IBIT News

Digital leaders Hamilton, Wink, and Geatens honored at 22nd Annual IT Awards

Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) honored three accomplished digital leaders at its 22nd Annual Information Technology Awards.

The awards event, held Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Philadelphia, brought together an elite group of tech leaders, innovators and disruptors for an engaging evening of celebration amongst the IBIT community. Dean Chip Hunter started the program by welcoming the participants. The rest of the evening spotlighted the honorees who shared their expertise and vision.

Jeff Hamilton, Chief Information Officer, Teva Pharmaceuticals received the 2024 Information Technology Leader Award. Hamilton is responsible for technology systems and infrastructure in 60 countries and 50 plants at Teva. Previously, Hamilton was Senior Vice President, Pfizer Digital with responsibility for manufacturing, supply chain and finance systems. He directed Pfizer’s digital efforts to rapidly scale COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution of billions of doses to more than 170 countries.

Chris Wink, cofounder and CEO of Technical.ly, received the 2024 Information Technology Innovator Award. Wink, a journalist and entrepreneur, co-founded Technical.ly, a news and community resource for technologists and entrepreneurs. Wink is the lead organizer of Philly Tech Week and in 2022, he was named one of Pennsylvania’s most influential impact leaders, and in 2017 Folio magazine named him one of the 100 most innovative media leaders in the country.

Fran Geatens, Vice President, Technology Infrastructure, Operations, and Experience, Merck received the 2024 Information Technology Award for Distinguished Alumni. Geatens is responsible for managing Merck’s worldwide technology infrastructure and business applications. He led Merck’s accelerated cloud transformation that is enabling new ways of working. Geatens is a graduate of Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

This year’s group of honorees are truly exceptional and we are proud to recognize them as digital innovation leaders.
Munir Mandviwalla, Executive Director

A sub-committee of the IBIT advisory board including George Llado (committee chair), Sondra Barbour, Michael Bradshaw, Andrea Stewart, and Bruce Fadem (board chair) identified nominees for the 2024 awards from a list of 62 candidates. These nominations were submitted to and approved by the entire board. Fadem, Barbour, and Llado also introduced each award recipient at the event.

The impact of the 2024 awards was rated highly on IBIT’s new Impact Model with an average score of 5.94 on a scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the highest rating. The highest rating of 6.43 was for the value of participating in the activity, while the lowest rating of 4.92 was for contributing to the success of the activity. The following is a sample of comments included in the above responses.

It was even better than the last year. I loved it.
Student Participant

Great to see the strides the program has made and industry connections to strengthen IBIT’s place in the market.
Industry Participant

The event was the best so far. Excellent choice of venue, everything was very professionally run.
Industry Participant

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

IBIT Scholarships 2024

The Institute for Business and Information Technology announces the 2024 scholarship recipients.

IBIT Cencora Scholarship
Yanelly Yanes

IBIT Kyndryl Scholarship
Zuzana Tyryllo

IBIT Pfizer Scholarship
Abby Dorotov

IBIT Scholastic Scholarship
Sarah Maher

Mentoring has a high impact on industry and students

IBIT’s Spring 2024 mentoring program which involved 16 students and 12 mentors ended the year with a reception for mentors and mentees to network. The average impact rating of the program was 6.3 on a scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the highest.

IBIT matches Temple University students with senior executive IT mentors based on students’ interests and career goals using a structured process to ensure regular engagement. The mentoring program runs each term and has, to-date, served 189 students from three different schools at Temple since spring 2020.

The high impact rating of 6.1 suggests that students and mentors are on average very positive about all aspects of the program. The highest rating was for the value of participation at 6.8, while the lowest rating of 5.79 was for enhancing professional network. However, this is still a positive result since both mentors and mentees contributed to the rating. The following comments illustrate the impact:

I was very nervous at first going into my first meeting but coming from my own experience, it was easier than I thought it was going to be to talk to my mentor and things just felt natural. I believe that I gained a lot of valuable knowledge and lessons from my mentor’s advice and experiences which makes me glad I did the program.
MENTEE

It’s fun giving guidance, especially surfacing career options the mentees may have not considered yet.
MENTOR

MENTORING PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

Mentors	Mentees	Mentees
Andrea Anania, Cigna (retired) Sondra Barbour, AGCO & Perspecta Chris Cera, Arcweb Technologies Craig Conway, FIS Kevin Dang, McKinsey & Company Larry Dignan, Constellation Insights Bruce Fadem, Wyeth (retired) Chris Kearns, Kyndryl Michael Luckenbill, Capgemini Neil Mundell, Cencora Sukumar Narayanan, CorVant Niraj Patel, Greystone Rich Rivara, Wave6 Dave Woodson, KPMG	Tyler Allen Sajjad Alloo Rhenece Andrew Nikitha Arramada Janice Augastine Duncan Carpenter James Carpenter Sarah D’Amico Victoria Doan Nahum Elias Nora Esack Adam Foster-Baird Jenna Fraioli Jonathan George Joseph Gorman Emily Greene	Evangelos Kamariotis Carly Krieger David Levit Veronica Li David Liang Aaron Markowitz Mia Myers Theresa Nguyen Alex O’Leary Alison Park Odalys Perez Victoria Phung Cole Roberts Kamilya Salikhova Nayana Santhosh Biko Smith Maya Smith

Sondra Barbour, Board Member, AGCO & Perspecta is the chair of the Mentoring Program. Laurel Miller manages the mentoring program for IBIT.

For more details about the impact assessment, visit: https://ibit.temple.edu/impact/

IBIT Mentoring Program

UfarmX wins 2024 Digital Innovation Award

The Digital Innovation Foundry is pleased to announce that UfarmX is the recipient of the Spring 2024 Digital Innovation Award!

UfarmX is a tech-driven agricultural platform, founded by Alexander Zanders, Andrea Kamara Dunbar and Segun Fagbami that utilizes AI and Blockchain solutions to empower smallholder farmers in Africa. They provide tailored support for crop management, market access and financial inclusion as well smart farming practices.

UfarmX was selected to receive $2,500 and support from DIF to further develop and commercialize its platform.

The Digital Innovation Award is open to all Temple University students, alumni, faculty, and staff. The award is presented by DIF in partnership with Temple University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute (IEI) Be Your Own Boss Bowl. Awards are based on the following criteria:

Digital – does the idea apply technology in an interesting and/or novel manner?
Problem – does the idea solve a real business or societal problem?
Practical – is the idea practically doable given current technology, context, and resources?

Dinesh Desai grew Emtec into a high performing mid-market IT services firm

Dinesh Desai and colleagues grew Emtec into a high performing mid-market IT services firm, by creating a unique culture, acquiring firms, and digital co-innovation.

In the newly published case titled Emtec: Culture, Acquisitions, and Co-innovation as the Upstream Future for Midmarket Firms, Munir Mandviwalla, Larry Dignan, Laurel Miller, and Bertrand Guillotin tell the story of a how a start-up grew through acquisitions and an entrepreneurial cooperative culture in the cut-throat trillion-dollar IT services market. The case also shows how co-innovation enables digital transformation.

The case is dedicated to Dinesh Desai, Fox’78, founder, CEO, and Chairman of Emtec. He received the 2015 Fox IT Award for Distinguished Alumni and served on the IBIT board. Dinesh passed away on March 27, 2024.

Note: Colleagues of Dinesh interested in reading the case, please contact ibit@temple.edu