IBIT News

Tech leaders Llado, Mango, and Desai honored at Fifteenth Annual Fox IT awards

Temple University’s Fox School of Business honored three top technology leaders at its 15th annual Information Technology Awards on Tuesday, April 14.

Fox School’s nationally ranked Department of Management Information Systems (MIS) and the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) organize this premier event for Greater Philadelphia’s technology community. The honorees are:

George Llado, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Alexion, will receive the Fox IT Leader Award, for his leadership in the use and development of IT in business.
Jeff Mango, Vice President of Total Experience in Verizon’s marketing organization, will receive the Fox IT Innovator Award, for his innovation in applying technology and insights to create business opportunities.
Dinesh R. Desai, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Emtec, will receive the Fox IT Award for Distinguished Alumni, for his work in the IT field and contributions to the community and industry.

“As innovators, executives and industry leaders, George, Dinesh and Jeff have excelled in a rapidly changing IT landscape,” said Fox School of Business Dean M. Moshe Porat. “In doing so, they carry on a proud and rich tradition of excellence displayed by past Fox IT Award winners, who will serve as models for our students.”

Llado is responsible for leading Alexion’s Global IT function, during a time of rapid expansion and focusing on initiatives that enable Alexion to serve more patients around the world, he and his global team develop and implement enterprise-level business applications and infrastructure, expand ERP implementation, manage information security, deliver new analytics tools, and design and deploy systems. He serves on the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) Board and the Temple Fox IT Advisory Board.

Mango and his team leverage social and digital media insights across Verizon’s business units in order to enhance the overall end-to-end customer experience and increase operational efficiency. Targeted information and solutions help drive improvements in customer experience and loyalty, which increases revenue and reduces operating costs throughout the business. Previously he led the customer and business intelligence organization (CBI) that was the first of its kind.

Desai earned an MBA from the Fox School in 1978. After graduation, he spent 12 years with American Can and Arco Chemical in various management positions. He went on to become President, CEO, Co-Chairman and an owner of Western Sky Industries and then Chairman and CEO of DARR Global Holdings, Inc., a management consulting firm. Desai has also served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Enterprise Center, a Nonprofit Organization.

“In a world increasingly dominated by digital business models, the 2015 Fox School IT Award recipients are true role models for MIS students, who are learning digital business innovation and how to lead revenue growth in a digital economy,” said Dr. Munir Mandviwalla, founding Chair of the MIS Department.

Recipients are nominated and selected by a committee chaired by Bruce Fadem (Chair, Fox IT advisory board) and comprised of senior leadership at Fox, the Fox IT Advisory Board, and previous recipients.

The Fox School’s MIS department, ranked No. 1 in the world for research, in the top 15 nationally for undergraduate programs, and in the top 20 for graduate programs, is a worldwide leader in transformative research and teaching in the design, use, and effects of information technology. IBIT integrates industry perspectives with academic research expertise to create forums for generating and exchanging best practices.

For more information on the annual Fox IT Awards, visit http://ibit.temple.edu/it-awards/

Martin Schroeter, CFO, IBM spends day with Finance and MIS students

Martin Schroeter, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IBM, recently presented a Distinguished Speaker talk as part of spending a day at the Fox School of Business.

Schroeter, an alumnus of the Fox School, was appointed SVP and CFO at IBM on January 1, 2014. Previously, he was General Manager of IBM Global Financing, a position he held since April 2011, where he led the world’s largest captive IT financier with a total asset base in excess of $37 billion and 125,000 customers in 50 countries.

During the day, he spoke to Temple’s Financial Management Association (FMA) and also held a small group meeting with students in MIS and Finance.

Schroeter also met with Dean M. Moshe Porat and faculty from the Fox School’s Department of Management Information Systems and Finance.

Martin Schroeter at Temple University

Sondra Barbour, EVP, Lockheed Martin spends day with Temple students

Sondra L. Barbour, Executive Vice President, Information Systems & Global Solutions, Lockheed Martin recently spent a day with students in the Fox School’s Management Information Systems program.

Barbour is Executive-in-Residence at the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) and was at Temple all day on March 9, 2015 as part of her responsibilities. She is an officer of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Under her leadership, IS&GS employs 26,000 professionals and generated $8.4 billion in sales in 2013.

Barbour is also the inaugural recipient of the Fox Information Technology award for Distinguished Alumni in 2005 and helped start the Executive-in-Residence program. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for 3M and was selected by Fortune magazine as one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” in 2014.

During the day, she participated as a guest expert in Professor Martin Doyle’s Enterprise Architecture class, had lunch with Fox BBA in MIS students, discussed cyber-security careers and other topics with the students in the Fox School’s Master of Science in IT auditing and cyber-security, and met with the representatives of the Temple University student chapter of the Association for Information Systems. Barbour also met with Neil Theobald, President, Temple University.

Atish Banerjea appointed 2015 Executive-in-Residence

Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) has appointed NBCUniversal executive and Temple alumnus Atish Banerjea as its newest Executive in Residence.

Banerjea serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer for NBCUniversal, where he is responsible for global technology strategy, applications, infrastructure and operations for the company’s worldwide media portfolio, and is part of the company’s Operations and Technical Services organization.

An alumnus of Temple University’s Fox School of Business, Banerjea attained a Master of Science degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) in 1991.

I am honored to give back to my alma mater, Banerjea said. After I first arrived in the U.S., it was my Temple education that provided the basis for starting a successful career focused on transformative technologies that help drive innovation and revenue across the enterprise.

Banerjea’s commitment to his alma mater includes his recent appointment to the Fox IT Advisory Board, through which he works with the MIS department toward designing curriculum updates, tailoring it to the industry’s current employment climate. Banerjea, widely considered a top innovator and technology strategist, recently was selected as one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2015. The distinction recognizes the best technology and business leaders from a variety of organizations.

Prior to joining NBCUniversal, Banerjea had most recently served as Chief Technology Officer for Dex One Corporation. He led a redesign of the company’s IT functions and helped transform Dex One from a print-centric business into a digital media marketing company. He also served as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for international media group Pearson, and held top roles at Maurices, Inc., and Simon & Schuster.

The IBIT Executive in Residence program facilitates interaction among Fox School faculty, students and industry leaders. In his role as IBIT’s Executive in Residence, Banerjea will engage with faculty and students on topics and projects of mutual interest, promote the activities of IBIT, the MIS department and the Fox School of Business.

Atish is a visionary and innovator who is a perfect role model for Fox MIS students, said IBIT Director Laurel Miller. As part of his executive-in-residence responsibilities, Atish will also help update the MIS curriculum.

Banerjea began his residency February 9, 2015.

Art student makes sense of data to win Temple Analytics Challenge

Admittedly, Cassandra Reffner said she might not know the difference between average and median. And she said she only understands the most basic functions of Microsoft Excel. What Reffner does know, however, is how to analyze data and display it in a creative, understandable manner. A junior graphic design student from the Tyler School of Art, Reffner won the $2,500 grand prize at the second annual Temple Analytics Challenge.

The month-long competition, organized by the Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) at the Fox School of Business, culminated Nov. 17 in finalist presentations at Alter Hall. The challenge tasks students from all of Temple University’s schools and colleges with making sense of data through visualizations and info graphics. The Temple Analytics Challenge awarded 10 prizes totaling $10,000, from corporate members of IBIT and the Office of the Senior Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at Temple University.

In its second year, the Temple Analytics Challenge received 130 submissions from more than 300 participants. The finalists came from both undergraduate and graduate programs across the University, including the College of Engineering, the Tyler School of Art, and the Fox School of Business.

Reffner used a test tube illustration to demonstrate the residual impact felt by employees following the proposed relocation of Merck’s corporate headquarters. Judges reflected favorably upon Reffner’s infographic, which displayed the raw number of employees whose commutes would be negatively affected by 30 or more minutes. (Other Merck Challenge finalists opted to use percentages.) To circumvent the issue, Reffner offered what she called “prescriptions,” using a medicine-bottle design to provide Merck with alternatives like incentivizing carpools or public transit usage, or implementing break time for employees who make longer commutes.

“I think the judges liked how I gave solutions, or as I called them ‘prescriptions,’ to help benefit those employees and to look at this in a less-negative term,” Reffner said.

Corporate partners of the Temple Analytics Challenge provided data sets and specific problems from which the students had to create an original visualization that also provided clear and meaningful insight. The NBCUniversal Challenge pertained to the allocation of advertising dollars for midterm elections; the Lockheed Martin Challenge focused on employee behaviors predicting security threats; and the aforementioned Merck Challenge centered around the overall impact of a corporate site’s relocation. The 20 finalists presented their work before a panel of professional judges, including representatives from QVC, Campbell Soup Company, and RJMetrics.

“The breadth of majors and students that excelled in the competition was really impressive. Analytics and the ability to interpret and visualize complex data is such an important skill, it’s exciting to so many students get involved and the final presentations were outstanding,” said Nicholas Piergallini, Program Manager at Lockheed Martin and a judge for the competition.

“We’re proud to once again see such a great set of entries from students across the University,” said Dr. David Schuff, Associate Professor of Management Information Systems and organizer of the challenge, “A key goal of the challenge is to encourage students from different disciplines to build their data analysis and communication skills, and to see how these skills apply to their careers.”

Reffner and five fellow Tyler students were among the competition’s 20 finalists, and she was one of three from Tyler to win one of the Temple Analytics Challenge’s 10 cash prizes. Encouraged to enter the competition by Tyler professor Abby Guido, Reffner said she hopes her grand-prize win helps push other students at Temple University to compete next year.

“Being a graphic design student, it was difficult to figure out what the data was and what we had to look at, what we had to analyze, and how to design it in a way people would understand,” Reffner said. “Most of my class doesn’t know Excel. “But the Temple Analytics Challenge was an innovative way to bring students from around campus together and show we can translate what we do know to a broader spectrum. It was that multidisciplinary aspect of the competition that, I think, was the most fun.”

Doug Seiwert echoed Reffner’s point. Seiwert, the Vice President of Information Technology and Enterprise Applications Development at QVC, said the popular home-shopping network produces one terabyte of data every month. “For those of you who don’t know, that’s a lot of data,” said Seiwert, the event’s keynote speaker, “and it can be daunting when you’re processing this much data. Our challenge, and (the students’) challenge in this competition, was finding ways to make the data widely consumable, and I think you all did an outstanding job.”

Click here to see all the entries and winners.