Alinean Executive Bios - Tom Pisello, Judy Robinet, Patty Baumgardner, Lyndon Wilkes, Bryan Leopard, Greg Shanker, Lisa McWhirter, Tom Murphy, Amy Cole, Eric Fink

Tom's latest endeavor, Alinean, was founded in 2001 to develop software, methodologies and tools for accurately evaluating, presenting and measuring the value of IT investments using benchmarking and ROI analysis; particularly helping vendors use business value selling to streamline the justification of new investments and assuring true value delivery. Alinean has exclusive partnership with leading IT industry analyst firm IDC, and customers including Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Intel, BellSouth and Dell, many of the worlds leading consultancies and CIOs.

Tom's pioneering ROI and TCO experience began in 1993 with Interpose, a company he founded to develop the first automated ROI and TCO analysis software for CIOs and IT vendors. Interpose was acquired by Gartner in 1998 and formed the foundation for Gartner's Measurement, ROI and TCO software solutions. Tom served Gartner as managing VP and was instrumental in the software becoming the industry standard for TCO assessment.

Tom is a serial entrepreneur having served as a founding member or advisor for several technology start-ups including Full Armor Corporation (acquired by NetIQ in 2003), Connotate Technologies, Digital Owl, OurBeginning.com and Spiral-Up Interactive.

Tom is a regular contributor to ComputerWorld, CIO Decisions and other TechTarget online journals, CIOInsight and other leading IT publications. He holds several software patents and is a featured speaker at major IT and management conferences. He has written several key e-books on ROI and TCO analysis; including "Return on Investment For Information Technology Providers: Using ROI as a Selling and Management Tool" and "IT Value Chain Management - Maximizing the ROI from IT Investments."

Tom Murphy, VP, Engineering/CTO

Tom is responsible for setting Alinean's technology strategy, and managing its execution in the development of the EnterpriseROI™ platform and tools, and in leading Alinean's Engineering Team. Tom has over 19 years of experience in software design and development, technical business development and project and team leadership. Throughout his career, Tom has worked with various sized companies in assembling development teams as well as full life cycle development. Tom comes to Alinean from DigitalOwl, where, as Director of Product Development, he helped direct and develop the company's Internet-based information management application services, leveraging digital rights management to solve critical business problems.

Prior to DigitalOwl, Tom was with Computer Sciences Corporation developing a state-of-the-art, n-tier DCOM suite of banking products which automated the credit application and credit delinquency processes. The remainder of Tom's career has been spent working in startup organizations establishing development teams and designing and implementing product solutions.

Tom holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and in Mathematics from Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York.

Patty Baumgardner, Vice President of Business Development

Patty is responsible for developing and managing Alinean's strategic partnerships, leading sales of Alinean's Enterprise ROI offerings and for developing new markets for Alinean solutions. She also manages several of Alinean's largest accounts, and oversees all aspects of sales strategy and implementation.

Patty has over 20 years of industry experience with an accomplished track record of top performance. Prior to Alinean, her entrepreneurial skills lead her to start up Pivotal Advantage, LLC, a niche sales and marketing consulting firm within the Information Technology marketplace. In that role, she collaborated with the executive teams of emerging IT companies to identify their market differentiation and business value - the foundation of all successful sales and marketing communication strategies.

Patty was previously with Gartner, Inc., where she was promoted throughout her tenure at the company, holding several key positions in both the sales and consulting organizations. As the Managing Director of North American sales to the technology vendor marketplace, Patty managed a team responsible for over $400 million in sales revenue. Within GartnerConsulting, Patty was a Director in the Technology Marketplace practice, where one of her most significant contributions lead to the development of a consulting methodology designed to assist professional service organizations win multi-billion dollar outsourcing engagements.

Patty started her career at CCH Incorporated, a leading information provider in tax, securities and business law research and compliance software. She holds dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Business and Life Sciences from Bowling Green State University.

Jefre Futch, Managing Vice President, Sales and Business Development

Jefre leads sales and business development,as well as the strategic management of Alinean's Enterprise ROI™ scalable enterprise application platform including authoring education programs, Peer Comparison / IT benchmarking and ITIL Assesment solutions.

Jefre has a proven track record driving profitable business from successfully establishing and growing start-ups to managing multi-hundred million dollar global business units to delivering on customer engagements and realizing dramatic improvements to his clients' bottom line. He comes to Alinean after running a $150 million consulting business for Sun Microsystems, where he created several new Systems Integration and Managed Services practices including an IT Assessment and Consulting practice based on ITIL that generated $28M annually. He brings over 20 years experience in General Management, Sales & Marketing, Business Process/Information Technology Consulting and Outsourcing Services. Prior to Sun, Jefre held leadership positions in world-class organizations such as CBIS (now Convergys), NYNEX (now Verizon) and NASA/Lockheed Space Operations.

As a certified ITIL Master and Six Sigma blackbelt, Jefre is an expert in applying process and technology to internal, partner/supplier and client business issues, executing on today's performance objectives while enabling strategic change for the future. He has been and continues to be a principle architect and champion in developing and instituting standardized best practice and methods for selling and delivering IT-based business solutions and services. He has published and holds patents for several methodologies and best practices as well as being a featured speaker at major IT and management conferences. Jefre holds a B.S. Degree in CIS/Engineering Technology from the University of Central Florida.

Greg Shanker, Managing VP, Analyst Group

Greg manages the analyst organization, developing engagement best practices, as well as serving as project manager and analyst for several major Alinean accounts. Greg has over twenty years of experience with leading firms in the software industry including IBM, Oracle, and SAS. Throughout his career Greg has driven innovation through strategic planning and establishing best practices in Sales and Marketing roles. Prior to joining Alinean, Greg lead the ROI Program Office for IBM Tivoli, where he developed value models for the Tivoli portfolio of systems management products, and trained and supported the field sales organization's value selling initiative. Under Greg's leadership Tivoli achieved a 10% increase in incremental sales, a reduction of 30% in sales cycles, and an increase of 50% in the win ratio for strategic opportunities by leveraging value selling. The ROI training and deployment program Greg instituted is viewed as a best practice within IBM and the industry.

Greg has extensive experience with several IT disciplines, including systems and network management, security, data management, storage, data warehousing, business intelligence and enterprise resource planning. Greg holds a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science from Vanderbilt University, and an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Bryan Leopard, VP, Analyst

Bryan is responsible for analyst sales tool model development and manages several major Alinean accounts. Bryan joins Alinean after a 14 year career in the IT industry. His experience includes business development, program management, partner relationship management, hardware and software engineering, database programming and systems management.

Bryan served most recently as a business development and program manager for Hewlett-Packard. He was the worldwide leader for development, deployment and training of ROI and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) toolsets within the BladeSystem division. The toolset was based on Alinean's ROI Analyst and ROI Calculator product lines. Bryan also developed several internal TCO models for HP. Using ROI Analyst and the internal TCO tools, Bryan helped many of HP's customers understand the values of using ROI and TCO to evaluate IT purchases. Bryan also trained the worldwide BladeSystem sales team for both HP and its partners on how to perform customer ROI analysis and translate those results into a quantifiable value to the customer.

Prior to his role in business development and program management, Bryan held marketing and engineering positions working in the Industry Standard Server division at Hewlett-Packard. Bryan also worked as an engineering partner manager representing Compaq/HP with Red Hat, SuSE, and SCO. Before joining Compaq/HP Bryan managed a data center for Cellular South and was a database programmer for Mississippi State University.

Bryan holds an MBA from Texas A&M University and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Mississippi State University.

Susan Schneider, Senior Analyst

Susan Schneider helps Alinean's clients build business value by developing models to prove and improve the ROI/TCO derived from their technology solutions. Susan brings a wide range of experience, most recently as a the author of numerous Web-based IT and financial articles, sales reports and marketing pieces to communicate the value of IT in business operations. Prior to her writing position, Susan worked as a benchmark advisor at The Hackett Group, advising corporate clients in process improvement and best practices in the information technology and procurement areas.

Over 10 years of Susan's technology experience were spent at Gartner, Inc. where, as a director in Marketplace Consulting, she founded and developed Gartner's ROI sales tool and consulting program for IT vendors. As part of her role as director, Susan authored ROI/TCO sales tool models and vendor-sponsored sales and marketing papers to assist sales teams with value-based selling strategies. In an earlier role as a TCO benchmark analyst, she communicated cost efficiency and effectiveness strategies with best practice process improvements to Fortune 100 companies based on their study results. Susan was also with Peregrine Systems of San Diego where she conducted TCO and ROI studies for asset management and support center software implementations and spoke on best practices at several Peregrine user meetings

Amy Cole, Manager, Analyst Production Group

Amy Cole manages the Alinean Analyst Production organization, working with customers and analysts to develop Excel models from conception to production publishing into the Enterprise ROI framework. Amy joined Alinean in 2004 and is responsible for developing ROI and TCO business case models for Alinean's enterprise sales tools and lead generation calculators, as well as managing the client relationships throughout the project and beyond. In addition to business case models, Amy contributes to Alinean's technical white papers.

Prior to joining Alinean, Amy worked as an Associate Financial Manager for AT&T's Business Services. In her position with AT&T, Amy worked to improve and develop standardized revenue forecasting and plan processes, managed the development and implementation of system enhancements used to improve accuracy and efficiency, and consolidated and analyzed monthly forecast and plan for revenue and expenses.

Amy holds an MBA with concentrations in Finance and Management from the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, and a B.A. in Accounting from Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois.

Judy Robinet Pisello, VP Marketing + Operations

Judy is a co-founder of Alinean, and leads both the Finance & Operations organization, as well as Alinean's Marketing strategy. She has been involved with several start-up technology ventures, specializing in marketing communications, brand identity, internet presence & user interface design. Judy has over 18 years of experience in new media marketing and digital production & management. Through her career, her creative direction has led the development of several nationally-recognized e-commerce websites, CD-ROMs, Kiosks and other interactive multimedia productions, primarily marcomm application & sales tools for clients such as Intel, Novell, Unisys, Seagate Software, Wall Data, The Celebration Company, PuertaBella.com, Microsoft and Gartner. In 1997, she founded Spiral-Up Interactive, Inc., a multimedia and Internet production company. Prior to Spiral-Up, Judy served as a Senior Multimedia Director for Walt Disney Imagineering as a member of the Emerging Technologies team, and as a Senior Project Manager for Advanced Computer Graphics in Cincinnati.

Judy holds a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Central Florida, where she had a dual major in Advertising/Public Relations and Graphic Design, with a minor in Business Administration.

Betty McNeil, VP, Sales

Betty is responsible for managing several of Alinean's largest accounts. Betty has thirty years of industry experience as a sales and marketing executive. Most recently she was with Gartner, where she held positions as Worldwide Senior Marketing Director for the eMetrix group, and National Software Director of Sales for GartnerMeasurement. Prior to Gartner, Betty was Worldwide Director of Sales for Interpose, Inc. a Total Cost of Ownership software firm which was successfully sold to the GartnerGroup in 1998. Within two years of acquisition, Betty drove the sales team to become a $30 million business in annual sales, helping Interpose to become one of Gartner's most successful acquisitions with a 1000% increase in sales.

Over seventeen years of Betty's career were spent with the IBM Corporation where she held a number of sales and marketing positions. Extensive financial software systems experience was gained with J.D. Edwards and Kirchman Corporation. Betty holds a BS Double Degree in Business and Education from Florida Atlantic University where she assisted in founding the IBM College Co-op Program in 1973.

Heather O'Brien, Director of Sales

Heather is responsible for new client development, and manages several of Alinean's key accounts. Heather has over 18 years experience in sales, marketing and sales management. Prior to joining Alinean, Heather contributed 5 years to Gartner where she demonstrated tremendous success in sales and was consistently recognized as a top performer. In addition to assisting with the growth of the inside sales channel, Heather was responsible for sales training and development. Prior to Gartner, Heather held various posts in Marketing and Sales for Barclays International in London.

Heather holds a Bachelors degree in Management and Business Studies from the University of Sussex.

Rob Ryals, Director of Sales

Rob is responsible for new client development. Rob has over 13 years experience in sales, sales management & marketing. He is a 10 year Gartner veteran, where he demonstrated tremendous success in sales, sales management, training and marketing. In addition to assisting with the success of the inside sales channel, Rob spearheaded a number of key marketing initiatives targeting technology providers that are still successfully being deployed at Gartner.

Rob holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing and Management from the University of South Florida.

Board of Advisors

Bill Kirwin

Bill Kirwin is an advisor to Alinean, helping to refine and develop better business models and go-to-market strategies. He is currently a business advisor to several other new technology start-ups, including Cohesive Knowledge Solutions, the e-mail management experts. Mr. Kirwin is formerly a research vice president in Gartner and is recognized as the founder of Gartner's breakthrough research in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), and has been active in the area of IT economics research for more than 20 years. At Gartner Mr. Kirwin focused on IT performance management, productivity, processes and services and the business value of IT.

Mr. Kirwin's experience includes 20 years with Gartner, and 31 years professional background overall in the IT industry, including Timeplex, Inc., as Director, Information Services and Resources, and Royal Business Machines as Regional Sales Manager. Mr. Kirwin holds a B.A. in Education from Southern Connecticut State University.

Lyndon Wilkes

Mr. Wilkes brings Alinean after 20 years with Hewlett-Packard as a Senior Information Technology Consultant and recognized expert in developing methodologies and tools for financially justifying investments in information technology. From 2003 to May 2007, Lyndon was the Worldwide HP leader for the development and deployment of a single HP-wide standard Business Value Selling toolset for financially justifying HP solutions to HP customers. This toolset was based on Alinean's ROI Analyst and ROI Calculator product lines.

Using these tools from Alinean, Lyndon trained and mentored hundreds of HP Sales Specialist and HP Services Information technology consultants from all regions of the world in how to use TCO and IT Business Value Assessment tools and methodologies to help HP customers understand how more business value can be generated from their investment in IT. Lyndon has more than eighteen years experience consulting with HP customers on information technology cost-benefit issues across a broad range of industries including manufacturing, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare and the public sector.

Before focusing on information technology financial justification, Lyndon was Hardware Product Services Finance Manager for HP's US Customer Service Organization. In that role he spearheaded the implementation of activity based costing principles in the US Customer Services Organization and a Division Controller of the Electronic Connector Division of Midland-Ross, he was responsible for consolidating the Financial, Sales Management and Manufacturing Systems of three Midland-Ross acquisitions. In this role he gained extensive experience in integrating multi-vendor systems across diverse multi-location organizational cultures.

Lyndon's financial justification education includes an MBA in Finance from MIT, and a BA with honors in Economics from Colby College.

Management Team

Alinean prides itself not only on its industry-standard technology, but also on the talent of its people.

Tom Pisello, CEO and Founder Visit Tom's Blog on ROI »