Speakers
Speakers at Future Focus 2008 included:
Yvonne Camus —The Eco-Challenge
Yvonne Camus was a member of the first rookie team to complete the Eco-Challenge, the world championship of adventure racing. A former senior executive for a chain of health and fitness clubs, Camus now delights audiences with messages of success and survival based on her hard-won experience training for the grueling Eco-Challenge. Fascinated by performance excellence, Yvonne has spoken to companies all over North America. Bayer Canada, Ceridian, Entourage, GlaxoSmithKline and other companies have responded with standing ovations to Yvonne's compelling presentations on service, teamwork, leadership and life balance.
Ernie Csiszar — Former President & CEO, PCI
Ernst "Ernie" Csiszar (pronounced Seh-zar) is former President and CEO of the Property Casualty Insurer's Association (PCI). PCI represents more than 1,000 member companies that write almost 40 percent of the nation’s property and casualty insurance. As president of PCI and its affiliates, Csiszar oversaw a staff of 240 and a $40 million budget. More recently, Csiszar has been involved in the launch of an insurance and reinsurance operation serving the alternative risk market. Throughout Csiszar’s distinguished career in the insurance industry, he has earned respect as a company executive, regulator and national leader. As director of the South Carolina Department of Insurance, he introduced operational efficiencies and helped create a thriving insurance market in the state. In 2004, he served as president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). Csiszar also served as president and chief executive officer of Seibels Bruce Group Inc. and was a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business. In addition, he spent time abroad, serving as managing co-director of the European investment-banking firm Holborn Holdings Corporation in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1979 to 1988.
Kimberly Harris-Ferrante — Gartner Insurance Industry Advisor Service
Kimberly Harris-Ferrante is a research vice president at Gartner Insurance Industry Advisor Service, where she is responsible for monitoring business and technology trends within the global property and casualty and life insurance industries. She specializes in strategies and technologies to support distribution, customer relationship management, exception-based underwriting, policy administration, claims management and administration, business process management, and back-office processing and optimization, as well as strategies to improve insurance IT architectures using service-oriented architectures and business process management. She is an active participant in Gartner’s outsourcing community.
Harris-Ferrante has been an insurance analyst with Gartner since 1998 and has been active in the research field since 1992 in areas such as social sciences, health care, law and information technology. In these positions, she supported quantitative research projects, including focus group support, survey creation, data entry, programming, statistical analysis, and report writing. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master's degree in sociology from East Carolina University. She has completed coursework for a Ph.D. at North Carolina State University. Her key areas of concentration include research methodology and statistics.
Thomas R. Litjen — PCI
Thomas R. Litjen is an attorney with 27 years' experience in government affairs and the practice of law. He possesses public policy expertise in legislative and executive branches of government and has served as counsel to elected officials of both major political parties at the federal and state levels. He has a record of proven success as a lobbyist for corporate, association, governmental and not-for-profit interests.
From 2001 to 2005, Litjen served as counsel to U.S. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE). Prior to that, he served for eight years as the Washington representative for then-Governor Nelson and the State of Nebraska. He was associate director of the Washington office of the State of Illinois in the last 16 months of Governor James Thompson’s administration. From 1983 to 1989, he practiced law with the firm of Kennedy, Holland, DeLacy and Svoboda in Omaha. Following graduation from Creighton University School of Law in Omaha in 1978, he served for five years as legislative assistant to three members of Congress — one Democrat and two Republicans.
Scott McNealy — Sun Microsystems Inc.
Scott McNealy is the founder, former CEO, and chairman of the board of directors of Sun Microsystems Inc. Over a 22-year-period he built the Silicon Valley start-up into one of the world's great technology companies. Sun is now a leading provider of network computing infrastructure, and the company’s exceptional products include Java, Sun Solaris, the Niagra chip and SPARC. McNealy's vision, business acumen and colorful personality have made him one of the most influential and widely quoted leaders in the IT industry. He is famous for his early commitment to open network computing and connectivity.
McNealy also founded Curriki, a non-profit organization that makes K-12 educational materials available free on the internet. Curriki’s goal is to make a high quality education accessible to all children worldwide. McNealy, himself, holds a BA in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University. He is an avid hockey player and a single digit handicap golfer.
David Moschella — CSC’s Leading Edge Forum Executive Program
David Moschella is the global research director for CSC’s Leading Edge Forum Executive Program. He guides strategic research aimed at helping CIOs and other enterprise IT leaders understand and exploit the ever-expanding intersection between business and information technology. Moschella is also a successful author and columnist. Harvard Business School Press published his most recent book in 2003. Customer-Driven IT, How Users Are Shaping Technology Industry Growth assessed the implications of the shift from a supplier-driven to a customer-led IT environment. His earlier book, Waves of Power, assessed global competition within the IT supplier community. Moschella has written some 200 columns for Computerworld, the IT industry’s leading publication on enterprise IT. His key areas of expertise include globalization, industry restructuring, disruptive technologies, environmental strategies, and the co-evolution of business and IT.
Before joining CSC, Moschella spent 15 years working for International Data Corporation as that company’s main spokesperson on global IT industry trends. He was also responsible for IDC’s worldwide technology, industry and market forecasts. He holds a BA from Colby College, in Waterville, Maine.
Phil Murphy — Forrester Research
Phil Murphy is a principal analyst for Forrester Research. He shows CIOs and IT managers how to improve their application management agility through planning and scoring mechanisms. His holistic advice helps companies reduce duplication and make full use of IT assets. He is an expert in application development, application planning and strategy, application portfolio management, architecture and technology strategy, financial services and government IT management, and legacy application modernization.
Previously, Murphy worked for the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI), where he managed NCCI's $26-million Year-2000 program office. At NCCI Murphy made unique use of offshore programming resources to remediate several million lines of source code spanning several languages and technology genres. He also developed and distributed a commercial software package, implemented a financial application package, and launched an online information service for the Workers' Compensation industry. Murphy has also served as an independent consultant for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; as a financial and academic application developer for Boston University; as corporate IT director for Cullinet Software; and as applications development director for Arbella Mutual Insurance Company.
William N. (Bill) Pieroni — State Farm Insurance Company
William N. (Bill) Pieroni is operations vice president for State Farm Insurance Company. Before joining State Farm, he held a series of executive positions focused on insurance industry strategy, operations and technology. He led efforts to strategically enhance the insurance operations of several large corporations through the use of technology. One was Aon Corporation, where Pieroni served as senior vice president. Another was IBM’s Global Insurance Industry, where he worked as general manager. A third was Accenture, where Pieroni was a partner. He also worked as consultant with McKinsey & Co.
Pieroni earned an MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration, where he was named a Baker Scholar. He earned his BS in accounting from the University of Illinois. Today, he sits on the board of directors of the Association for Cooperative Operations Research and Development (ACORD). Pieroni is also the author of several in-depth insurance studies and is a contributing editor to several leading insurance publications.