Fox Information Technology Award Recipients

YASMINE MUSTAFA

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI

Yasmine Mustafa believes ROAR found her, not the other way around. She draws upon her experience as a refugee, discovering she was undocumented, and working in unsafe conditions to lead the Company in its mission to empower and protect others. She has over 15 years of leading technology companies, having sold her first company, 123LinkIt, to a Silicon Valley firm in 2009.

She is fueled by a passion to leverage technology for good, previously launching a non-profit to help women learn how to code in a safe, judgment-free zone.

Her role as a leader and advocate has been recognized by the BBC, CNBC’s Upstart 100, and the City of Philadelphia, among others. She loves to speak at conferences to inspire others and she is a 2x TEDx speaker with a roster of speaking credits that includes SXSW and CES.

In her free time, Yasmine enjoys spending time with friends and family, and being outdoors as much as possible, whether it’s biking around Philadelphia, hiking or hammocking, and traveling. She sits on the board of the Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies.

TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL IT AWARDS

PATRICK COZZI

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INNOVATOR AWARD

Patrick is the Chief Platform Officer at Bentley Systems, where he leads the open software platform for digital twins of the built and natural environment, enabling a global ecosystem of software developers.

He is the founder and former CEO of Cesium, joining Bentley in 2024 via acquisition. He is an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Greater Philadelphia Award Winner for building Cesium into the leading 3D geospatial software company.

Patrick has received multiple industry awards for his contributions to geospatial and 3D computer graphics open standards including 3D Tiles and glTF. He is an inventor on 10 US patents and has authored, edited, or contributed to 10 books.

He is the co-founder of CreateAccess, a nonprofit to increase opportunities in technology for young people in under-resourced communities through exposure education to 3D creation.

In real life 3D, Patrick is an avid martial arts student, having grown up in the storied Upper Darby Boxing Gym and having earned a 2nd-degree black belt as an adult.

He earned a Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also taught GPU Programming & Architecture for almost a decade. He received a CME from Harvard Business School Executive Education.

Patrick serves on a variety of nonprofit boards for national security and economic growth.

TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL IT AWARDS

CHRIS KEARNS

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LEADER AWARD

Chris Kearns is Senior Vice President for Enterprise Applications at Kyndryl. Kyndryl is the world’s largest provider of IT infrastructure services with thousands of enterprise customers in more than 60 countries. Chris and the Enterprise Applications teams are responsible for enterprise applications across the firm, spanning front office lead-to-quote processes, back office quote-to-cash operations, and corporate support functions. He is a champion for innovation and operational excellence with experience overseeing core platforms for financial services, customer relationship management, marketing, procurement and other corporate operations.

Prior to joining Kyndryl, Chris held executive leadership roles at Corning Incorporated, NBC Universal, the Vanguard Group, Leidos, and Lockheed Martin. Chris has over 25 years of industry experience in IT and IT services. In prior roles he was the global head of Workplace Services, the global head of data center engineering and was responsible for leading a $700M+ information technology business with 2,000+ employees serving U.S. Department of Defense customers. His expertise spans operations and cyber defense of critical national infrastructure, management of private datacenters and high-performance computing centers, migration and security of cloud computing, and mission and enterprise application management.

Chris holds a master’s degree in information science from Pennsylvania State University and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Scranton. He serves on the Industrial Advisory Board to the Engineering Department at the University of Scranton.

TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL IT AWARDS

Digital leaders McGettigan, Nucci, and Conway honored at 23rd Annual Information Technology Awards

Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) honored three accomplished digital leaders at its 23rd Annual Information Technology Awards on Thursday, May 1st, 2025, in Philadelphia.

The event brought together top technology leaders, innovators, and disruptors for an evening of celebration. The dinner featured remarks by Dean Chip Hunter and award presentation by IBIT board chair Sondra Barbour, followed by a conversation on leadership, innovation, careers, and AI moderated by Munir Mandviwalla. Members of the IBIT community of industry partners, alumni, faculty and students from colleges across Temple University were in attendance.

The evening spotlighted IBIT’s three honorees for 2025.

David McGettigan, Senior Vice President, Pfizer Inc., received the 2025 Information Technology Leader Award. McGettigan is leading Enterprise Platforms and Solutions encompassing three major areas: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Platforms (Cloud Computing, Infrastructure and Operations) as well as Acquisitions, Collaborations, and Divestitures (ACD). This includes our systems that manage ~$60B – $100B in financial and supply transactions annually. David has extensive experience across marketing, finance, manufacturing, and digital platforms for multinational companies, and has successfully led many large-scale transformational, innovative, and business acquisition initiatives.

Rick Nucci, Co-Founder and CEO, Guru, received the 2025 Information Technology Innovator Award. Guru is the enterprise AI search and knowledge platform that delivers trusted information from your company’s scattered docs, apps, and chats the moment you need it – directly in your workflow. Industry leaders like DHL, Shopify, and Spotify are a few of the thousands of companies that use Guru to break down information silos, reduce app overload, and improve efficiency org-wide. Before Guru, Rick was the founder of Boomi, which defined and led a new segment as the industry’s first cloud integration platform-as-a-service. Boomi was acquired by Dell in 2010, where Rick went on to run the Boomi business for Dell, helping grow the organization into the industry leader it is today.

Craig Conway, Chief Technology Officer, Togetherwork, received the 2025 Information Technology Award for Distinguished Alumni. Prior to his role at Togetherwork, he was responsible for operations and customer experience for the Modern Banking platform at FIS. The Modern Banking platform is a 3rd generation cloud-based core banking platform for both retail and commercial banks. FIS is the global leader in financial technologies focusing on banking, capital markets, and payments products and services.

A sub-committee of the IBIT advisory board including Jeff Hamilton (committee chair), Bruce Fadem, Niraj Patel and Sondra Barbour (board chair) identified nominees for the 2025 awards from a list of 69 candidates. These nominations were submitted to and approved by the entire board.

For more about the IT awards and honorees, visit https://ibit.temple.edu/itawards/.
To see the event pictures, click here.

Contact ibit at ibit@temple.edu.

CRAIG E. CONWAY

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AWARD FOR DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI

Craig joined Togetherwork, an integrated financial software and payments platform for member-based organizations as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) on March 31, 2025. Previously, he was responsible for operations and customer experience for the Modern Banking platform at FIS. The Modern Banking platform is a 3rd generation cloud-based core banking platform for both retail and commercial banks. FIS is the global leader in financial technologies focusing on banking, capital markets, and payments products and services.

Craig has also been responsible for global enterprise architecture, emerging technologies, and enterprise technology transformation at FIS. He focused on applying existing, new and emerging technologies to transform and optimize business and operating models across all products and services.

Craig’s previous role was chief technology officer at Livingston International, which is a global trade management and logistics company. He was responsible for technology, enterprise portfolio management, and was general management of Livingston’s SaaS software businesses. Craig modernized Livingston’s infrastructure and application capabilities by leveraging API, mobile, cloud, AI, machine learning, data analytics, and blockchain technologies.

Craig has a unique portfolio of experiences and has achieved exceptional results in driving global product offerings, enterprise architecture and product innovation. The majority of Craig’s career has been focused on payments technology, including executive vice president and global chief technology officer at Transaction Network Services, as well as chief technology officer of financial services and general manager of prepaid at First Data Corporation and senior vice president, technology and operations at ConcordEFS, which included responsibility for the Star and MAC debit networks. Prior to ConcordEFS Craig held leadership roles at Electronic Payment Services and CoreStates Financial (now Wells Fargo).

Craig holds a B.B.A. in finance and legal studies and an M.B.A. in technology management, both from Temple University, Fox School of Business in Philadelphia. He also attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management Executive Education Program.

Craig has served on the Advisory Committee for Ben Franklin Technology Partners and currently serves on the Mid-Atlantic Customer Experience Advisory Board. Craig also mentors CEOs, advises portfolio companies, and mentors Temple students.