Speakers

Emma-Ruth Arnaz-Pemberton is the Director of Consulting Services at Wellingtone; a PPM consultancy firm with offices in Windsor (UK), Madrid (Spain) and Dublin (Ireland). She is a Fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM), is part of the PMI UK Board, member of IPMA AEIPRO, PMI Spain, an Axelos P3M3 Assessor, and an NLP Master Practitioner with a Diploma in Modern Applied Psychology.

Professor John D. Driessnack specializes in solving wicked problems by combining his industrial systems management engineering and new institutional economics education along with his 35 plus years of project/program/portfolio leadership and management. A prior major program manager, CFO, and lead Logistician within the US Air Force on various joint programs, John today runs Olde Stone Consulting, a niche sole proprietorship. John’s portfolio of work includes Executive Vice President of the College of Performance Management (CPM), Professorial Lecturer at American University School of Public Affairs and Lecturer at Univ of Maryland’s Project Management Center of Excellence. He is also a Professor at the Defense Acquisition University, Defense Systems Management College. John recently has written several papers for PMI with a focus on portfolio management. This led to his selection as the subject matter expert on the congressionally directed Section 809 Panel where he was responsible for the Portfolio Management section. He also was on the core team for the ANSI Standard for Earned Value Management, ANSI/PMI-19-006-2019

Mark Adler Madsen is partner and co-founder at Aspire Innovation, which is a consultancy with roots in both USA and Europe seeking to help manufacturers improve product development and get faster from idea to profit. Mark has spent his entire career leading and coaching product development – from leading projects to building enterprise portfolio & project management offices for global businesses.

Andrew is a Transformational Leader with 18+ years of experience in business and project management. He demonstrated transformational leadership competence in Retail, Big Data Analysis, Financial, Supply Chain and Big 5 Consulting enterprises. He managed strategic projects, business portfolios, and Agile and digital transformation initiatives to deliver outstanding business results.

As former PMI Chief Operating Officer, Michael (Mike) DePrisco provided executive leadership to the Global Operations Group, supporting more than 1.2M active certification holders, 650,000 members and 300 chapters from over 200 countries. He was responsible for the Product Portfolio, Lean Portfolio & Product Integration, Customer Care, and Digital Groups. His team’s focus was on digital product delivery and management, and the successful execution of all major initiatives. Mike joined PMI in 2013 and has held several roles within the organization including Vice President, Global Membership & Chapters, and Vice President, Academic and Educational Programs. Prior to PMI, Mike served in executive positions in higher education. There, he executed university strategic plans to ensure integration and alignment of key initiatives and priorities. He provided executive oversight to campus development and growth, including student acquisition and retention, program development, financial management and stakeholder relationships. He has a Bachelor and Master of Science degrees from West Chester University of Pennsylvania and holds a Certificate in Company Direction (International) from the Institute of Directors. Mike is active in youth and educational programs in his community.

Aimee Rodrigues is a Planisware Director of Customer Success and Best Practices. Aimee has more than 15 years of experience within the animal pharmaceutical industry. Her knowledge spans R&D, supply chain, process improvement and technical solutions. Aimee has helped launch some of the biggest products within the animal health world. She was instrumental in creating a best of both model for project, portfolio and resource management within R&D during a large M&A creating the largest animal health company to date. Aimee holds a BS in Molecular Biology from Stetson University and a Masters of Business Administration from Troy University. She is certified by the Project Management Institute as a Project Management Professional (PMP).

Matthew McCreight is a Senior Partner at Schaffer Consulting. His time with the firm includes a ten-year term as the firm’s Managing Partner, He has been with the firm since the late 1980s, consulting with a wide variety of organizations, such as: AIG, J&J, Southern California Edison, General Electric, Givaudan, Helen of Troy, Service Wire, World Fuel, Zurich Insurance and Say Yes to Education. Matthew has helped many organisations carry out large-scale change in ways that achieve significant results rapidly while building the leadership, strategic insights and broad-based involvement that are essential for long-term success. In this context, he works with senior leaders and their teams to orchestrate the strategy and transformation of their organizations. Over the years, Matthew has helped to build strong, sustained operational transformation; to create robust organic growth on an international scale; to integrate major mergers successfully; and to create effective new business innovation in long-established organizations. In keeping with Schaffer’s focus on building the capabilities of our clients, Matthew has created and led development programs for global leaders in the firm’s distinctive “Results-Fueled” approach. He also coaches and develops internal groups – human resources, finance, consulting, information technology, and others – in Schaffer’s “High Impact Consulting” skills and experience to support transformation and change. Matthew earned a MPPM (Masters in Public and Private Management) from Yale University School of Management and a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University.

As the Chief Product Officer, Matt leads the administrative and product directions and the strategic development of KeyedIn solution offerings. In addition to being a qualified accountant, he is an accomplished leader with over 30 years of experience in all aspects of corporate business systems. Matt has served in leadership roles in Finance, Consulting, Sales, Marketing and Product Development and has contributed to the design of several ERP and business software products. Matt has a passion for delivering corporate and customer success through innovation and the use of new technology combined with best practices to create world-class products and organizations. Throughout his career, he has gained an exceptional talent for improving efficiencies and optimizing strengths. Prior to KeyedIn, Matt held various leadership roles at a number of B2B enterprise software companies. In addition to spending 10 years in Sales and Product roles at Epicor Software, as Vice President of Product Management for Sage Software, Matt managed a software product portfolio contributing in excess of $1 billion in revenue annually to the company. Matt’s deep understanding of the enterprise market and software procurement models coupled with strengths in finance makes him a well-rounded leader that gets results.

Jennifer is a curriculum developer and faculty member at the University of Southern California and has been managing projects, programs, portfolios and PMOs for nearly 30 years for Fortune 500 companies in many different industry sectors. She is a published author and holds PMP, PgMP, PfMP, ITIL, BRMP, CB-PMO, SAFe-SA and SSMBB certifications. In addition to many articles and presentations regarding PMO and portfolio management, she also wrote a chapter in “Portfolio Management: A Strategic Approach”. In 2020, she was featured in “The Perspective of Women Project Management Professionals” by Ipek Sahra Ozguler.