Software Council of Southern California

Are you trying to reach the CIO or CEO to present your technology? Are you frustrated with the obstacles in your path? Would you like to hear from CIOs and CEOs on the best way to access and engage them? A stellar panel of CIOs and CEOs will describe what piques their interest, how they prefer to be "pitched" and what works and what doesn't work for them. Learn about the most successful ways to access the executives and the worst ways that can ruin a potential engagement.

Panelists:

Dean Bymaster joined Great American Custom in 1994 to establish their Systems department. Prior to Great American Custom, he spent 19 years with Transamerica Insurance Group in Los Angeles where he started as a programmer-trainee, working his way to AVP of Programming. His responsibilities at Great American include setting strategic direction of technology, ensuring the alignment of IT and business objectives, management responsibility of IT, oversight of day to day company operations and IT liaison to parent company.

John Byrnes currently serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of California National Bank (Cal National). Mr. Byrnes joined the CalNational team in December 2003. With assets of $5.4 billion and a 64 branch retail network, Cal National is ranked as the second largest commercial bank headquartered in Southern California. Cal National is a wholly owned subsidiary of FBOP Corporation of Oak Park, Illinois. FBOP has $12 billion in assets with banks in Illinois, Texas, Arizona and California. Cal National is the holding company's largest bank.

Before joining California National Bank, Mr. Byrnes held a variety of leadership positions in the U.S. Navy, Defense, and Financial Services industries. His specialty has been to drive business process change through the logical application of enabling technology. His twelve years of service inside TRW and Northrop Grumman culminated in a position supporting technology responsibilities across Northrop Grumman corporate offices. He served as one of eight peer CIOs collaborating on standards and processes across the $26 billion defense leader. Mr. Byrnes has also served as CIO for Western United Insurance Company, Foothill Capital Corporation, and Transamerica Life Companies. Mr. Byrnes holds a B.S. in General Management from the United States Naval Academy, and a master's degree in Computer Science from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.

Don Olender is Executive Vice-President and CIO of Wells Fargo Foothill, (WFF), a 6 billion dollar commercial financing subsidiary of Wells Fargo's Wholesale Banking Division. WFF delivers asset-based financing to middle market businesses through its nine offices across the country. Wells Fargo Foothill is based in Santa Monica. Mr. Olender has been with Wells Fargo Foothill for almost ten years and has served as its CIO for eight.

Throughout his career, Don has been in technical and project management working previously as a senior project manager, programmer/analyst and computer operator at Providian Bancorp in Northern California for eight years, and as a senior project manager at Bank of America in their card services division for 13 years.

Don is currently Chair of the Executive Board of the I.S. Associates. He is also a member of the Southern California Chapter of SIM and is the founding chairman and current member of the Commercial Finance Association's Technology Committee. He earned his B.A. in Business Administration and Human Resource Management from Golden Gate University, San Francisco, graduating magna cum laude.

Lelah Jenkins
Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer
Downey Savings and Loan

Lelah Jenkins is the Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Downey Savings and Loan, headquartered in Newport Beach, where she is responsible for the development, deployment, and management of all technology utilized throughout the bank. Prior to this position, Ms. Jenkins held positions as Senior Vice President of Information Technology Strategy for California Federal Bank, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Glendale Federal Bank, and the Director of Company-Wide Financial Systems of the Walt Disney Company. Ms. Jenkins holds an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California and a B.S. in Business Administration and Finance from the California State University, Northridge. She is active in the Association for Women in Technology and a frequent guest speaker at professional associations and educational institutions.

Jim Davis is the Associate Vice Chancellor - Information Technology and a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCLA. In his Associate Vice Chancellor position, Jim has broad responsibility for university-wide technology planning and for coordinating implementation. He coordinates the IT planning, policy setting, prioritization and decision-making processes and is responsible for the strategic deployment of the academic and administrative operations, services and resources in support of the university mission and its central and distributed technology requirements.

Jim is currently Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) and is a member of University of California's Information Technology Leadership Council, UCLA's Anderson School IS Associates Executive Board, the Global Education Learning Community Advisory Board facilitated by Sun Microsystems, and Apple's University Education Forum. Prior to coming to UCLA, he worked extensively with the Ohio Supercomputer Center, the Ohio Academic and Research Network (OARnet), the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (Big10), and Internet2 in developing high performance computing, network, research, and educational initiatives.

Jim has published and consulted extensively in the areas of knowledge-based systems and neural networks and has conducted numerous short courses and professional training workshops both nationally and internationally. He has worked or consulted on decision support applications in many process and manufacturing companies. Jim comes to UCLA with several years' industrial experience at Amoco Chemicals Corporation and Argonne National Laboratory. He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University.

Barbara Lewis began her career as a journalist writing for The Wall Street Journal among other publications. After working in the marketing department at service companies, she started a marketing company in 1990. When she graduated with an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management 1995, she teamed up with her classmate, Dan Otto, a former aerospace engineer, to form Centurion Consulting Group. The two offer strategic planning, marketing, operations and financial advice, as well as computer modeling to help executives make better decisions.

After six years in business and "selling hours" as consultants, Barbara and Dan decided to commercialize a computer model and begin licensing their proprietary software. They formed MarQuant Analytics in 2003. Their clients include OgilvyOne Worldwide, Allstate, Wachovia Bank and the Allant Group. MarQuant currently has four software products, all of which optimize the marketing budget.