Andres E. Carvallo
CIO
Austin Energy

Diane Kenyon
Senior VP of IT
Harden Healthcare

Anurag Kumar
Senior Manager
DELL

Lauren Lueders Storage Executive
DELL

Nick Spennato
Oracle, Applications Manager

Jim Weatherby
Dir. Info. Systems
Texas Legislative Council

Andres E. Carvallo
Chief Information Officer
Austin Energy
Andres is currently the Chief Information Officer at Austin Energy, where he is responsible for the technology vision, planning, development and operations across the enterprise. Since February of 2003, Andres has been driving a wireless and SOA transformation to deliver a fully-integrated and self-healing enterprise. The current direction for the company is to deliver the first smart grid in the world by 2009. In addition to his responsibilities as CIO, Andres is member of the 8 person executive team, and member of the Innovation and Opportunity Development executive board. Outside of Austin Energy, Andres is Chairman for the Large Public Power Companies’ CIO Task Force, a board member of the Center for Commercialization of Electric Technologies and an advisor to several companies.

Andres is a requested speaker on CleanTech, Smart Grid, SOA, Wireless, and Running IT as a Business. He is co-author of Information Technology Leadership and CTO Best Practices Collection. And he is an honoree to many awards, including IT Executive of the Year by the Association of Information Technology Professionals in 2005, Premier 100 IT Leader by Computerworld in 2006, Best in Class of Premier 100 by Computerworld in 2006, CIO 100 Award by CIO Magazine in 2006, InformationWeek 500 by InformationWeek Magazine in 2007, and Computerworld’s Top 12 Green IT Companies in 2008.

Andres has over 22 years of experience and great knowledge of the Energy, Software, Computer, and Wireless industries. Prior to Austin Energy, he held key titles at four start-ups and large companies like Philips Electronics, Digital Equipment Corporation, and Microsoft. Andres received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Kansas, and has completed executive management programs at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania 

Austin Energy is the 9th largest public power utility in the nation providing low cost reliable power to the capitol city of Texas and metro area, with annual revenues over $1 billion servicing 400,000 premises representing around 41,000 businesses and 1 million consumers. Austin Energy is also recognized as an industry leader in conservation and renewable energy offering the most comprehensive residential and commercial energy efficiency programs in the nation; active in the use and management of distributed generation by operating the first fuel cell in Texas tied directly to the electric grid and the largest module combined heat and power plant in the nation, and using the best solutions for information technology and telecommunications to deliver the first smart grid in the world by Q1 2009.

Jim Weatherby
Director of Information Systems
Texas Legislative Council
James L. “Jim” Weatherby was born and raised in Dallas, Texas and attended Texas A&M University where he obtained a BA in mathematics in 1964 and an MS in economics in 1966. After Texas A&M, he enrolled at the University of Minnesota to pursue a Ph.D. degree in economics that he received in 1970 at which time he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin as an Assistant Professor. While at UT, he pioneered several techniques in the area of Computer Assisted Instruction as well as managed the transition from an “IBM card” computer environment to a remote real time computer environment. He left the University of Texas in 1976 and with a colleague founded a consulting business, Southwest Econometrics, Inc. where he specialized in the implementation of empirical models of client processes. In 1985 he sold his interest in Southwest Econometrics and joined Hart Graphics at their Director of Information Services. He was promoted to Vice President of Information Services and in this capacity he designed and directed the implementation of a real time shop floor tracking and scheduling system and implemented decentralized computing company wide. In 1989 he was appointed the founding President of Hart Forms & Services. He led the company through changes associated with the collapse of the savings and loan industry in Texas and California, the acquisition of a major distributor, the redefinition of its manufacturing unit, and conceived and implemented an image change of the company to the digital age. He left Hart in 1997 to again pursue an independent consultant practice. In this practice, he worked for numerous Austin area organizations on assignments ranging from design of electronic printing systems to geographic market definition. He joined the Texas Legislative Council in June of 1998 and since that time has made significant contributions in in the areas of customer service and organizational effectiveness. Among these are being recognized twice in a one year period by the Senate of the State of Texas for exemplary customer service and receiving multiple awards for the public web site for the legislature (www.legis.state.tx.us) most recently the Online Democracy Award given by the National Council of State Legislatures. In November of 2007, Dr. Weatherby was recognized as Austin’s IT Executive of the Year for the Public Sector for his leadership role in the migration of over 60 applications from a mainframe-centric environment to a server-based environment. In addition to his duties at the Legislative Council, over the past several years he has taught at UT’s LBJ School of Public Affairs, St. Edward’s and Concordia.

Anurag Kumar
Senior Manager
Dell

Anurag is an experienced global technology professional with a talent for finding innovative solutions to complex business problems and building and growing businesses.  He is skilled at forming and managing globally distributed teams and motivating them to focus on customer needs and revenue generating activities.   He has extensive experience working with and for companies that range in size from the Global 500 to pre-investment startups.

As Senior Manager at Dell Global Services, he led IT Planning and Governance initiatives to select and optimize the IT investments and project selection.  He also managed a large deployment of Portfolio and Project Management solution using CA Clarity across three geographies and more than 200 users in a very short time frame using limited budget.

Previously, he had founded ConnectionE, a wireless solutions and software services provider based in Austin.  Under his leadership the company acquired more than 200 business clients, reduced wireless costs by 15 – 30% per client by utilizing our proprietary processes and solutions and manages more than a dozen software development projects with teams in US and India.  He sold the company in 2008.

In 2006, he was the interim-CEO and led the business development of an India-based IT Outsourcing and Software Services Company where he reduced expenses by 30% while increasing sales by 40% to turn this unprofitable entity into a cash positive company. Under his leadership, the company was able to spin out the software development group.

Anurag spent more than 8 years with IBM Global Services in the Managed Operations division where he led a team of 30+ engineers to create IBM’s Asset Management Solution (AssetWorks), a lifecycle asset management system that enabled IBM to manage customers’ information technology assets remotely.  He also managed many large IT projects for Global 500 clients.

He served as the President of TIE Austin, a global networking and mentoring organization for entrepreneurs for two years.  He rejuvenated the Austin chapter and grew the paid membership base and sponsorship revenues by 50% in the past year.  Earlier in his career, he consulted for KPMG and Tata Consultancy Services on several large IT projects in public and manufacturing sector.  Anurag has an MBA from Michigan State University, a MS in Computer Engineering from Wayne State and Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi.

Lauren Lueders
Storage Executive
Dell
Lauren Lueders is a Storage Executive at Dell Inc., where she is responsible for developing the Dallas, TX partner community and revenue generation for Storage Area Network solutions. She comes from EqualLogic that was purchased by Dell in February 2008.  Before joining EqualLogic, Ms. Lueders built business-to-business revenue in the reseller industry and led sales teams as Business Development Manager for Avnet in Dallas and VP of Sales for Excel Meridian in Dallas and Cutting Edge in San Diego. She earned a bachelor of science in Business Management from University of Tulsa and a master of science from Texas Women’s University.

FORUM MODERATOR:

Nick Spennato
Applications Manager
Oracle Corporation (www.Oracle.com)
Nick Spennato has over 20 years of experience selling enterprise business solutions to help solve business problems. He has been with Oracle Corporation for 8 years selling ERP business systems to small-to-medium businesses in south central Texas.  Prior to that he spent about 15 years selling control systems and advanced control solutions to the process manufacturing industries at both Pavilion Technologies and Emerson Process Automation in Austin.  Mr. Spennato holds a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University.

FORUM WELCOME:

Anthony Huang
Founder & CEO
Technology Executives Network (Techxans | TechExecs|
arh@techxans.org
866.661.0258
As a well known industry icon, Anthony Huang has been a successful entrepreneur with a solid track record of having started and sold four profitable business ventures. Along with two other individuals, Pamela Terry and Laura Ramey, Anthony Huang launched the Techxans organization back in 2000.  Techxans.org has sustained the ups and downs of the Information Technology industry for the past 7 years and continues to strive and grow in size and capabilities.  In 2001, Techxans reached national and international attention for helping to launch EnronX.org which was the largest Ex-Enron contact site and was mentioned on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and CIO Magazine.  In January 2007, Techxans formed Techxans InterActive Broadcast providing Internet TV broadcasting, strategic online advisory services for Techxans Corporate Members & Sponsoring companies.  Prior to Techxans, Anthony Huang was the CEO of Rexton InterActive Consulting that led the market in providing strategic web consulting for over 100 major clients across 23 different industries. Anthony also served as the CIO for 2 healthcare ventures.  Anthony began his career with Apple Computers and Ernst & Young and was a recipient of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1998 with The Greater Houston Partnership.  He has been a speaker at numerous conferences including InformationWeek, Gartner Group Midsize Enterprise Summit, and Red Herring Venture Forums. Anthony graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BBA in Management Information Systems and lives in Sugar Land with his wife and two children.