Distinguished Speaker Series

The Fox School’s Institute for Business and Information Technology presents the Distinguished Speaker Series, featuring talks by leading professionals on essential business technology topics.

Winning Strategies for Starting, Growing and Managing an Innovative Company in the 21st Century

Jeffrey Citron
Chairman and Chief Strategist
Vonage

October 25, 2006

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About the event

A serial entrepreneur, this discussion will explore Jeffrey Citron’s experiences founding several successful startups that transformed their respective industries — Vonage, a leading provider of broadband telephone services being his most recent endeavor. Highlights of the talk will include insight into how he’s spotted several disruptive technologies, what they should consider when starting a business, how to manage growth. He will also share key learnings from his decade of experience reinventing several billion dollar industries: stock trading, electronic communications networks and telecommunications.

Biography

Jeffrey A. Citron served as Vonage’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from January 2001 through February 2006. He resigned from his position as Chief Executive Officer and became the company’s Chief Strategist in February 2006. In 1995, Mr. Citron founded The Island ECN, a computerized trading system designed to automate the order execution process. Mr. Citron became the Chairman and CEO of Datek Online Holdings Corp. in February 1998 and departed The Island ECN and Datek in October 1999.

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Attendance is free on a space available basis for qualified industry and academic professionals. For more information, please contact ibit@temple.edu.

The Fox School’s Institute for Business and Information Technology presents the Distinguished Speaker Series, featuring talks by leading professionals on essential business technology topics.

Banking Systems Technology: A Practitioner’s Perspective

Kent Seinfeld
CIO
Commerce Bank

April 27, 2005

 

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About the event

Banking is one of the oldest and most fundamental of business endeavors.  While it has changed over hundreds of years, many of the basic functions have survived throughout the centuries.   Taking deposits, making loans and facilitating payments are still at the heart of banking.

While not in the business of technology per se, banking has long been on the frontier of the application of information technology.  As the concept of (monetary) value has evolved, it continues to get increasingly virtual.  It is this virtualization of value that makes it increasingly susceptible to technological innovations.  From barter to gold to paper money to credit cards to wire transfer to internet banking, banking is very close to, if not at the front of the line in the application of information technology.

This discussion will explore where banking has been, where it is and where it is going with respect to IT.

Biography

Kent Seinfeld is the Chief Information Officer of Commerce Bank. Kent has led the development and management of systems to support rapid growth at Commerce over the past four years. Kent was a consultant specializing in enterprise architecture prior to joining Commerce. As a consultant, he led efforts to establish enterprise architectures and planning processes at a pharmaceutical firm, an insurance company, a Russian bank, and a Canadian cable and telecommunications company.

Prior to that, Kent was a senior vice president and served in three different positions with CoreStates (Wachovia/First Union) Bank.  He was the CIO of First Pennsylvania Bank prior to its acquisition by CoreStates.  After the merger, Kent became the manager of systems development for the MAC ATM and POS network.  Subsequent to the spin-off of MAC, Kent founded and managed the Strategic Technology Planning group.  This group was responsible for the development of the bank wide client/server systems architecture, standards, development methodologies and a workflow and document imaging infrastructure.

Kent was the founder and manager of the Technology Planning and Research group at CIGNA, where he was responsible for standards, security policy, development methodologies, and R&D.  Kent has also served as the CIO for Girard Bank (now Mellon Bank/Philadelphia).  Earlier in his tenure, he was the principal architect in the design and implementation of a large-scale highly integrated banking system.  This system evolved into the foundation of the George Network, one of the first large ATM and Bank-by-Phone networks.  Kent has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from NYU and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Attendance is free on a space available basis for qualified industry and academic professionals. For more information, please contact ibit@temple.edu.

The Fox School’s Institute for Business and Information Technology presents the Distinguished Speaker Series, featuring talks by leading professionals on essential business technology topics.

Information Portals: From Vision to Value

Sondra Barbour
CIO and Vice President of Operations
Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions

November 17, 2004

 

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Biography

Sondra Barbour is the CIO and vice president, Operations for Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems & Solutions (IS&S), a $3.4 billion business area of the Lockheed Martin Corporation.  Headquartered in Gaithersburg, Md., IS&S employs over 13,000 people with key locations in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Arizona, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia.  Ms. Barbour is responsible for the operation, maintenance, and future directions of IS&S technical infrastructure, enterprise applications, facilities, support services, publications, employee health & safety, and supply chain.  She is also responsible for IS&S activities under the Lockheed Martin LM21 Operating Excellence initiative.

Most recently, Sondra had served as director of the IS&S Transformation Program, orchestrating efforts to re-engineer business processes and leverage technology to improve productivity, saving the company more than $220 million over the last four years.  She also managed the development of the IS&S employee portal. She has 19 years experience in the design and development of large scale information systems.  Her background includes management roles in engineering, functional and program operations areas for large software development systems (1+ million lines of code) with engineering and operations staffs of 1000 or more professionals.

Sondra is a volunteer with Lockheed Martins’ Network of Volunteer Associates, an organization volunteering time and resources to give back to the community.  She is the co-champion for IS&S sponsorship of FIRST, a national program that supports high school teams in robotics competitions.  She is also a member of the steering committee for the Pennsylvania Eastern Technology Council’s CIO Institute and sits on the advisory board for the Math Options program for young women at Pennsylvania State University Delaware County.  Within IS&S, she acts as the Executive Sponsor for the Delaware Valley Diversity Council.

Sondra is a graduate of Temple University with a double major in Computer Information Sciences and Accounting.  She is also a graduate of IS&S’ Program Management Development Program.

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Attendance is free on a space available basis for qualified industry and academic professionals. For more information, please contact ibit@temple.edu.

The Fox School’s Institute for Business and Information Technology presents the Distinguished Speaker Series, featuring talks by leading professionals on essential business technology topics.

Innovation Through Corporate – Higher Education Partnerships: A Case Study

Dan Pantaleo
Vice President, Strategic Issues Group
SAP

October 12, 2004

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About the event

In his book, “Open Innovation” Hank Chesbrough suggests that rather than relying entirely on internal ideas to advance the business, an “open” approach to innovation leverages internal and external sources of ideas. He makes the case that rather than restricting innovations to a single path to market, open innovation inspires companies to find the most appropriate business model to commercialize a new offering — whether that model exists within the firm or must be sought through external licensing, partnering, or venturing. In their article in the Harvard Business Review of August 2002, Meyer and Ruggles boldly explore the outsourcing of innovation. These are unusual ideas in light of the long standing mind set that innovation is secretly developed, uniquely owned, and closely held. Things are clearly changing.

In exploring the characteristics of corporate Idea Practitioners in his book, “What’s the Big Idea” Tom Davenport stats, “…Because academic and other external relationships are important sources of ideas for idea practitioners, these businesspeople are the most likely participants in … and multiclient research programs. Idea practitioners are also the mainstays of industry-sponsored research programs at business schools. At times they have university affiliations.”

These concepts build a strong case for corporations to work with university colleagues in a variety of collaborations.  Dan Pantaleo will explore the evolution and development of SAP’s efforts in this collaborative innovation arena and will describe the present cooperative landscape with an eye toward future developments.

Biography

After a career of twenty-five years in higher education as a faculty member, Fulbright Scholar, dean, academic vice president, and provost, Dan Pantaleo spent four years as Vice President for Product Development with an interactive multimedia education and training developer.  Dan left that post in 1997 to assume the responsibilities of Program Manager for SAP America’s University Alliance Program where he has been able to apply his knowledge of higher education and interactive learning to significantly develop the Program.  Expanding his responsibilities, he was appointed Director of Higher Learning Initiatives for SAP America with responsibility for several higher learning projects including the University Alliance Program throughout the Americas.

Dan was appointed to lead the SAP Innovation Institute as its Vice President in October 2000. The SAP Innovation Institute was responsible for identifying and facilitating collaborative research projects with universities, an Executive Education program, the University Alliance program, and for identifying innovation strategies, methods, and best practices.  In July, 2002, Dan became part of the SAP Global Communications organization with global responsibility for the University Alliances Program.

Recognizing the opportunity to expand the development of strategic content and research for SAP, the University Alliances research and innovation team was joined with the strategic analysis team of SAP Global Communications to form the SAP Strategic Issues Group. Dan heads the project development and management of this new team.

Dan holds a B.S. degree in chemistry from Manhattan College and the Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Emory University.  He served as a Fulbright Scholar in Science Education in the Philippines, held a post-doctoral appointment in the chemistry department at Louisiana State University, and took post-doctoral coursework in astrophysics at Georgia State University. Dan is a published author and researcher and a member of several professional associations including the Innovation Council of the Conference Board and serves on several advisory boards and councils.

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Attendance is free on a space available basis for qualified industry and academic professionals. For more information, please contact ibit@temple.edu.