George S. Paras Managing Director EAdirections
Mr. Paras is a widely recognized mentor/coach, speaker, and thought leader in Enterprise Architecture, Strategy, Business Architecture, Transformation, Portfolio Management, Organization and Governance. He has guided hundreds of companies, offering practical advice on introducing, refining and sustaining these core disciplines. Mr. Paras and his co-founder Tim Westbrock created EAdirections in 2006 to bring their unique mix of experience, creativity, insights, and pragmatism to the market. Their mission is to improve the skills and success of senior leaders and their teams. Previously, he led EA research and provided guidance to IT leaders in his position as Director of Enterprise Planning and Architecture Strategies at META Group. He has also served as Vice President of Strategy at Troux Technologies, as the Senior Enterprise Architect at United Airlines, and held multiple leadership roles at several IT vendors. He served as Chairman of the Enterprise Architectures Conferences (EAC) for 12 years and has co-authored sections of two EA compilations, the “SIM Guide to Enterprise Architecture” and “Coherency Management”. Dedicated to the advancement of the EA discipline, he is currently Editor-in-Chief of Architecture and Governance Magazine.
Joel Crabb VP, Architecture, Chief Architect Target
Joel spent most of his working life coding large scale software systems for enterprises. Architecture crept into his life as he worked on larger and more complex systems that needed a holistic view of the system and thoughtful planning to function and scale. At the same time, Joel embraced the Agile development movement and learned both the Agile and Architecture trades concurrently. He has worked in multiple industries and companies from startup medical devices, power utilities, health insurance, online banking, call center work force management, rail car commodity trading, online education, long haul trucking logistics, and finally, retail. Retail is a space facing massive digital disruption and Joel has served as Chief Architect for Minnesota’s two largest consumer goods retailers, Target and Best Buy. Joel brings a strong Agile and Engineering focused bent to the practice of Enterprise Architecture. Joel has a BSEE from Washington University in St. Louis, a MSNE from the University of Wisconsin, and an MBA from the University of Minnesota.
Len Fehskens Chief Editor, Journal of Enterprise Architecture
Len Fehskens is responsible for the Association of Enterprise Architects’ (AEA) activities relating to the professionalization of the discipline of enterprise architecture. He is currently the Chief Editor of the AEA publication, the Journal of Enterprise Architecture (JEA). He is also the VP of Skills and Capabilities for The Open Group.
Prior to joining The Open Group, Len led the Worldwide Architecture Profession Office for HP Services at Hewlett-Packard. He majored in Computer Science at MIT, and has almost 50 years of experience as both an individual contributor and a manager, within both product engineering and services business units.
Len has worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, Data General Corporation, Prime Computer, Compaq and Hewlett Packard. He is the lead inventor on six software patents on the object oriented management of distributed systems.
David Lounsbury Chief Technical Officer for The Open Group (CTO)
David is Chief Technical Officer for The Open Group. As CTO he ensures that The Open Group’s people and IT resources are effectively used to implement the organization’s strategy and mission, including The Open Group’s proven processes for collaboration and certification both within the organization and in support of third-party consortia.
David’s previous executive assignments at The Open Group and the Open Software Foundation (OSF) include VP Advanced Research and Innovation which fostered open systems technology through collaborative funding and development, including LDAP, ActiveX Core Technology, DCE 1.2, CDE-Next, and Complex Text Layout.
David holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and is holder of three U.S. patents.
Workshop Presenters 2017
David Ching
Biography: David Ching is an entrepreneur with a reputation for integrity and innovation. An Engineer by education, he has brought a systems perspective to the development of software products for different markets. He has founded or co-founded companies in the software industry. His first products provided real-time process control and plant management software to the manufacturing and public utilities markets. With his engineering and systems background, he took those concepts to managing middleware technology in IT environments, looking at middleware as a system rather than a technology silo. His products have been recognized as the best-of-breed by many analysts in the software industry and are used by many of the Fortune 500 companies in financial, insurance, federal government, telecom and manufacturing industries. He is currently employed at Prime Therapeutics LLC, delivering SaaS solutions for the healthcare industry. David has a BS, MCE and PhD degrees in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota.
Youssef Haddad
Biography: Youssef is a thought leader with over 25 years in Information Technology with experience in areas such as leadership, management, enterprise architecture, software engineering, databases design, education and training. Youssef is currently serving as the Enterprise Application Architect for the State of Minnesota. Some of Youssef Duties are overseeing the policy and Architecture standard for the delivery of the State IT services. Youssef is the cofounder of the Midwest Architecture Community Collaboration (MACC) and serve as board member for the AEA and IASA. Some of Youssef accomplishments are the architecting designing and launching of www.mn.gov, website, www.bestbuy.com website, www.careerOneStop.org , and the e-licensing system for the state of Minnesota. Youssef was the recipient of the Minnesota High Tech Association “Tekne Awards” for the best architecture on the carrerOneStop.org for the 2009.
Mary Auer
Biography: Mary Auer is a Senior Business Analyst Consultant with over 20 years experience. Working at Cargill she had roles designing and implementing systems, managing small projects, and design process owner. As a process owner she worked across teams to provide visibility and alignment of the deployment process. As the Cargill business architecture practice developed she began seeing the connections between Process Management, systems projects, and Business Architecture. Building on that spark she received her Certificate in Business Architecture in May which provided the knowledge to build out the picture of how Business Artifact artifacts ties to Business Analysis.
Johan Wettstrom
Biography: Johan Wettstrom has helped companies solve business and technical problem for 30 years. He has worked mainly for software and consulting companies. Johan’s specialty is as an IT Solution, Application and Technical Architect. He has helped companies with architecture, processes, best practices and implementations. He has architected and implemented systems in Banking, Financial, Energy, Retail, e-Commerce, ERP, Device Configuration and Sales Automation among other segments.
Johan is owner of Tech Edge Solutions in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a consulting company specializing in Microsoft Technology stack. He is also a member of the Iasa Minnesota Chapter Board since the inception of the chapter.
Chris Kelly
Biography: From her start as a software developer over 20 years ago, Chris has worked on all aspects of application design and delivery. She spent many years as a Solution Architect focused on technology specification and acquisition, integration and implementation. Chris is currently a Senior Enterprise Architect at Andersen Corporation. In this role, she manages the enterprise application portfolio and is the primary IT liaison to business architects working in different functional areas. Chris is a 2015 graduate of Metropolitan State University’s Business Architect Certificate Program.