President: Ammar Rayes, Director, Distinguished Engineer, Cisco

Ammar Rayes is a Distinguished Engineer at Cisco Systems. He has been at the core of developing IP-based network and service management solutions for over 20 years. His main areas of expertise include Smart Services, NMS/OSS, Big Data, Cloud, Mobility, Performance and Traffic Engineering, and Embedded management.

Dr. Rayes has authored / co-authored over a hundred papers and patents on advances in communications-related technologies, including a book on Network Modeling and Simulation and one on ATM switching and network design. He is an Associate Editor of ACM “Transactions on Internet Technology”, Editor-in-Chief for “Advances of Internet of Things” Journal.Dr. Rayes received his BS and MS Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He received his Doctor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1994 where he received the Outstanding Graduate Student Award in Telecommunications

Vice President, BOD Member: Charlie Bess, VP, HP

Charles Bess is a Fellow in the HP Services and Solutions Research lab focusing on next generation business value generation. In his career, he has been the leader of HP’s global architecture capability, the Chief Technologist for numerous large clients and internal structures for HP and EDS. He is an avid blogger and regularly publishes outside HP. He has also led HP’s internal global technical conference. Charles received a BSEE degree from Purdue and an MBA from SMU. He is currently licensed as a professional engineer, certified as a distinguished architect by The Open Group and a senior IEEE member.

Secretary / Treasurer (acting), BOD Member: Jim Spohrer, VP, IBM

Jim Spohrer is the IBM Innovation Champion and Director of the IBM University Programs World Wide. He was the founding Director of service research at IBM and has widely published on service science and engineering. He received his undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT and his PhD in Computer Science/Artificial Intelligence from Yale University.

Executive Director: Yassi Moghaddam, ISSIP

Yassi Moghaddam is a go-to-market and service innovation and management consultant, entrepreneur, and Managing Director of Stradanet, a consulting firm based in Silicon Valley where she has served clients including Wells Fargo, Cisco Systems, Applied Materials, New Venture Partners, Mojo Mobility, and a number of successful start-ups. Yassi’s main areas of expertise include mobility, cloud computing, and collaboration. Prior to her consulting career, Yassi was the VP of Marketing at ASIP Inc, a venture backed Princeton University incubator, Director of Marketing Alliances at Avici Systems, and earlier in her career she held senior product and technical management positions in Lucent and AT&T. Yassi holds an MBA from Columbia University, MSEE from Georgia Tech, and a BSEE from University of Oklahoma.

BOD Member:  Ralph Badinelli, Professor, Virginia Tech

Ralph Badinelli is a professor in the Department of Business Information Technology of the Pamplin College of Business of Virginia Tech. He received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Management from the Krannert Graduate School of Business of Purdue University, an M.S. degree in Physics from Purdue University, and a B.S. degree in Mathematics and Physics from Hofstra University.Prior to pursuing an academic career, Dr. Badinelli worked as Production Planning Supervisor for the optics division of a west-coast laser manufacturer. He has consulted with a number of companies on planning, forecasting, and software development for decision support.Dr. Badinelli’s teaching responsibilities are in the areas of operations management and quantitative methods for business. These responsibilities extend over undergraduate, MBA and doctoral levels. He has taught many executive-development seminars on the subjects of project management, quality improvement, production and inventory control, and business strategy. He has received the R. B. Pamplin College of Business Certificate of Teaching Excellence.Dr. Badinelli has published refereed articles across a wide range of topics including inventory control policies, revenue management, probability estimation, decision analysis and optimization. His publications have appeared in Operations Research, Management Science, Service Science, Decision Sciences, Naval Research Logistics, Computers and Operations Research, International Journal of Production Research, European Journal of Operational Research, and the Journal of the International Academy of Hospitality Research. He is a member of the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP), Service Research and Innovation Institute (SRII), Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), Project Management Institute (PMI) and a certified member of the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS).

BOD Member: Haluk Demirkan, Professor, University of Washington

Dr. Haluk Demirkan is a Professor of Service Science & Information Systems (transdisciplinary with Supply Chain Management and Strategic Marketing & Services Leadership), and a Research Fellow for the Centers for Services Leadership and Advancing Business through IT at W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University. He received a Ph.D. in Information Systems & Operations Management; Post Master of Engineering and Master of Engineering in Industrial & Systems Engineering from the University of Florida, and Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Istanbul Technical University. He also holds a PMP Certification from the Project Management Institute.

He has almost 15 years of professional work & executive education experience on business intelligence & analytics driven process innovation (business-, social- & cloud- intelligence, big data analysis and active data warehousing) with Fortune 100 companies such as American Express, Bank of America, Intel, Premier Healthcare, Darden Restaurants and Lending Tree among others. Industry positions he held include principle consultant & technical account manager for MicroStrategy Inc., and process engineer & project manager for AT&T Universal Cards/Bell Labs and Citibank Corp.

His main research and teaching interests are on service science & sustainable innovations, strategic project & service management, business-, social- and cloud services-intelligence & analytics, service supply chain management, service oriented technology & management and cloud computing. He has more than 150 publications, and he fulfilled many international service roles (e.g. track chair for the Decision Analytics, Mobile Services and Service Science Track at the HICSS, journal guest-editorship, and advisory board membership). He received various awards and honors (e.g. ranked 50th in the Top-100 World-wide Researchers by AIS, IBM Faculty, and IEEE Computer Society).

He has more than 10 years of higher education interdisciplinary (e.g. IS, SCM, OM, MKT, ACT, Ind. Eng.) teaching and mentorship experiences (face-to-face & online) at the executive, graduate and undergraduate levels at national and international universities.

He is a member of the International Society of Service Innovation Professionals (ISSIP), Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS), Association for Information Systems (AIS), and Project Management Institute (PMI). He is also a Co-Editor of a Book Collection “Service Systems and Innovations in Business and Society”, in Business Expert Press.

Board Member: Ana Gabriela Pinczuk, SVP Cisco 

Ana Pinczuk is Senior Vice President, Global Technical Center within the Cisco Services organization. She is responsible for a global team of 2000 professionals that deliver global technical support, define the global service experience, and partner with engineering to drive product excellence.Ana has a diverse background, having been in Services, Marketing, Sales, Business Development, and Engineering roles throughout her professional career. Within Cisco, Ana has led diverse teams including Software Development, Test, Release Engineering, Product Management, Solution Development, Engineering IT and Technical Services,Prior to Cisco, Ana spent 15 years at AT&T and Lucent where she held key roles such as VP of Internet Technologies responsible for development and deployment of AT&T’s Internet backbone and Sales Client Director for the JP Morgan account.Ana has received many honors including the AT&T Architecture and Vista Champions Awards, the 1999 AT&T Laboratories Woman of the Year, and most recently the Diversity Journal 2009 Top 100 Women Worth Watching.Ana has a Bachelor of Science and a Masters of Engineering in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University, a Masters of Technology Management from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, and an MS in Software Management at Carnegie Mellon University. She is married and has two sons.