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Our Team

The Feld Group Institute and Affiliates

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Our affiliates are a network of deeply experienced IT operating professionals who have held CIO, CTO and line leadership roles in major corporations. Whether teaching in our programs, facilitating workshops or consulting on-site with clients, our affiliates share a passion for our frameworks and have the operational perspective and experience necessary to guide complex organizations in achieving transformation, enterprise excellence and sustainable growth.

Connect with Charlie Feld

Charlie Feld

Founder and CEO, The Feld Group Institute

Influential, insightful IT leader with broad perspective on information technology, leadership, and transformation.

Charlie Feld is the founder of The Feld Group Institute, a unique leadership development firm that works with global corporations to develop next-generation business and IT leaders. TFGI’s curriculum and management development activities draw heavily upon its founder’s leadership insights, operational experience, and time-tested strategic framework for enterprise success.

During his extraordinary 50-year career, Charlie has been committed to helping organizations and executives achieve IT-driven transformation. He has been frequently featured in the media, and has received numerous awards and accolades in recognition of his profound influence upon the IT industry, including the Smithsonian Award for Technology Excellence and the Carnegie Mellon Award for Innovative Technology.

As founder and CEO of The Feld Group, Charlie built a team of information technology executives that enabled dramatic results in Fortune 500 companies. The Feld Group specialized in transforming large, complex IT organizations with a two-year turnaround model that evolved into TFGI’s strategic framework.

The Feld Group served major corporate clients from its founding in 1992 until it was acquired by EDS in 2004. During this period, CIO Magazine named Charlie “One of the 12 Most Influential IT Executives of the Past Decade.” While directing The Feld Group, he served in numerous IT leadership and senior advisory roles, including as Interim CIO at Delta Air Lines, Burlington Northern Railroad, and First Data Resources; adviser to EDS’s CEO and board of directors; and mentor to the CIOs of WellPoint and FedEx. From 2004-2008, Charlie was a SEVP and Member of EDS’s Executive Committee.

Charlie’s perspectives on IT, leadership, transformation, and enterprise excellence were strongly impacted by formative career experiences at two world-class organizations, PepsiCo and IBM. At PepsiCo, he served from 1981-1992 as Frito-Lay Co.’s VP & Chief Information Officer; from 1981-83, he was Director, Management Services. Prior to this, Charlie held a number of Systems Engineering and Account Management roles at IBM from 1966-81.

Charlie holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the City University of New York, Hunter College. He is the author of two books on Leadership—The Blind Spot: A Leader’s Guide to IT-Enabled Business Transformation and The Calloway Way: Results & Integrity. In addition to extensive coverage in the media, The Feld Group’s work has been profiled in case studies by the Harvard Business School, MIT, and McKinsey & Co.

Connect with Jon Feld

Jon Feld

COO, The Feld Group Institute

Successful technology entrepreneur with proven record in analytics, CRM, digital marketing, and business intelligence.

Jon Feld is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute. Jon is a seasoned startup CEO in the IT, Analytics, Marketing and Business Consulting industries.

With a record that includes having founded and led three successful startups during the past 25 years, Jon brings a perspective that combines entrepreneurial experience with expertise in analytics, CRM, digital marketing, business intelligence, and performance management. He is an accomplished strategist, recognized for his ability to assess business dynamics, create a vision for change, identify growth opportunities, and build and lead teams to achieve exceptional results.

In 2011, Jon founded nGame, which delivers data-driven marketing, CRM, customer loyalty, and customer service strategies and insights to some of the world’s leading brands. The innovative data-gathering and analytics platform is able to connect CRM and social identities to enrich the 360-degree view of the customer with social affinities—down to the individual customer level. The resulting insights can be used in any channel to drive a better personalized and relevant customer experience, and revenue growth. In 2015, FullContact acquired nGame as a strategic accelerator to providing services and solutions to enterprise B2C brands. In 2017, after successfully integrating the two companies, Jon left FullContact to focus full-time on his work as an Affiliate of The Feld Group Institute.

In 2010, Jon funded and co-founded Tech Wildcatters, a mentorship-driven, seed-stage accelerator that offers guidance and investment funds to technology startups. Tech Wildcatters was named among the Forbes list of the “Top Ten Hottest Startup Incubators.”

Earlier in his career, in 1991, Jon founded Navigator Systems, Inc., a business intelligence and enterprise collaboration consulting company serving some 200 corporate clients, including many Fortune 500 companies. Gartner Group called Navigator Systems “visionary” in the business intelligence space. After Hitachi Consulting acquired Navigator in 2006, Jon led the integration efforts both for business services and talent. The Navigator-Hitachi combination yielded high levels of retention and deep team integration, as well as tremendous growth, including more than doubling the revenues of the former Navigator business in just two years.

Jon earned a BS in Marketing from the University of Virginia.

Connect with Stan Alexander

Stan Alexander

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Accomplished leader in the digital transformation of enterprises, with proven expertise in strategy, architecture, development, integration, enterprise data & analytics, cybersecurity, and infrastructure management.

Stan Alexander is the Founder of Digital Pilot LLC which provides consulting services to enterprises at the intersection of business and technology concentrating primarily in the transportation and logistics industries. During the last decade, Stan served in senior technology leadership positions at Southwest Airlines and BNSF Railway. In the years between Southwest and BNSF he operated as an Affiliate of The Feld Group Institute, and returned in March 2020 to work with the FedEx Services team.

Most recently, Stan served as VP & Chief Technology Architect at Southwest leading Technology Teams responsible for enterprise & solution architecture, enterprise data & analytics, and common services. This position required him to play a pivotal role working across technology and business to drive strategy and execution across all major transformational initiatives and portfolios.

At BNSF, Stan held the position of AVP in Technology Services where he led common application services, enterprise data services, information security, and infrastructure management, before leading all application development and support for the railway operations business systems portfolio.

Stan met Charlie Feld in 1992 and went on to spend a dozen years with The Feld Group serving as chief architect and CTO, leading strategy and modernization efforts for complex organizations. Following the EDS acquisition of The Feld Group, Stan was the CTO and VP of Technology Strategy & Architecture responsible for guiding the enterprise-wide effort to develop the technical direction and strategic alliances for the EDS portfolio of services.

Over Stan’s multifaceted career, spanning operational and consultative roles, he has led systems modernization efforts for a blue-chip portfolio of companies, including Southwest Airlines, FedEx, BNSF, Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot, First Data Resources, and The Coca-Cola Company. Several of these engagements have become the subject of Harvard University Business School and MIT case studies. Especially noteworthy was the innovative work at Delta Air Lines in customer care systems and legacy modernization which was recognized with the prestigious Computerworld Smithsonian Award.

Stan is described as a leader with integrity who is able to assimilate and articulate a clear agenda that integrates the business, technology and organization patterns. He has demonstrated an ability to work across organizational boundaries, enlist the right talent, and inspire teams to be fully included and cooperative. No matter how good the strategy or the people he knows unexpected challenges arise. Stan’s optimism, resilience, solution orientation and character shine even when things appear to be going sideways. His ability to stay positive and refocus a team in those situations to get back on track is remarkable.

Having moved to Texas in 1992 after living in seven other states, Stan proudly identifies with the saying, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could!” He loves spending time with his family and enjoys DIY projects around the house – especially those involving electrical work and home automation. As a college football fan, Stan was very happy to see his alma mater, West Virginia University, join the Big XII in 2012. He earned an MS in Computer Science from WVU following his years at West Virginia Wesleyan College where he graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Computer Science.

Connect with Dick Amin

Dick Amin

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Deep technical expertise in formulating IT strategy and architecture, and executing transformation agendas.

Dick Amin is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute and founder of Modsarch Inc., which serves as an adviser to clients in formulating, developing, and executing long-term IT architecture and implementation strategies to support business-centric transformation agendas.

With more than 30 years of experience in IT architecture, development, and operations, Dick has a deep technical and business knowledge that informs his ability to identify the right solution for successful implementation. His extensive experience in developing and delivering transformational IT strategies to large corporations includes consulting work with the Bank of Montreal, FedEx, Republic Services, Southwest Airlines, Macy’s, and JetBlue Airways Corp.

Among the diverse accomplishments of his career, Dick was among the pioneers of mobile handheld and wearable computing devices for use by civilian and military emergency medical technicians to record and access patient information in the field. Dick earned patents for this work relating to the navigation and editing of electronic records through speech and audio. Dick also led a technical team at GTE that designed and developed one of the first commercial voice-activated dialing systems.

Prior to joining the Feld Group Institute as an Affiliate, Dick led the event-driven architecture of common services for messaging, integration, and complex event processing for United Airlines, resulting in both real-time and predictive solutions. Prior to that, Dick served as a principal IT architect for a number of key EDS clients.

Earlier in his career, Dick spent eight years with Delta Air Lines developing critical IT components that led Delta to become the first airline with fully integrated real-time data and services. As Principal Architect, Dick’s responsibilities included developing and driving a long-term application strategy that would support Delta’s business objectives, and then guiding development across the customer, operations, and revenue management applications portfolios.

Dick earned a BS in Physics at Gujarat University and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from MS University in Baroda, India.

Connect with Brent Browning

Brent Browning

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Expertise in IT strategy, IT leadership, application development, and enterprise architecture.

Brent Browning is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute. Brent works with clients to improve business performance with strategically architected technology, an aligned business process, and a culture that fosters high-performing team members.

Brent has more than 25 years of broad-based experience in technology and IT systems. His tenure in global IT leadership roles makes him a valued coach, able to enhance team performance and deliver results through hands-on, on-site collaboration with the management and technology groups that he supports.

During his career, Brent has been deeply involved in IT-led enterprise transformation, IT leadership development, enterprise business and technical architecture, enterprise program planning and management, service management technology, decision support technology, and massively distributed computing architecture.

Brent’s corporate experience includes serving a diverse set of companies in applying technology. Brent served Hewlett-Packard as VP, ITO Software and Tools Transformation, during a period in which savings were achieved through the consolidation of software tools onto fewer and more leveraged platforms. He held an earlier role at HP as VP, Enterprise Service Management. Earlier, Brent served as VP, in the Office of the CIO, at EDS, where his responsibilities included technology services and support of the supply chain management function, as well as a supply chain business transformation to improve customer experience. He also worked at Delta Technology as VP, Airline Network Systems. Brent had earlier consulting experience at Accenture and began his career with Coca-Cola Enterprises in Atlanta.

Brent also has a passion for leveraging technology to improve secondary education. Before joining the Feld Group Institute as an Affiliate, Brent served as the IT Director at Loganville Christian Academy, where he initiated and executed an IT-led transformation of both the administrative and academic areas of the school, which included a refresh and redesign of all supporting infrastructure. Among the goals of the initiative was to better prepare graduates for future technology-rich careers. During this time, Brent also created the curriculum for two computer sciences courses, and taught both courses for two academic years. Brent continues to consult and provide guidance in this field for school systems throughout the state of Georgia.

Brent earned a BS in Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MBA at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. His home is in Atlanta with his wife, Shannan, and their four children.

Connect with Mark Canada

Mark Canada

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Versatile leader adept at bridging the gap between technology and business.

Mark Canada is an Affiliate of the Feld Group Institute and a member of the Technology Strategy practice at Dialexa, an Institute partner.

Mark has over 25 years of experience in developing strategy and implementing solutions predominately focused on enterprise data in large organizations. Much of his career has been spent in a consulting capacity focused on analytics, insights, governance and organizational strategy.

At Dialexa, Mark and fellow Feld Group Institute Affiliate, Russell Villemez form the Technology Strategy practice. Dialexa is in the business of technology research, design, and creation; we deliver proprietary technology solutions and strategies for enterprise organizations who are looking to modernize and digitally transformation their business operations and customer experiences through custom product and platform engineering. The Technology Strategy practice is a component of how Dialexa thinks about creation: knowing where you’re going and what the plan to get there looks like is critical for delivering a solution at any scale.

Prior to joining Dialexa, Mark ran a Service department for a SaaS based identity resolution provider, FullContact, and developed deep expertise in leveraging insights from big data, specifically social data, for Marketing use cases. FullContact had acquired nGame in 2015 for which Mark was a Principal. nGame delivered data-driven marketing, CRM, customer loyalty, and customer service strategies and insights to some of the world’s leading brands. The innovative data-gathering and analytics platform was able to connect CRM and social identities to enrich the 360-degree view of the customer with social affinities—down to the individual customer level.

In the 18 years of consulting leading up to joining nGame & FullContact, Mark has worked in a broad range of industries and functional areas. He’s managed practices, accounts and client implementations. Particular areas of depth include industry experience in Travel & Hospitality, Retail and functional experience in Marketing & Finance. The majority of Mark’s consulting background was gained at a firm called Navigator Systems, a business intelligence and enterprise collaboration consulting company serving many Fortune 500 clients. Hitachi Consulting acquired Navigator in 2006 where Mark continued performing similar services for Hitachi’s client base.

Over his career, Mark has worked with brands like Southwest Airlines, Kimberly Clark, Sabre, JetBlue, Brinker, Reckitt Benckiser, JCPenney, Intermountain Healthcare, and Kaiser Permanente. Mark started his career in technology in 1993 as an employee in IT at Burlington Northern Railroad, of where Charlie Feld was the acting CIO.

Mark earned a BS in Finance from Tulsa University.

Connect with Mike Childress

Mike Childress

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Extensive experience across all dimensions of IT, from strategy planning to tactical implementation.

Mike Childress is a Feld Group Institute Affiliate and President of James M Childress Consulting. He specializes in advising clients on strategy, architecture, development, and IT operational matters, while ensuring close alignment to business goals and objectives.

With more than 25 years of technology experience, including key roles at EDS, Delta Air Lines, and elsewhere, Mike brings strategic and operational insights to every client engagement. Having led large IT teams, he has a deep-seated understanding of the technology legacy challenges, budgetary constraints, and daily, monthly, quarterly, and yearly pressures that IT leaders must handle.

As a Feld Affiliate, Mike provides advice, guidance, and implementation for IT transformation across all aspects of the IT organization. He leads complex transformation engagements that often include a focus on business-technology models, enterprise architecture, infrastructure, IT processes, and organizational alignment and talent. Committed to advancing the influence of IT on organizational effectiveness, Mike gives special attention to the process, organizational structure, and leadership required for success in each engagement.

Prior to becoming a Feld Group Institute Affiliate, Mike served at EDS as VP, Portfolio and Engineering, where he was responsible for product research, design, and engineering of standard tools and processes. While serving in this role, he received the prestigious Chairman’s Award.

Earlier, at Delta Air Lines, Mike was SVP and Chief Development Officer. There, he held responsibility for the portfolio of applications, business technology consulting, enterprise data, middleware and messaging, and standard development environments. Mike served earlier in key IT roles at Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, American Airlines, and General Dynamics.

Mike earned his BBA in Business Analysis and Research at Texas A&M University, specializing in computer information systems. He has been named to Computerworld’s list of the Premier 100 IT Leaders, while the customer support and legacy modernization work completed at Delta Air Lines was honored with the Smithsonian Award for Technology.

Connect with Mary Contreras

Mary Contreras

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Deeply experienced leader in the disciplines of Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture, strategic planning, and agile architecture practices.

Mary Contreras is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute and the founder of Contreras Consulting LLC, where she works with large corporations to develop, architect, and deliver major IT transformation and modernization initiatives, and assists clients in furthering and maturing their organization-wide enterprise and business architecture practices.

Mary has more than three decades of experience as a proven leader in business and systems architecture. She has spent a majority of her career in the transportation and logistics industry at the FedEx Corporation, is an expert in Enterprise Architecture and Business Architecture practices, and has extensive experience in International Information Technology Solutions, Customs Clearance Systems, Network Systems, and Systems Development. Mary has held a number of senior roles in her tenure with FedEx, including leading their domestic and international Enterprise and Business Architecture efforts which focus on implementing agile architecture practices to identify, analyze, architect and execute strategic change. Her high level of skill in strategy development, business and systems architecture design, managing software development and implementing business driven projects in a global, distributed, computing environment have led to the creation of durable positive outcomes for the organizations she has worked with.

Mary is dedicated to creating exceptional value for the enterprise, and is committed to improving the customer experience. Her ability to consistently and successfully work with business and IT teams has garnered her accolades for leadership, organizational planning, architectural leadership and global scale projects. She has been awarded multiple Five Star Awards from FedEx for Enterprise Architecture and Global Clearance Architecture support, in addition to numerous awards within the organization including Rising Star, All Star and Hall of Fame awards.

Mary’s extensive experience and proficiency in both Enterprise and Business Architecture, and her mastery of the Transformational Framework and its application, make her an exceptional coach and mentor for architects at all levels, from system to enterprise, across all domains, business, application, data and technology. As an Affiliate of The Feld Group Institute Mary shares her experience and insight with leaders who participate in the Operationalizing Enterprise Architecture class and the Technology Leadership Development Program.

Connect with J.R. Jesson

J.R. Jesson

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Founder, Arrowhead Labs – a Feld Group Institute partner

Expertise in technology strategy, enterprise agile methods, DevOps, cyber security, enterprise architecture.

J.R. Jesson is a Feld Group Institute Affiliate. In 2018, J.R. founded Arrowhead Labs, Inc. with the belief that every organization can achieve radical and sustained improvements in IT performance and business impact. The Arrowhead Labs team serve as technology advisors, teachers, and embedded coaches, helping our clients organically and sustainably transform into breakaway organizations. We’re experts in applying Feld Group Institute principles, enterprise agile methods like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), DevOps, pragmatic architecture and appropriately applying both emerging and proven technologies, to ensure our clients can efficiently execute their transformation strategies to achieve business, architecture, and efficiency outcomes.

With 30 years of experience in various aspects of technology delivery, operations, and consulting, J.R. has led multiple enterprise functions, including enterprise architecture and innovation, product management, commercial software development, professional service delivery, and technology support services. His multifaceted career includes founding and growing a pioneering Internet services firm, delivering large-scale composite web service implementations for a global systems integrator, and development of enterprise products and services for multiple markets.

A proven technology expert and executive, J.R. leads complex IT transformation engagements for Feld clients with a hands-on approach both to strategy and execution leadership. He is adept at delivering high-quality results and sustainable practices to global enterprises as well as growth-oriented startups.

J.R. has a special expertise in enterprise architecture, as well as unique insights into the role that IT structural decisions can play in powering organizational growth and effectiveness. He embraces the challenge of serving clients with impactful, market-driven solutions. These attitudes and skills have been central in J.R.’s many consulting and leadership roles, which have included serving as a Senior Partner at Maxsam Partners, where he led technology transformation engagements; and having held senior IT roles leading e-Discovery software research, product development, and product management at Attenex Corp., and later at FTI Consulting.

Among his earlier career experiences, J.R. served at EDS as CTO, Applications Development Portfolio, and later as CTO, Application Services Field Operations. J.R. was CIO of an investor-driven turnaround of Go-Comm, which involved designing, building and deploying a converged Voice over IP (VOIP) offering in multiple markets. He co-founded Digital Pilot Corp., a pioneering Internet software development and integration firm. J.R. also led development for multiple software products, including KnowledgeTool, as well as real-time data collection systems for the U.S. Department of Defense.

While pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Math and Computer Sciences at Creighton University, J.R. enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. He served as a fulltime airborne computer specialist on the E-4B, the National Emergency Airborne Command Post, where J.R. received his first introduction to the ARPANET, the predecessor to today’s Internet. He completed his degree work summa cum laude.

Connect with Jan Marshall

Jan Marshall

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Recognized proven leader and executive partner across industries.

An Affiliate of The Feld Group Institute, Jan Marshall is a recognized proven leader and executive partner in information technology across industries. She is a technology innovator with a deep understanding of tech strategy, program management, cyber security, and organizational and governance processes. In addition, she is an established Board Director.

Jan founded jlm Coaching and Consulting, a firm focused on transformational leadership and guidance for technology and business. Jan has demonstrated outstanding leadership in driving business transformational change through technology.

At Cubic Corporation, Jan focused on alignment, strategy and transformational change execution, while leading the implementation of global business processes for Cubic using an SAP platform. In addition, Jan stood up a global service center for employees and provided oversight of the development of a world class cyber security function.

Jan was CIO for Southwest Airlines from 2006 to 2012, during which time the company transformed its financial platform, rewards program, website, mobile capability, and social presence in the industry. During her leadership tenure, Jan drove the culture from continual turnover to one recognized by the industry in 2010 as a Best Place to Work in IT. Prior to Southwest Airlines, Jan was with The Feld Group/EDS for eight years, focused on applications strategy. She supported clients in transportation, consumer goods, financial services, and manufacturing industries.

Jan is a certified Executive Coach, is a Governance Fellow of NACD and holds a certificate in Cyber Security from Carnegie-Mellon University. Jan earned a Bachelor of Science in Psychological Sciences from Purdue University and an MBA in Management Information Services from the University of Dallas. She served on the Southern Methodist University and SAP Independent Executive Advisory Councils. Jan has received several prestigious IT industry recognitions, including being named to the 2011 Top 25 CIO of the year list and Computerworld’s Top 10 Breakaway CIOs in 2011. More recently she was recognized as a Top 100 Tech Exec of San Diego, an Athena Nominee, as well as featured as a top 100 Leader in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics).

Connect with Sam Moultrie

Sam Moultrie

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Deep expertise in enterprise technology architecture and IT organization transformation.

Sam Moultrie is an Affiliate of The Feld Group Institute and President of Moultrie Group LLC, which provides senior-level IT consulting to corporations in multiple industries that seek to improve their business and IT alignment.

With more than 30 years of experience in IT operational and senior consulting roles, Sam’s primary focus is on helping to transform organizations in key ways that include becoming better and more effective consumers of IT services. He is adept at building strong partnerships with CEOs, CIOs, and other executives, as well as technology professionals, and brings to each engagement his deep expertise in needs assessment, strategic planning, establishing priorities, delegating tasks, and motivating teams to achieve their best.

Sam joined The Feld Group Institute in 2015. He is currently serving as a Senior Consultant at Cubic Corporation, where his responsibilities include establishing an enterprise technology architecture organization to support Cubic’s IT transformation. His consulting clients have included Brinker International, where he helped to implement and define the corporation’s enterprise architecture. At Brinker, he also served as a consultant to the Project Management Office (PMO), created artifacts for the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and the intake processes, and participated in major technology contract negotiations and IT executive recruitment.

Sam has held a number of IT leadership roles at major global corporations, including serving as VP of Application Development at United Airlines, where he was responsible for all application development and leverage development services capability. Earlier, he served as United’s VP of Common Services.

During the course of his extensive career, Sam also previously served as CTO of Electronic Data Systems, where he managed over one hundred engineers to deliver support to the core business and its largest clients, including GM, DWP, and the U.S. Navy. Previously, while a consultant with The Feld Group, he served as Enterprise Architecture Director of Southwest Airlines; as VP of Technology for The Home Depot; as VP/CDO of Common Services at First Data Corporation; and as CIO of Freightwise. Earlier in his career, he held IT management roles at BNSF Railway, CSX Railroad, and elsewhere.

During the 1980’s, Sam served as a Computer Operator in the United States Air Force, where he worked in computer intelligence and held a top-secret security clearance.

Connect with Doug Register

Doug Register

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Global experience in infrastructure, networks, information security, and data centers.

Douglas K. Register is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute and President of the Register Technology Group. Doug guides clients through complex business-driven technology challenges, with special expertise in the areas of infrastructure, networks and telecommunications, information security, and data centers.

Doug has a proven ability to establish and communicate a compelling vision for an organization. During his 30-year career, he has built a strong record of success for leading IT infrastructure organizations through periods of transformational change, improving all aspects of operational performance even in the most challenging business environments. He has held full responsibility for budgets exceeding $100M and teams greater than 650 professionals.

In serving consulting clients, Doug taps his extensive senior IT management experiences in the rail, airline, healthcare, and financial services industries. Among his organizational strengths is his ability to recruit, develop, motivate, and retain diverse staff, structuring them into teams that deliver both savings and results.

Doug’s business resume and relationships are extensive. Prior to joining the Feld Group Institute as an Affiliate, Doug was VP, Infrastructure Engineering and Operations, at Asurion, where he held global leadership responsibility for infrastructure engineering. Doug also served as VP, IT Service Management and Engineering, at United Airlines. There, he led the transformation of the technology infrastructure organization, dramatically improving global service, reducing costs by more than $50M per year, and enhancing employee satisfaction and engagement scores by 20% to 30%, year over year.

Earlier, Doug served as VP, IT Service Delivery, for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida; VP, IT Operations, for Delta Air Lines, and Director, IT Service Delivery for Barnett Bank. Doug began his career as Director, Network Services, for CSX Technology.

Doug’s foundational education in electronics, oceanography, navigation, and tactics comes from serving with the U.S. Naval Air Reserves.

Connect with Meredith Sasser

Meredith Sasser

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Deep expertise in IT and customer experience strategy.

Meredith Sasser is an Affiliate of The Feld Group Institute and the founder of 1L Consulting, which provides clients with a holistic approach to aligning business goals and capabilities to IT strategy, ensuring that technology solutions enable integrated transformation.

Meredith has 25 years of experience in IT operations and consulting. Throughout her career, she has assisted large, complex corporations in successfully aligning IT strategy and customer experience goals with overall business objectives. She has worked with an exceptional list of clients that includes JetBlue Airways, Republic Services, Southwest Airlines, VMware, Delta Air Lines, Marriott International, and Cubic Corporation.

With a relentless focus on ensuring that an organization’s information and technology are enablers of stakeholder value, Meredith is an expert in diagnosing pain points to identify the root causes of a company’s current state challenges. She then works with clients to determine the future vision for customer and employee experiences, assess and articulate the capabilities necessary to achieve that vision, and develop and carry out the appropriate plan for multi-year investment and change.

Prior to founding 1L Consulting in 2009, Meredith served in a number of key roles at EDS, including Director of IT Strategy, Director of Enterprise and Industry Frameworks, and Director of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Framework. In her role as Director of IT Strategy, Meredith was responsible for enhancing and expanding the firm’s proprietary IT strategy framework; this framework was built upon the work of The Feld Group and evolved into principles and mechanisms featured in Charlie Feld’s The Blind Spot: A Leader’s Guide to IT-Enabled Business Transformation.

Prior to joining EDS in 2005, Meredith served in a number of IT strategic consulting roles at Delta Technology and Marriott International. Meredith started her career at Epsilon in 1991 (a data-driven marketing company) before moving in 1995 to Tessera Enterprise Systems (a customer data warehouse and analytics company).

Meredith received a BA in Sociology and a Certificate in Markets and Management from Duke University, with special interests in organizational behavior and statistics. She has also completed the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School, as well as the electives Leading Professional Service Firms and Strategic Negotiations – Dealmaking for the Long Term.

Connect with Vivek Vijayaraghavan

Vivek Vijayaraghavan

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Deep technical expertise in formulating IT strategy and architecture.

Vivek Vijayaraghavan is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute and managing partner at Synapse IT, LLC. He works closely with his clients to help define and deliver major IT transformation and modernization initiatives while bridging the gap between business and technology.

With over 22 years of experience in Information Technology, Travel, Transportation, Hospitality, Education, Restaurant, Logistics, Waste Management, Finance and Retail Industries, Vivek has been involved in planning and leading the delivery of comprehensive solutions that encompasses business, applications, technology, operations and governance functions within the enterprise.

Vivek has played multiple roles while enabling delivery including but not limited to business process analysis, architecture and design, data management, infrastructure design as well as project and program management. He leverages this diverse expertise in establishing and executing long-term and short-term technology directives as well as performing vendor product and solution evaluations and recommendations.

In one of his recent client engagements, Vivek led the delivery of next generation Web, Mobile and E-Commerce platform. This included assisting digital marketing business units in defining the business & IT Roadmap to enable online self-service capabilities for customers as well as enabling a digital platform to view products & pricing, bill pay, checkout, account management functions.

Some of Vivek’s client consulting engagement includes Bank of Montreal, Republic Services, Brinker International, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, UTi and PepsiCo. Prior to that, Vivek was actively engaged in leading delivery of data and messaging services by partnering with various business groups within Hewlett-Packard, EDS, Sabre and American Airlines.

Vivek’s passion has been around data and messaging services. He is currently exploring data science conceptualization as applicable to applied statistical models and predictive analytics for valuable business insights. Vivek earned his Masters in Computer Science Engineering at UT Arlington, Texas and Bachelors in Electronics Engineering at University of Chennai, India.

Connect with Russell Villemez

Russell Villemez

Affiliate, The Feld Group Institute

Head of Technology Strategy, Dialexa – a Feld Group Institute partner

Highly regarded CTO and change agent with IT strategy and enterprise architecture expertise.

Russell Villemez is an Affiliate with the Feld Group Institute and the head of Technology Strategy at Dialexa, a Technology Research, Design and Creation firm that works with organizations on initiatives such as Operational Transformation, Business Growth, and New Venture Creation.

During 17 years in operational roles and 15 years in consulting roles, Russell has worked across a variety of industries in both executive leadership positions and as a subject matter expert. Russell thrives on the scale and complexity of leading major change agendas in large corporate environments.

Recent consulting clients include AmerisourceBergen, the American Automobile Association, Brinker International, Cubic, Equifax, and Cox Automotive. A common thread is the client’s need for strong leadership during a period of change—whether motivated by acquisitions, spin-offs, competitive pressures, or other factors. Clients also benefit from Russell’s expertise in enterprise architecture, agile development, application portfolio rationalization, technology and architecture strategy, as well as business strategy and commercial software product development.

Recognized as a versatile IT executive, adept at solving complex problems with innovative solutions, Russell’s capabilities and achievements span a continuum from business-strategy formation to hands-on IT solution development. His extensive career achievements include pioneering the first use of relational databases in high-volume transaction systems in the ‘80s, applying voice recognition DSPs in public intelligent network services for consumer markets in the ‘90s, and leading large-scale adoptions of open systems, object technology, and middleware frameworks in complex business environments, often in advance of commercially available software products.

Prior to joining Dialexa, Russell served at HP as Enterprise Services Chief Technology Officer for the Americas, leading a global capability for embedded Account CTOs in large enterprises. Russell began his career at Accenture, where he first crafted his consultative problem-solving approach, later honed at A.T. Kearny and the Feld Group. Russell’s deep telecom experience is built upon numerous director and enterprise architect positions at AT&T, Bell Atlantic, Telstra, US West, Pacific Bell, and Sprint, and as V.P. and CIO for WebLink Wireless.

Russell has a BS in Business Administration from Louisiana State University and an MBA from Vanderbilt University. In his spare time, Russell participates in amateur auto racing, and is a driving instructor with the Porsche Club of America.

Our Team

Charlie Feld

Jon Feld

Kenny Feld

Stan Alexander

Dick Amin

Brent Browning

Mark Canada

Mike Childress

Mary Contreras

J.R. Jesson

Jan Marshall

Sam Moultrie

Eugene O’Callahan

Doug Register

Meredith Sasser

Vivek Vijayaraghavan

Russell Villemez

Express Interest

Express Interest