glass used to focus sunlight to ignite a flame . . . a combination of experience and highly creative problem solving . . . a robust energy based in the blend of mind and heart . . . Gabe Fasolino derives results.”

Gabe serves on the board of directors of PixelGigs, volunteers with PDX11′s mentoring project, and contributes locally and internationally through the Rotary Club of Portland and Kenya Keys for Special Needs.

Dawn Foster is a co-founder and board member of Legion of Tech, a non-profit chartered with organizing free events for the Portland, Oregon technology community. As part of her work with Legion of Tech, Dawn is an organizer for Portland BarCamp, Ignite Portland and other events. Dawn has more than 14 years of experience in business and technology with expertise in strategic planning, management, community building, community management, open source software, market research, social media, and RSS.

Dawn has experience and a passion for bringing people together through a combination of online communities and real-world events. She has experience building new communities, managing existing communities, and providing consulting and advice to companies with a particular emphasis on developer and open source communities.

Manoj Garg is a Managing Partner and CIO consultant for Virtual Information Executives (VIE). He brings over twenty years of senior executive leadership skills and technology management experience with domestic and international operations to VIE’s clients. He has worked in four industries: manufacturing, hi-tech, leisure and higher education. Manoj’s Information Technology (IT) experience covers a broad array of skills, including Large Scale Technology Infrastructure Management, Outsourcing Management, Information Security Management, Program Management and Enterprise Resource Planning.

Manoj is noted for creating and implementing innovative solutions that assist businesses in achieving goals rapidly. Manoj has significant outsourcing experience and has delivered successful projects in many overseas locations including Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, Australia, India and China.

Rachel L. Kjack (pronounced “check”) is the CEO of Learning for Leverage. She is also a passionate speaker and facilitator who leads workshops on topics ranging from leadership and communication skills to socially responsible entrepreneurship. She serves as a director of the board for the non-profit organization Women’s Center for Leadership, is a member of the professional association Net Impact and acts in an advisory capacity for a number of workforce and professional development groups.

More about Rachel >>

Bob Lieberman , MS, PMP, is the founder of Cultivating Creativity, a Portland, Oregon company that teaches business leaders how to capitalize on the creative potential of their colleagues and themselves. A performing violinist and former software development manager, he has taught his creative leadership approach at conferences and to professional associations across North America.

Bob is a certified project manager, an educator, and a long-time software professional. He teaches Organizational Development at Portland State University, and holds a MS in Computer Science from Carnegie-Mellon University.

Mark Molau is a Practice Director and consultant for Virtual Information Executives (VIE) delivering enterprise performance management focused business intelligence and information management solutions. He has twenty years of senior leadership experience spanning various information technology, finance and business functions.

Mark has worked in various organizations, from the Fortune 50 to fledgling high-tech startups; working with sales, marketing, professional services, product management, research and development, service delivery, production engineering, manufacturing, finance and human resource organizations and functions. Prior to joining VIE, Mark led his own consulting firm and held senior management positions in IT, finance and professional services with firms such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Price Waterhouse. He is known for building and leading creative, dynamic, focused cross-cultural teams working in a global business environment.

Dhaval Panchal Dhaval has consulted with organizations ranging from mid-sized product companies to the Fortune 100, including 30 Scrum Project teams during enterprise-level rollouts. With a background including software development, business & functional analysis, lean office implementations, organizational change, system architecture, business intelligence and Agile project management, Dhaval has successfully leveraged his skills to deliver dozens of ScrumMaster certification and Scrum Product Owner certification courses.

With a BS in Engineering from Mumbai University, India, Dhaval is one of our three bi-lingual instructors. Working internationally and within the US, he’s effectively coached people-centric, high-performances teams while writing about software development and coaching on his blog.

John Pierce , MBA, is Vice President of Information Systems at Tripwire, Inc. John brings over 25 years of senior level experience leading and managing software development and information systems teams. This experience includes 20 years with high-technology manufacturing and services companies and five years in healthcare with a variety of companies including Intel Corporation, Sequent Computer Systems, and RadiSys Corporation. With his undergraduate degree in Economics from Reed College and an MBA from Harvard University, John brings a business approach and perspective to his role as an IS executive.

Johanna Rothman works with companies to improve how they manage their product development—to maximize management and technical staff productivity and to improve product quality. She consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. She enables managers, teams, and organizations to become more effective by applying her pragmatic approaches to the issues of project management, risk management, and people management.

Johanna publishes The Pragmatic Manager, a monthly email newsletter, and writes two blogs: Managing Product Development and Hiring Technical People. She is the author of several books:

• Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
• Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
• Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)
• Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds; The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People
• Corrective Action for the Software Industry (with Denise Robitaille)

Find more of Johanna’s writing at www.jrothman.com

Bryan Stallings leads the efforts of the Professional Services Consulting team to maximize the benefits that agile methods present to SolutionsIQ’s software development and agile consulting clients. He is an experienced leader of Agile adoption initiatives, both as a consultant and as an internal change advocate. Prior to joining SolutionsIQ, Bryan defined and led the enterprise agile adoption programs at two previous companies. A Certified Scrum Trainer, Bryan regularly leads Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner training courses.

Bryan is known for his skill at facilitating collaboration with senior leaders and within empowered project teams—across organizations, geographies, and cultures—to foster productive relationships and achieve critical business results. In addition to 15 years of international and domestic experience in information technology, financial services and manufacturing, Bryan has an MBA in International Business from the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. He holds a Six Sigma certification and is also fluent in Spanish.

Chris Sterling has more than 15 years of experience working with clients as an Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Technology Consultant.

A previous member of SolutionsIQ’s Agile Consulting team, he has excelled as an enterprise architect, development manager, developer, and project manager. Chris’ extensive technology, process, and consulting background allows him to work with a diverse set of clients and teams, bringing real-world experience and deep passion for software development into his engagements. In so doing, he enables others to grasp important points and always take away something of value.

Chris has created and continues contributing to multiple open source projects, and has been a speaker at many conferences and group meetings including Agile 2007-2009, SDWest, Scrum Gatherings, PNSQC 2009 and others. He has been a coordinator of multiple Puget Sound area groups including International Association of Software Architects (IASA), Seattle Scrum, and most recently Beyond Agile . Chris is currently teaching the “Advanced Topics in Agile Software Development” class at the University of Washington Agile Developer Certificate extension program and writing a book with publisher Addison-Wesley on software architecture.

Michael Tardiff has been working with teams to deliver software and services for over two decades, in large enterprises and small start-ups on both coasts and in Europe. He has a background in operating systems development, enterprise portals, web-based B2B e-commerce, data communications networks, web presence and telecommunications products.

“Hearing development happen” as teams collaborate, pair-program and resolve issues is one of Michael’s joys, and with expertise in product, program and project management at a director level, he has delighted and been successful in no position more than ScrumMaster and Agile coach. He currently blogs on agile topics, and helps coordinate the monthly Agile user group, Beyond Agile.

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock is an internationally recognized leader in the development of object design methodologies. She invented the set of development practices known as Responsibility-Driven Design. Among her widely used innovations are use case conversations and object role stereotypes. She is the regular design columnist for IEEE Software and the author of the classic text, Designing Object-Oriented Software. Her most recent book, Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities and Collaborations, was published in 2002.

Rebecca has written numerous articles, lectured and presented tutorials on object analysis, design and management topics. Rebecca’s methodology contributions are based upon thirty years of hands-on software development experience. Most recently she has advised an engineering group on design and architecture for a large embedded application, been a major contributor to the design and architecture of a telecommunications framework, led the development of an online banking system, and mentored teams on use case writing, design, architecture, and managing incremental and iterative object-technology projects.

Colleen Wright is an Oregon native and graduate of Portland State University with two Business Administration degrees in marketing and advertising management. Her career has spanned a variety of industries from banking and finance to seminar marketing, sports marketing, high tech, non-profit, commercial real estate and horticulture.

As an Internet marketing trainer, consultant and owner of Response Interactive LLC, she enjoys helping her diverse client base and students capture their target market through the power of the search engines and the strength of compelling content.

Joseph Yoder is a founder and principal of The Refactory, Inc., a company focused on software architecture, design, implementation, consulting and mentoring on all facets of software development. Joseph is an international speaker and pattern author, long standing member of the ACM, and the President of The Hillside Group, a, a group dedicated to improving the quality of software development. Joseph specializes in Architecture, Analysis and Design, C#, Java, Smalltalk, Patterns, Agile Methods, Adaptable Systems, Refactoring, Reuse, and Frameworks.

Joe is the author of many patterns, including being an author of the Big Ball of Mud pattern, which illuminates many fallacies in the approach to software architecture.Joe currently resides in Urbana, Illinois. He teaches Agile Methods, Design Patterns, Object Design, Refactoring, and Testing in industrial settings and mentors many developers on these concepts. He currently oversees a team of developers who have constructed many systems based on enterprise architecture in the .NET environment.

Other projects involve working in both the Java and .NET environments deploying Domain-Specific Languages for clients. Joe presents tutorials and talks, arranges workshops, and organizes leading technical conferences held throughout the world, including international conferences such as Agile, Agile Portugal, Encontro Ágil in Brazil, AOSD, CBSoft, JAOO, QCon, PLoP, AsianPLoP, SugarLoafPLoP in Brazil, OOPSLA, ECOOP, SATURN, and SPLASH. Joe thinks software is still too hard to change. He wants do something about this and believes that with good patterns and by putting the ability to change software into the hands of the people with the knowledge to change it seems to be on promising avenue to solve this problem.