Steve Brennan, Carhartt
I’m a technology professional with 20 years of experience leading through change within both large and small organizations spanning several verticals. I’m passionate about data, about best practices, and about enterprise strategy. I understand the importance of data integrity and data management at the enterprise scale, and spend a lot of time promoting those concepts to my partners in technology and in the business.
Data is essential to an organization’s stability and success. We can talk about the window shutter colors all day long, but if there are cracks in the house’s foundation, we’re focused on the wrong things. Data is that foundation. Being able to serve as a senior leader and working very closely with business stakeholders to prioritize, drive change, and align on our strategy as an overall business is what I love to do.
Sarah Green, CMS Energy
Sarah Green is the Business Intelligence Team Lead at Consumers Energy. Sarah graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Informatics, specializing in Data Mining, and has spent the last five years working on various data initiatives at Consumers, including leading a year-long benchmarking exercise within the IT department, leading the IT Measurement and Performance team, and most recently, establishing a Marketing Analytics Practice within CE. Sarah lives in Jackson and enjoys playing board games and spending time with family and friends in her free time.
Jennifer Horne, iDashboards
Jennifer Horne is the Senior Digital Marketing Coordinator at iDashboards. A Michigan native, she studied Psychology at Northwestern University, and has split her professional life between marketing and the culinary arts. As head of content for iDashboards, she has immersed herself in the world of data and data visualization, striving to unpack how clients can create the most effective and engaging dashboards and data vizzes. She lives in Detroit and works to restore her historic home in her free time.
Derek Huffman, Ernst & Young
Derek Huffman is an Executive Director in Ernst & Young LLP’s Detroit office. With over 15 years of experience helping clients across all sectors solve complex business problems through analytics and machine learning in forecasting, product development, supply chain, marketing and risk. He currently serves as the Automotive and Transportation sector leader for EY’s Advisory Data and Analytics practice.
Murthy Mathiprakasam, Informatica
Murthy Mathiprakasam is a Director of Portfolio Marketing at Informatica and responsible for outbound marketing activities with Informatica’s Big Data products. Murthy has a decade and a half of experience working with emerging high-growth software technologies including roles at Mercury Interactive/HP, Google, eBay, VMware, and Oracle. Murthy holds a Master of Science in Management Science from Stanford University, and two Bachelor of Science degrees in Management Science and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Chris Ruiter, Amway
Chris is Senior Solution Architect for Amway’s connected experiences team. In his role, Chris is working to architect Amway systems to support data-driven decisions and customer experiences.
Kevin Tollison, Ernst & Young
Kevin is a Senior Manager of EY's analytics consulting practice and has experience in machine learning and intelligent process automation. He has helped design and implements various projects with rapid development and ongoing industrialization needs. His experience includes process improvement within finance, marketing, risk management, and product development. In addition, he has helped companies assess their analytics organization and prepare strategies to accelerate realizing value from analytics.
Alex Tweedy, Amway
Alex is a Principal Data Architect for Amway’s connected experiences. In his role, Alex is working on data, integration, and visualization solutions to support Amway’s diverse product portfolio.
Michelle Vercellino, IMA Financial Group
Michelle is the Chief Technology Officer & Chief Information Officer for The IMA Financial Group, Inc., leading the company in enabling innovative business solutions through supporting technologies and partnering with The IMA Financial Group’s business units and subsidiaries to facilitate growth, scalability and operational efficiencies.
Her career includes driving revenue growth, transformative technology implementations, asset creation, client management and delivery excellence - with an inclusive focus on helping companies solve challenging problems and create effective solutions to increase customer value. Her clients have included companies in the telecommunications, high-tech, banking, fast casual restaurants, and energy industries.