Board of Advisors

Daniel Corsten, Professor at IE Business School

Daniel is a Professor of “Shoperations”, more commonly known as retail and operations management, at IE Business School in Madrid.

A leading academic of Efficient Consumer Response, the collaborative supply chain movement, Daniel was Founding Editor of the ECR Journal, President of the ECR Research Foundation and member of the ECR Europe Board (2000-2006). His two authoritative reports on “Retail Out-of-Stocks” (2002 and 2007) co-authored with Prof Tom Gruen, funded by Procter & Gamble and published by the Grocery Manufacturers of America were game-changing for the retail and consumer goods industry. His consulting work with fashion retailer Charles Voegele of Switzerland was acknowledged with the RFID Journal Award for Best Implementation (2009). Recently, he published a report for the IE Research Foundation on Shrinkage in Spain, funded by Ernst & Young. His current research on global shopping trip management with Unilever was awarded research grants by the Marketing Science and the International Commerce Institute.

Daniel is a regular speaker at international conferences and a consultant to many Fortune 500 companies. He obtained his PhD from University St. Gallen. Previously, he was on the faculty or visited University St. Gallen, INSEAD and London Business School. He lives in Madrid and at Lake Geneva with his wife and two boys.

John Deane, SVP/CIO of Abercrombie & Fitch

John has over 25 years experience in executive management and applied information services. His experience was acquired in the retail, foodservice, healthcare, manufacturing and government industries. John is currently Senior Vice President and CIO at Abercrombie & Fitch, where he is responsible for the global footprint of information and technology services. A large share of his time is spent pursuing ANF’s strategy of global expansion, its commitment to the ecommerce channel, developing tools to enable consumer engagement and supporting over 1,100 chain and flagship stores. Prior to Abercrombie, John was Managing Director of Clipper Advisory Group, assisting various companies with the assessment, improvement planning, strategy, organizational design and recruiting for their IT functions. Before that John was EVP North American Operations for Wendy’s International, Inc. where he led the turnaround of brand operations in the US domestic and Canadian businesses. As EVP and CIO, he improved IT performance, aligned goals, searched for opportunities and delivered value through the use of technology, implemented IT as a shared service and improved user satisfaction. Prior to Wendy’s, John was Executive VP & CIO for Caremark Rx and held positions at Whirlpool Corporation, Price Waterhouse and First Wisconsin National Bank. John speaks at industry events and is also involved in TechColumbus where he recently chaired the 2010 TechTomorrow conference for CIOs. He has an MBA from Marquette University, and a Bachelor of Science degree from the Universidad Católica Argentina in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Nicholas P. Delany, President of VTech Communications Inc.

Nicholas P. Delany serves as the President of VTech Communications Inc., a subsidiary of VTech Holdings Ltd. and Mr. Delany is responsible for the overall management of Telecommunication Products business in US specifically business development, sales, customer support, business intelligence processes, product management, supply chain, logistics, IT, HR/Administration and marketing. Mr. Delany served as Senior Vice President of Telecommunication Products Business and Vice President of Supply Chain and Logistics at VTech Communications, Inc. Prior joining VTech in 2000, Mr. Delany had 23 years sales and management Experience in the industrial, retail, construction and mining Industries in the US, Europe, Asia and South Africa including more than 10 years’ experience developing supply chain systems in leading corporations in North America including The Stanley Works, Inc. Mr. Delany holds a Bachelor Degree in Marketing and Financial Management from the University of South Africa & Damlein College.

Roddy Martin, Managing Director – Accenture

Roddy Martin is currently the Managing Director of Value Chain & Operations Transformation at Accenture Management Consulting. Previously he was Senior Vice President of Global Supply Chain at Competitive Capabilities International (CCI); and the Vice President and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner/AMR Research. Roddy has a millwright trade, engineering technician diploma, and graduated cum laude B Sc Electrical Engineering with two final year awards from the University of Pretoria in South Africa.

Roddy was instrumental in AMR Research’s focused research on the verticalized transformation of manufacturing and supply chains to Demand-driven Value Networks. At CCI, he is responsible for the TRACC Supply Chain and Change Management products.

Thomas Matthews, Former Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer of Saks Fifth Avenue

Thomas Matthews was appointed as Former Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer at Saks Fifth Avenue in 2003. He also served as Group Senior Vice President-Logistics, Operations, Asset Protection, Construction, Design, Planning, Facilities, and Visual. Matthews joined Saks Fifth Avenue in 1993 as Vice President of Corporate Loss Prevention and has served as Senior Vice President of Asset Protection since 1999. He gained previous experience at Ann Taylor, New York, as Senior Vice President of Asset Protection, Risk Management, Systems and Procedures beginning in 1989 and began his career with Lord & Taylor.

Matthews received his Masters degree in Criminology from Rutgers University, is a Fellow at the Wharton Business School and holds an MBA from the University of Michigan.

David A. Minster, former Chief Operating Officer at David Yurman

Mr. Minster was most recently the Chief Operating Officer at David Yurman, having spent 12 years there as a member of the executive committee. He joined David Yurman in 2001 as CIO to establish an IT Strategy for the growing brand, and to build an organization that could successfully oversee its implementation. In the course of 2 years, he lead the implementation of a Business Planning System, an Oracle/Business Objects corporate Data Warehouse, the QAD Mfg:Pro ERP system, wall to wall reengineering of Operations, and oversaw the creation of the remarkably successful eCommerce business. In 2004, he was made responsible for Operations which added Demand Planning, Forecasting, Purchasing, Manufacturing, Inventory Control, Logistics, Returns, Repairs, Security, and Facilities. In 2007, he re-engineered the Retail Operations function, and was given its’ management responsibility. In 2010, he built a new Operations Center in Hong Kong to facilitate follow-the-sun Product Development and Sourcing.

Prior to joining David Yurman, Mr. Minster spent 14 years at Unilever. Prior to Unilever, Mr. Minster worked as a software systems engineer at companies such as McDonnell-Douglas and Shared Medical Systems. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the College of Engineering at the Ohio State University.

Kathy Persian, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of SuperValu

Kathy Persian joined SuperValu in February 2010 in the role of Group Vice President of Retail and Merchandising Systems, and later moved to Group Vice President of Corporate Planning, Analysis and Business Process. Prior to SuperValu, Kathy spent more than 20 years at Accenture and Best Buy working in business areas of IT, general retail, retail operations, merchandising, supply chain, and finance. She most recently worked for Best Buy as the Senior Vice President of International Business Process and Operations. Kathy began her career at Accenture in 1988 where in due course was promoted to Partner, Retail Practice.

Amit Singh, President of Google Enterprise

Amit Singh leads Global Sales and Business Development for Google’s Enterprise Business with responsibility for all Global Operations as Vice President, Global Sales and Business Development. He joined Google in 2010 after nearly 20 years at Oracle in different areas of the business, including product development, channel management, sales, strategy and acquisitions. In his most recent role, as Group Vice President, he led the Application Strategy Group, responsible for applications acquisitions, shared services and product strategy for North American Sales. He also ran sales and operations for some of the fastest growing acquisitions at Oracle including Demantra, G-Log, Agile, Logical Apps and Peoplesoft HR. Amit spent a decade in various sales positions managing Applications sales organizations in the Northeast and Midwest. He began his Oracle career in product development, designing and building some of the first Oracle Applications, before moving into channel management.

Amit is a graduate of Rensselaer with a master’s degree in industrial and management engineering and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Delhi College of Engineering.

Bill Copacino

In memoriam