International Association of Reservation Executives

23rd Annual Conference and Exhibition

April 19 - 23, 2008
Westin Horton Plaza * San Diego, California  U.S.A.
 

About the Speakers
Updated 04/04/2008

Details about each speaker are listed below. Check back often for updates; information will be added as the schedule is finalized.


Nolan Burris
Visionistics Enterprises, Inc., Future Proof Travel Solutions

Nolan Burris began his professional career as a travel agent in 1979 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He eventually worked in nearly all areas of the travel industry.

Nolan developed an early interest in technology and the business solutions it could provide. In 1990, his continued work on the strategic use of technology lead him to Vancouver where he served as Vice President of Information Technologies for Uniglobe Travel International.

In 1999, Nolan formed his own company, Visionistics. As a consulting and educational resource, Visionistics' mission is to help others achieve personal and professional success. All of the company's programs are built on a set of fundamental principles called "The Visionistics Process of Success"™. The concepts are based on the belief that sustained success is a process and is dependent upon integrity. The program also teaches that integrity is created and maintained through balanced attention to Vision, Strategies, Tactics, and Ethics.

In 2007 Nolan created Future Proof Travel Solutions to take the Visionistics concepts and apply them specifically and exclusively to the travel industry of today and tomorrow. Nolan's work in teaching strategies for success has made him a popular and in-demand international speaker. His programs have been presented in keynote and motivational addresses around the world.

Marilyn Clark
Consistacom, Inc.

Marilyn Clark is the Director of Marketing and Sales for Consistacom, Inc. an Avaya Partner. Marilyn graduated in the top of her class from Michigan Technological University with a MS in Business Administration and a BS in Mathematics. She spent the majority of her career in manufacturing, learning the business process improvement tools on how to do more, with less. Since her start with Consistacom in 2005, Marilyn has focused on the development of business processes and partnerships allowing her to help the progress of Consistacom.

Marilyn has been a part of three start-up organizations from 1976 to 2005 and one turn around in the U.K. in 2000. She brings a fresh, new perspective to the call center industry by applying skills learned in manufacturing that have been proved time and again to work.

In addition, Marilyn is an Honorary Lecturer in the School of Business at Michigan Technological University, and is certified in project management as well as APICS certified

Michelle Cline
FurstPerson

Michelle Cline is FurstPerson’s Vice President of Operations.  In this role, Michelle holds executive responsibility for the delivery of the FurstPerson Assessment Solutions and Recruitment Process Outsourcing.  Michelle drives and oversees all aspects of operations within FurstPerson client services, including development and implementation of assessment products and technology as well as coordination and allocation of human and technical resources.

Michelle joined FurstPerson 10 years ago when the company was founded.  She had been working as a consultant for CallCenter Services, taking on multiple projects focusing on improving internal call center business processes and implementing new call center methodology.  Prior to her role with CallCenter Services, Michelle worked for EDS in a General Motors call center where she was a member of the call center operations team.

Seth Ettwein
Alaska Airlines

Seth Ettwein has worked for Alaska Airlines in various capacities for the last 8 years.  He started as a Reservations Sales Agent in Phoenix, Arizona and moved on to work in Reservations Applications Development as a business analyst.  In that role, he supported the software applications development team in providing business analysis and process documentation for various reservations specific software applications. In 2007, he moved to his current position in Network Operations and helped launch the At-Home agent program.

Mark Frei
West Corporation

Mark Frei is a Senior Vice President of Sales for West Corporation. Mark is responsible for new business strategy and service development for West's Custom Operator Services Group, which includes home agents, as well as US-based, near-shore and offshore brick-and-mortar call center solutions.  

Over the past five years Mr. Frei has focused on the development and deployment of West’s home agent solution, West at Home. In that time, he has helped grow the program to over 14,000 active agents and has become a recognized expert in this space. 

With over 11 years at West, Mr. Frei has also been responsible for sales within West's Interactive and Direct Response Divisions. Prior to joining West, Mr. Frei spent five years with American Express & First Data Resources.

 Mr. Frei is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has had numerous articles published regarding technology capabilities, transaction processing and call center services.

Neil Giles
Avaya, Inc.

Neil has served in various technical and leadership roles in the telecommunications industry for over 13 years. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration. He actively continues formal education and certification in the fields of IP Telephony and Contact Center applications through the Avaya Professional Certification Program. He has earned certifications for IP Telephony and Contact Center solution architecture design. For more than a decade, Neil has focused on the application of advanced technologies to address business needs while facilitating increased revenues, reduced costs, and enhanced customer satisfaction for global corporations with complex communication networks and diversified eco-systems including in-house, outsourced, and off-shore contact centers.

Ric Kosiba
Bay Bridge Decision Technologies

Ric Kosiba is one of the founders of Bay Bridge Decision Technologies and serves as its President. He leads the development of the company's simulation and optimization technologies and is an expert in the field of call center management and modeling, collections and call center strategy optimization, and the optimization of large-scale operational processes. He holds two contact center planning and analytic patents.

Before founding Bay Bridge, Ric was Director of Management Science at Partners First and was responsible for company-wide efforts, including collections and call center analysis, predictive and prescriptive marketing and risk modeling, and operations engineering. Before joining Partners First, Ric was Vice President of Operations Research in First USA's Customer Support Division. He was in charge of collections strategy modeling, staff planning, budgeting, and call center process involvement.

Ric received a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Engineering from Purdue University, an M.S.C.E. and a B.S.C.E. from Purdue's School of Civil Engineering.

Dr. Brooks Mitchell
Snowfly Incentives

Brooks Mitchell PhD. has the rare ability to combine humor with meaningful and practical interpretation of research in the areas of employee motivation and retention.  Dr. Mitchell held top HR positions at PepsiCo and Texas Instruments before relocating to Laramie, Wyoming in 1987 where he is currently a teaching professor at The University of Wyoming and CEO of Snowfly Incentives which he founded in 1999.  Brooks has received outstanding reviews as a featured speaker at numerous call center events including The 2007 Avaya Predictive Dialer System User Conference and The 2007 Aspect Customer Experience.  He is a published author and has been featured in over 75 national publications including Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, The New York Times and U.S.A. Today.  In addition to Snowfly and his students, Dr. Mitchell devotes his time to fly-fishing, golf, and military history

Erv Prince
IEX, a NICE Company

Erv Prince is a Senior Regional Sales Manager at IEX Corporation. Prior to joining IEX as a Sales Manager in 1994, Erv was an International Marketing Manager at E-Systems, Inc., a Fortune 500 defense systems company. His responsibilities there included new business development in the US, Latin America and the Middle East.

In his current role at IEX, Erv is responsible for sales activities in the Western Region, incorporating Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii. Working with solutions Engineers from IEX and partner companies, Erv assists prospective customers with solving key business problems through the implementation of leading-edge software solutions from IEX and IEX partner companies.

During Erv's tenure at IEX, he has been responsible for placing IEX's flagship TotalView Workforce Management system at numerous key accounts. He has been Regional Sales Manager of the Year five times and is a four time member of the President's Club.

Erv attended Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing. He also received a Master of Science in Operations Management from the University of Arkansas.

He is a former US Air Force officer, having served 22 years on active duty, retiring in 1989 at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Marc Schneider
ProFlowers

Marc Schneider joined ProFlowers in 2006 as Vice President of Customer Contact Operations. He has over 15 years of experience as an operator, investment banker, and management consultant working across a variety of industries such as call center operations, financial services, oil & gas, chemicals, utilities, commercial printing, and international development. Mr. Schneider also has extensive experience in post-merger integration, cost reduction, value-based selling, pricing, and new venture launch. Mr. Schneider received his BS in Economics and Accounting from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and his MBA in Marketing and Statistics from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business. He was a Visiting Professor of Competitive Strategy at the University of Anahuac in Mexico City and has served as a Board member of several non-profit institutions.

Connie Smith
Envision Telephony, Inc.

Connie Smith has been involved in the contact center industry in various roles for more than 20 years. She has built operations and fulfillment centers from the ground up including multi-site, retail and wholesales, reengineered multiple site centers and built one of the first true multi-channel contact centers in 1998, including integrated telephone, e-mail, Web chat and callback technologies.

She leveraged her cumulative experience with all aspects of managing contact centers and became a consultant, helping world-class contact centers with building, relocation, mergers, assessments, vendor selection, workforce management, metrics, telephone systems, CRM and CTI applications, customer service skill development, training initiatives and quality programs.

Today, she is Chief Evangelist for Envision (formerly Click2Coach), and her passion is to educate the industry on the importance of workforce management, quality monitoring, coaching, eLearning, performance management and analytics.

David Taylor, CISSP
PCI Knowledge Base

David Taylor is the President of PCI Alliance and the Founder of PCI Knowledge Base.  The mission of Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Vendor Alliance (SVA) is to provide products and services for the affected members of the payment card industry including retailers, E-commerce companies financial institutions, payment processors, POS vendors and any other organizations that must achieve compliance with the PCI Data Security Standards. The PCI SVA will also complement the objectives of the major card payment brands by helping educate the payment card industry about the business value of achieving PCI DSS compliance. David has a PhD. from Purdue University and an MBA from New York University.  He has six years experience with AT&T Bell Labs and 14 years with Gartner.

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Last edit 04/04/08