Margaret Mary Fitzpatrick, Ed.D. has enjoyed a thirty-five-year collegiate and university management career that has been characterized by success in strengthening institutions’ competitive position through increased enrollment, strategic planning, human resource selection and development, oversight of multi-million dollar budgets, and revenue-generating campaigns and partnerships that include current global initiatives. Since 1995, Dr. Fitzpatrick has served as president and chief executive officer of St. Thomas Aquinas College, a liberal arts college with a population of 2,700 students, 150 full- and part-time faculty members, seventy-five administrators, and an annual budget of $28 million. The college offers sixty undergraduate majors, minors, and specializations and five master’s degrees in the fields of education and business. In 2001, it ranked in the top tier of colleges by U.S. News and World Report. As chief executive, Dr. Fitzpatrick leads the college in strategic planning and assessment, and advancing institutional internal and external relations. From 1992 to 1995, Dr. Fitzpatrick was the senior vice president at St. John’s University, a comprehensive, doctoral granting institution, with a student population of 18,000; 1,200 full- and part-time faculty members; and 2,000 administrators and professional staff. Dr. Fitzpatrick currently serves on the board of trustees for Ridgewood Savings Bank, and was also appointed commissioner with the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a post she will hold until at least 2009. In 2005, she was named “Woman of the Year” by Rockland Business & Professional Women’s Club.
A.G. Karunakaran is the president and chief executive officer of GDA Technologies Inc., the company he co-founded in 1996. He has led the company from a four-person operation to a robust enterprise of 400-plus employees with multiple design centers around the world. He has two U.S. patents related to upgradeable computing platforms and is a charter member of the TiE organization, as well as the founding member of the CEO Leadership Forum. Mr. Karunakaran has more than twenty years of experience in the computer and semi-conductor industry, having held engineering and technical marketing positions at Wipro India, HCL India and HCL America, OPTI, and Trident Microsystems. His diverse knowledge touches on systems engineering, design engineering, Fabless IC technical marketing, and general management related to electronics product development in vertical markets, such as computing, communication, embedded, and consumer electronics. In his spare time, Mr. Karunakaran volunteers at his local community soccer organization as a coach and referee, loves to hike, and works closely with Families for Children—a charitable organization supporting children in Coimbatore, India. Additionally, he likes to travel and explore new places with his family.
Arthur J. Lendo, Ph.D. has been president, Peirce College, Philadelphia, since 1991. His tenure places him among the most experienced college presidents in the country. He shepherded the college through a charter change to four-year status, established the successful Peirce Corporate College, and created the acclaimed Peirce Online, which offers accredited degrees completely online and was rated twentieth nationally in the OEDb (Online Education Database) Online College Rankings for 2008. The college now has a national scope with international reach. Degree-seeking students have enrolled from forty-three states, including seventeen of the nineteen U.S. congressional districts in Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and thirty-six foreign countries. President Lendo has received numerous awards during his career, including a National Award for Economic Education from The Freedoms Foundation, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Dr. Lendo holds a B.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, a M.Ed. from The American University, and a Ph.D. from Boston College, as well as certificates of advanced graduate study from Harvard University, The Aspen Institute, and Oxford. Dr. Lendo’s professional background includes administrative and faculty positions at The American University, Boston College, Northeastern University, and Saint Joseph’s University. While at Northeastern, he co-founded the instructional television program, Network Northeastern University (NNU). Dr. Lendo gained Fortune 500, high-technology experience with Sperry Univac (now UNISYS). He was part of the worldwide marketing division and managed educational technology grants. President Lendo presented a major policy paper at Oxford University in 2004 regarding asynchronous online learning, which received wide distribution.
Kent A. Murphy is the company founder and has led Luna Innovations as president, chief executive officer, treasurer, and chairman of the board since 1992. Within a two-year period that began in 2001, he spun out three additional companies from technologies developed within Luna. He sold the spin-outs to a Fortune 300 company, a multibillion-dollar European firm, and a billion-dollar biotech in California. Dr. Murphy took Luna public on the NASDAQ in 2006. In 2005, Luna was presented the Governor’s Technology Award for Entrepreneurship, which acknowledges a business that best exemplifies the Virginia entrepreneurial spirit through use of technology to grow into new markets, to markedly increase jobs inside the Commonwealth of Virginia, and/or participate in local or regional business associations or activities. Dr. Murphy was named by the governor as a 2004 Industrialist of the Year, an honor given to a business or industry for distinct contributions made to advancing business development through the innovative use of science or technology. Dr. Murphy is a founding member of the Virginia Research and Technology Advisory Commission (VRTAC) appointed by the governor. He is also a member of the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) board of directors, the National Research Council, the National Academies’ SBIR Steering Committee, and the Potomac Task Force. Additionally, Dr. Murphy founded and is the president of The Accelerating Innovation Foundation, a non-profit organization whose goal is to promote and facilitate development of a technology innovation cluster in the mid-Atlantic region.
Thomas H. Oliver has been in the securities industry since 1979 and has been president and chief executive officer of United Planners Financial Services since 1999. Before becoming CEO, he was senior vice president of the firm. Prior to United Planners, Mr. Oliver served as vice president of First Affiliated Securities, SunAmerica Securities, Anchor National Financial Services Inc., and Private Ledger Financial Services (LPL). He was also president of American Financial Management, a registered investment advisory firm. Before getting into management, he was president of his own RIA firm. He was in the top 5 percent of retail producers and a limited partner of Edward Jones. Mr. Oliver has the notable distinction of also being involved in the fine arts world as a musician and bronze sculptor. He has been commissioned to create numerous bronze portraits and monumental sculptures. In 2007, he received the honor of being inducted into the IRR (Rock ’n Roll) Hall of Fame. Mr. Oliver received his B.A. with an education major and an art minor from William Penn University and is Series 7, 63, 24, and life insurance licensed.
David Pakman has been a pioneer and an entrepreneur in digital media since its early days. The majority of his career has been focused on developing new business models for the music industry that embrace the digital economy and benefit both artists and consumers. As the chief executive officer of eMusic, Mr. Pakman ran the world’s leading digital retailer of independent music, second only to iTunes in number of downloads sold. eMusic serves customers aged twenty-five-plus, offering independent music and audio books in a universally compatible format at a great value. In the four years that Mr. Pakman ran eMusic, the business grew by more than 850 percent. eMusic sold more than 200 million songs in that stretch—more music than all of its competitors combined (except iTunes)—and is now one of the most successful entertainment subscription services, with upwards of 400,000 paying subscribers and more than 8 million unique monthly visitors. eMusic.com Inc. is wholly owned by Dimensional Associates Inc., the private equity arm of JDS Capital Management Inc., where Mr. Pakman has also helped to oversee a portfolio of private equity investments, including digital music distributor The Orchard. Prior to joining eMusic and Dimensional, Mr. Pakman was co-founder and president of business development and public policy at Myplay Inc., the broadband application services company founded in 1999 that introduced the “digital music locker” and pioneered the locker category. After selling Myplay to Bertelsmann’s eCommerce Group in 2001, Mr. Pakman was named senior vice president of corporate development and public policy for BeMusic, a division of Bertelsmann. Before Myplay, he was vice president at N2K Entertainment, which created the first commercially viable secure digital download service. He also was an early principal force and co-creator of Apple Computer’s Music Group, co-founding the Macintosh New York Music Festival and co-producing the then-largest industry Webcast to date, the 1997 GRAMMY Awards. A respected figure in the world of digital entertainment, Mr. Pakman currently serves on the Board of NARM (National Association of Recording Merchandisers) and is a frequent resource for journalists on digital media issues. He is a former board member of DiMA (Digital Media Association) in Washington, D.C., and co-chair of its Music Licensing Committee. He has testified before Congress and the NTIA (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), guest-lectured at both the Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania, and spoken at hundreds of conferences and public events. In May 2007 he delivered the commencement address at Penn Engineering’s 251st commencement. Mr. Pakman holds a B.S.E. in computer science engineering from the school. Mr. Pakman is a member of the Board of Overseers at Penn Engineering and serves on the Leadership Committee for the UJA-NY’s (United Jewish Appeal-New York’s) Music for Youth. He is an avid musician and songwriter.
Robin Raina is chairman, president, and chief executive officer of the Ebix group. In addition to running a successful business enterprise with a worldwide market capitalization of $400 million, he has dedicated his life to public service. Mr. Raina is known as one of the key figures in the U.S. insurance industry. He was the first Indian to join Ebix Inc. (NASDAQ: EBIX), a thirty-two-year-old publicly traded American company, and he has since led the transformation of this company into a profitable $400 million global group with offices in Australia; New Zealand; Singapore; London; Chicago; Atlanta; Pittsburgh; Park City, Utah; Walnut Creek, California; India, and Toronto. Under Mr. Raina’s leadership, Ebix has delivered one of the highest returns on shareholder investment in recent U.S. stock market history. The company has clocked shareholder return of 4,720 percent in the last five years. Every $1,000 invested in Ebix stock five years ago is worth $47,200 today. The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently rated his company the Second Best Company in Georgia, ahead of other Georgia-headquartered companies Delta, Coca-Cola, and Home Depot. The company has been named among Fortune’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies in the United States, with revenues of $200 million or lower, for the past four years. Mr. Raina has been named among the 100 Most Powerful People in Insurance in North America by Worksite magazine. ABI named him “Man of the Year” for his work in the insurance industry in 2003. As a philanthropist, Mr. Raina founded the Robin Raina Foundation (RRF), which supports thousands of children in India with education, food, shelter, and medical care. He recently conceptualized and started a $15 million project to build 6,000 concrete homes for slum-dwellers in Bawana in North Eastern Delhi.
Edward T. Reilly has been the seventeenth president and chief executive officer of the American Management Association, International since 2001. AMA (amanet.org) is the world’s leading not-for-profit, membership-based management development, research, and publishing organization. Each year, AMA directly interacts with more than 100,000 managers and executives in the United States and around the world, through its renowned management education seminar programs and conferences. It publishes many newsletters, research papers, and a quarterly management journal. Through its publishing arm AMACOM, it publishes more than eighty books per year. AMA is the parent company of Management Centre Europe (MCE.be), a leading pan-European business management education institution for middle and senior executives. Management Centre Europe has been located in Brussels for forty years. AMA also maintains operations in Canada, Mexico, Japan, and China, with affiliated organizations in Istanbul, Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, and Seoul. AMA’s organizations are distinguished by the quality of their faculty of global business practitioners, the practical action-oriented focus of their learning programs, and the dynamic, interactive nature of their courses. Mr. Reilly previously served as president and chief executive officer of Big Flower Holdings Inc. (now Vertis Inc.), a leading provider of integrated marketing and advertising services. Under his four-year leadership, revenues at Big Flower Holdings increased from approximately $1 billion to nearly $1.9 billion. The NYSE-listed company broadened its services and made numerous acquisitions, specializing in newspaper insert advertising, individualized direct mail, digital asset management, and application software for the broadcasting and advertising agency industries. In December 1999, the company was taken private in a leveraged transaction. Prior to joining Big Flower Holdings, Mr. Reilly spent more than twenty-five years with the broadcast and book publishing groups of The McGraw-Hill Companies, holding positions as editor in chief of the accounting, computing, and data processing department of Gregg Community College Division; chief financial officer of the California Test Bureau; general manager of the Instructo Corporation; group vice president for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; group vice president for McGraw-Hill Training Systems; and executive vice president in charge of McGraw-Hill International Book Company. In 1987, Mr. Reilly became president of The McGraw-Hill Broadcasting Company; during that time, he also served as chairman of the board of the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), chairman of the board of the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV) when the technology platform for digital broadcasting and high-definition television was developed and approved by the FCC, and as a board member of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). He is also a past chairman of the Advertising Council, the world leader in public service advertising. Currently, Mr. Reilly serves on the following boards: vice chair of the USO Worldwide Board of Governors; member of the board of directors of AARP Services Inc.; Media & Entertainment Holdings Inc.; and the New York Society of Association Executives. He is chairman of the Royal Society of Arts in the United States, a Fellow of the International Academy of Management, and a member of the North American Advisory Board of the UCD Michael Smurfit School of Business in Dublin. Mr. Reilly holds a B.B.A. from St. Francis College, New York, and attended the Stanford Executive Program. He resides in Westport, Connecticut, with his wife, Susan.
As an executive in the health care field for the past twenty-three years, Scott A. Root has spent the past four years as president and chief executive officer of Astra Tech Inc. Prior to that Mr. Root spent fourteen years in various senior management roles at The Straumann Company, where he helped the company go from a startup subsidiary to the number two player in the industry. He began his career at Procter & Gamble, where he spent five years in various roles in sales and sales management. Mr. Root received a B.S. from Babson College.
Anthony P. Schirripa, chairman and chief executive officer of Mancini•Duffy, is a registered architect with more than thirty years of experience on a variety of architectural and interiors projects. He has worked extensively on projects for leading institutions and is particularly adept at managing large and technologically sophisticated projects for a varied client base. Mr. Schirripa has been a driving force in Mancini•Duffy’s transition and transformation from a mid-sized local practice to a multi-office 180-person firm, with a diversified client base and a national reputation. His emphasis on strategic planning, investments in technology, training, and continuing education, and his businesslike approach to project and practice management are the foundation for the firm’s growth. Prior to joining Mancini•Duffy, Mr. Schirripa was vice president and principal at Gensler. His efforts over fifteen years gave him special insights into the operations and requirements of major financial services companies. Active in the architecture community, Mr. Schirripa participates in many professional events and speaking engagements for organizations such as the American Institute of Architects, the International Interior Design Association, the New York Building Congress, and the Society of American Registered Architects. He is currently First Vice President/President Elect of the AIA New York Chapter.
Gary Shapiro is president and chief executive officer of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,300 consumer electronics companies and owning and producing the continent’s largest annual trade show, the International Consumer Electronics Show. Mr. Shapiro led the industry in its successful transition to HDTV (high-definition television). He co-founded and chaired the HDTV Model Station and has served as a leader of the Advanced Television Test Center (ATTC). He is a charter inductee to the Academy of Digital Television Pioneers and received its highest award as the industry leader most influential in advancing HDTV. He focused on the need for a hard cut-off date and led the effort to obtain the 2009 cut-off date. As chairman of the Home Recording Rights Coalition (HRRC), Mr. Shapiro led the manufacturers’ battle to preserve the legality of recording technology and consumer fair use rights. He has held many exhibition industry leadership posts and has received the exhibition industry’s highest honor, the Pinnacle Award. Mr. Shapiro served on the Board of Visitors of George Mason University and is a member of the board of directors of the Northern Virginia Technology Council. He also served as a member of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Commission on Information Technology. He has been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a “mastermind” for his initiative in helping create the Industry Cooperative for Ozone Layer Protection (ICOLP). Mr. Shapiro leads a staff of 150 employees and thousands of industry volunteers and has testified before Congress on technology and business issues more than twenty times. In both 2007 and 2008, The Hill named him one of the top advocates in Washington. Also, in both 2007 and in 2008, Washington Life magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in Washington. CEA has won many awards for its magazine, Vision, and as a family-friendly employer and one of the best places to work. Prior to joining the association, Mr. Shapiro was an associate at the law firm of Squire Sanders. He also has worked on Capitol Hill, as an assistant to a member of Congress. He received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a double major in economics and psychology from the State University of New York, Binghamton. He is married to Dr. Susan Malinowski, a retina surgeon. Their son, Mark Jerome Malinowski Shapiro, was born April 18, 2008.
Patric M. Verrone is a television writer, attorney, and president of the Writers Guild of America, West. In 2008, he led that union through the on hundred-day strike that won entertainment writers a contract covering the Internet. Mr. Verrone graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was an officer of The Harvard Lampoon, and earned his J.D. from Boston College Law School after serving as editor of the Boston College Law Review. He is admitted to practice law in Florida and California. Mr. Verrone has been an adjunct law professor at Loyola Law School and University of California Los Angeles Extension. For ten years, he was issue editor of the Annual Entertainment Law issue of Los Angeles Lawyer magazine. His television writing credits include The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Larry Sanders Show, The Critic, The Simpsons, Pinky and the Brain, Rugrats, Muppets Tonight!, Class of 3000, and Futurama. Having been nominated for eight Emmys in four categories, Mr. Verrone has won two. He has also received an Environmental Media Award, an ASIFA (International Animated Film Society) Annie Award, a People’s Choice Award nomination, the Writers Guild’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Animation Writing, and the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel’s Labor Counsel of the Year Award. Speaking frequently all over the world on media, entertainment, and law, including testimony before the Federal Communications Commission, the California state legislature, and the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Mr. Verrone is married to fellow TV writer and novelist Maiya Williams. The couple has three children who all want to be writers and two dogs who want to direct.
Penelope H. Wills, Ph.D. became the ninth president of Northeast Iowa Community College (NICC) in the summer of 2004. Her career includes various leadership positions in higher education at the state, regional, and national levels. Prior to coming to Iowa, Dr. Wills developed extensive experience in such fields as student development, assessment, planning, and quality improvement. Her positive reputation for forming effective partnerships with industry, K-12, and state agencies is well recognized. Under Dr. Wills’s leadership, NICC has markedly increased college engagement for students and faculty. Examples of this enhanced involvement are the creation of a College Senate (a model for shared governance); NICC’s new Quality Council, which directly ties to the college’s strategic plan through assessment and accountability; the formation of Iowa’s first Regional Academy for Math and Science, which exemplifies strong partnerships with business, civic leaders, and K-12 districts; and generation of new revenue streams through development of the college’s first Advancement Office, included in a new division of External Relations, which also includes grant writing and legislative advocacy. As proof of the regional communities’ support for NICC, the college received a super majority approval by the voters for a $35 million capital bond levy in late 2007. Dr. Wills serves on various community, state, and federal boards. Examples include Workforce and Economic Development Commissions (IDED—Iowa) and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC); the Rural Policy Research Institute (RUPRI—national); BioScience Alliance Board (Iowa); Greater Dubuque Development Corporation; Northeast Iowa Dairy Foundation Board; Dubuque Chamber of Commerce Board; Decorah Rotary; United Way of Dubuque; and the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety.
