Speakers at the Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
Data Protection Strategies Conference

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the Manager of Disaster Recovery and BT BCP at Discover Financial.  Kent has been in IT over the past 20 years and has worked within notiable organizations like United Airlines, Galileo International, Qwest Communications and Discover Financial.  He has a broad knowledge of mainframe, distributed and networking systems focused on high availability.  He is a graduate of Northeastern Illinois University.

Philip Bierdz
 Philip Bierdz is the Manager of Infrastructure at Riverside Medical Center.  Phil has over 16 years of expertise in infrastructure design and management with overall responsibility for enterprise network and server systems, including email.  In his last year, Phil led a complete replacement of the college’s network systems, architected and contracted a campus-wide wireless system, and was the driving force behind adopting an email archiving solution for Moraine Valley Community College.  Phil has served for three years as President of the Illinois Community College Technology Commission, President of the Illinois Council of Community College Administrators, and as a full member of the Illinois Advanced Engineering Taskforce.  Philip earned his bachelor in science in computer science from Northern Illinois University, his MBA from the University of Phoenix, and has eight hours towards a doctorate in management and leadership studies.  When not in front of his computer, he can be found fishing or bike riding with his wife and two children.

David B. Guilinger

David B. Guilinger is the Director of Information Services with Gateway Health Plan®. David has over 20 years of Information Technology and Risk Management experience within a number of verticals including finance, healthcare, large law firm and manufacturing. David began his career managing mass tort litigation and quickly moved into managing information technology management. David has led a number of successful large application, infrastructure and voice initiatives. David earned his Bachelor of Science in Accounting and Finance from Robert Morris University and is an avid runner and swimmer.

David Kluger

David Kluger is StorCOM's principal technology architect. StorCOM's primary focus is aiding the clientele through a consultative approach on such topics as; overall data protection, management of data and disaster recovery strategies. Having worked in the IT industry for over 20 years he has gained an extremely wide range of experience. Additionally, David has public sector experience in consulting and providing leadership to an array of projects, managing and deploying data protection, as well as disaster recovery solutions for such organizations as; US Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin Corporation and Fireman's Fund Insurance. David also spent many years working as a senior consultant and systems architect at Microsoft, XIOtech and NetApp. David attended Arizona State University, where he also acquired his Masters Degree.

Eric Ledyard

Eric Ledyard steers Ahead’s technology vision and is responsible for defining the company's evolving technology strategy. Eric works directly with Ahead customers to understand their current environment and assist in designing solutions that address current needs while keeping an eye on future requirements. Prior to joining Ahead, Eric was the Sr. Systems Engineer for the Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery team, managing 20 states in the Midwest. Eric was a key member of the technical competitive analysis team at EMC providing expert insight on Hitachi Data Systems and IBM virtualization products. Prior to working at EMC he held engineering roles for Sun Microsystems as storage specialist as well as two technology resellers specializing in storage solutions as well as high-performance systems architecture. Prior to transitioning into a pre-sales architecture, Eric has significant end user experience where he was hands utilizing the technology and managing data center environments, this experience provides him with a profound understanding of all aspects of the value chain. Eric attended the Purdue School of Engineering with focus on Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering Technology.

John Nootens

Mr. Nootens has worked on the systems and support end of IT his whole career.  From mainframes and their SNA network of controllers and terminals, through the first PCs and island LANs, on thru bridged/brouted/routed local area networks and WANs.  With significant concentration in Networking, Security, Operations, Network and Application Performance and Capacity Planning, John has become and expert in High Availability, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery. With a unique ability to understand and explain highly technical concepts in order to achieve efficient, effective decisions on the use of that technology. John has been able to help major corporations see the big picture in the use of technology to solve their business needs.

Mike Peebles
Mike Peebles is the Product Marketing Manager at Hewlett-Packard responsible for the Information Management suite of products in the America’s region. This includes solutions for business continuity and availability, governance and ediscovery as well as document workflow transformation. He has extensive experience in architecting storage and data protection solutions.  Since joining HP in 1997, Mike has held technical and management positions within HP’s storage and software businesses focusing on current as well as future storage issues. Mike has applied his expertise within the Americas as well as Europe. Prior to joining HP Mike held hardware design engineering and engineering management positions focused on HP-IB and SCSI storage device development.  Mike was also the Manager for Technology Assessment and Acceptance during which he identified new storage solution business opportunities.  Mike has an MBA and a B.S. of Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University.

Jeff Roseman

Jeff Roseman is Director of IS Infrastructure for Patterson Medical Holdings, Inc. the world’s leading distributor of rehabilitative medical supplies and non-wheelchair assistive products. He is a seasoned IT executive with over two decades of experience in both technology management and consulting roles. With past experience in marketing, sales, business process re-engineering, and as an IT Director, CIO and Consultant, he has worked both sides of the technology world. Mr. Roseman possesses an extensive background working with regional, national, and international businesses in a variety of industries including healthcare, manufacturing, legal, real estate, construction, non-profit and professional services. Focused primarily on IT infrastructure, he has a broad knowledge of strategy, networking, telecommunications, training & development, systems integration, mergers and acquisitions, facility relocation, and business continuity planning. Mr. Roseman continues to be successful moving IT teams from a crises management mentality to predictive, proactive, disciplined organization. He has previously lectured on network connectivity, customer relationship management, endpoint security, and disaster recovery planning. He previously served as Vice President - Chicago Chapter of International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners. Mr. Roseman has a bachelors degree and an MBA in Information Systems and Marketing from The University of Iowa. He is a member of The University of Iowa Tippie School of Management Advisory Committee (SoMAC).

Steve Susina
Steve Susina has more than 20 years of engineering and marketing experience in the telecommunications and IT industries and currently serves as Director of Marketing for Laurus Technologies, a business consulting and IT solutions provider based in Itasca, IL. Previously, he was Senior Product Manager for UTStarcom's fixed/mobile convergence product line, and has also held various sales, marketing and engineering roles at Tellabs and AT&T. His speaking experience includes technology conferences around the world on such topics as IT & business strategy, optical networking, compliance and identity management and mobile communications.  Susina holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Deepak Verma

Deepak Verma is Solutions Architect at Hitachi specializing in Business Continuity and Data Replication strategies and technologies. He has been with Hitachi for 5 years. During this time he has architected a number of resilient recovery architectures for customers, in the Americas, that helped meet their business SLAs. While his current role demands deep technical capabilities, prior to Hitachi, he worked in New York City for a big-5 consulting firm focusing on delivering Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategies to technologies.  He was involved in post 9/11 disaster recovery efforts for a few Wall Street financial institutions.