Regional Leadership Forum Facilitators

This distinguished group of facilitators has more than 200 years of IT leadership, experience, knowledge and education to help ­tomorrow’s IT leaders understand and enhance their leadership style. From its inception, these leaders have helped develop, guide, and expand RLF and its highly regarded curriculum. In each region, one or more of the following contacts facilitate the sessions and guide the participant discussions.

Scot Berkey  |  Midwest Facilitator  | scot@scotberkey.com | 847.769.9659

Scot is a Partner at Media Systems Inc and is a 2002 RLF graduate. He has over twenty years of experience in the technology sector in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 multi-nationals to smaller high-growth corporations. Prior to joining Media Systems, Scot held executive roles in both buy and sell sides of the technology industry, and he has extensive experience in for-profit education, insurance brokerage, and in turnaround leadership situations in a variety of business segments. His professional experience includes leadership roles as CIO, executive roles in global operations and application development, client services and contract negotiation, and applied business technology, and he is on the Board of the Chicago SIM Chapter. Scot holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Northwestern University and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago.

Bart Bolton  |  Northeast Facilitator  |   bartbolton@aol.com | 508.529.3532

With more than 35 years experience in IT management, Bart’s ­experience includes leading and managing multiple IT departments, consulting, educating, marketing and selling to the IT function. He has been facilitating the RLF since 1994 and the Leadership Development Roundtable (LDR) since 2001. He has worked with clients in their leadership development programs. He spent 17 years at Digital Equipment Corporation as a Manager of Consulting Services, MIS Marketing Manager and Manager of Field Information Systems. Prior to Digital, Bart was a Corporate Director of IS for an automotive parts manufacturer, a senior consultant with Touche Ross and a marketing representative for IBM. He is the trustee and past chairman of SIM’s Boston Chapter. 

June Drewry  |  RLF Director and Southeast Facilitator  |  june_drewry@yahoo.com 

June Drewry was the Global Chief Information Officer for Chubb & Son until her retirement in 2009. She currently is a National Director of the Society for Information Management’s Leadership Development Institute, the Southeast facilitator for SIM’s Regional Leadership Forum (RLF), an Executive Coach with Treeline Consulting, and an Advisory Board member for Diversified Information Technologies, Inc. 

Ms. Drewry has extensive international experience in the insurance and financial services industry at the senior management level, as a corporate CIO, business unit CIO and as president of a third party administration subsidiary.

June served two terms as president of SIM International and has earned several awards throughout her career for innovative business use of technology and leadership in information technology.

 Cliff Higbee  |  Midwest Facilitator  |  higbeecw@ldschurch.org | 801.240.3358

Cliff Higbee is the Director of the Management Information Center for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He received his B.A. in Speech Communications from the University of Utah. He is a past Intermountain Chapter president, has served on the SIM Executive Board in several Vice President positions, and chaired the 1994 Annual Interchange Conference. Cliff has been a guest lecturer at Weber State University and The Salt Lake Community College. He holds an elected position on the Salt Lake City School Board and serves on the Advisory Boards for Weber State University and Utah Valley Community College.

 Steven John  | New York Metro Facilitator  |  sajohn@comcast.net | 651.261.9502

Currently Steven is the CIO of H. B. Fuller, a specialty chemical manufacturer. The company spans 31 countries, and its adhesive, sealant, paint and other specialty chemical products reach customers in nearly 100 nations.

Prior to H. B. Fuller, Steven was the Chief Information Officer at Agriliance, the largest supplier of crop nutrients, and crop protection products.  He also held positions with the Society for Information Management, First Health, CIGNA, Unisource Network Services, and Transora, Inc.

In 2006 he was selected by Computerworld magazine as one of the Premier 100 IT Leaders. He was recently presented with the 2008 Leadership award by the CIO Executive Council. Steven was also recognized by InformationWeek magazine as a relentless innovator in 2009. That same year H.B. Fuller was ranked 109th in the InformationWeek 500. This marks Fuller’s first appearance on the InformationWeek 500 list, which recognizes leaders in the use of business technology.

He was recently presented with the 2008 Leadership award by the CIO Executive Council.

Steven holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from the University of Utah, and completed graduate work at Temple University.

Mike Rochelle  | Southwest Facilitator  |  mike.rochelle@pobox.com | 214.621.6285

Mike is a results oriented IT leader with demonstrated ability to meet or exceed business goals. He has 20 years of increasing sales, marketing and IT operations, business process renewal and full client lifecycle experience. 

Mike received a B.A. from Ambassador University and an M.B.A. from Azusa Pacific University. He is a graduate of The Society for Information Management's Regional Leadership Forum, founded and has facilitated the Dallas/Fort Worth RLF for 13 years. He is an active member of SIM’s Enterprise Architecture group, and has served on the Dallas SIM Chapter board. Mike currently serves on the board of the Highland Village Parks Foundation and is Cub Master for Pack 1163 and Charter Representative for Troop 99.

Mike is an active outdoorsman, mountain biker, and soccer and ballet dad. Mike resides in Highland Village, TX, with his wife, Arlene and sons, Michael Alexander and Paul Anthony and daughter Erika Marie.

Bob Rouse  | Northwest Facilitator  | brouse44@gmail.com  | 314.935.4791

Bob is a founder of the St. Louis SIM Chapter and a Past President of SIM. For 15 years he has facilitated RLFs in the Midwest, Northeast, New York and the Chubb Internal Forum. He has served as a RLF Director for six years. Bob is Professor Emeritus, Computer Science at Washington University; he held many leadership positions at WU, including IT Strategy Director for the School of Medicine, automation lead for the Development Office, Assistant Dean, and Director of the Center for Intelligent Computing Systems. He is President of Red Eagle Advisors, a focused advisory practice for firms seeking leading edge business innovation for people+technology.

Kevin Ryan  | Northeast Facilitator  |  kevin.ryan@muddybrook.com  | 860.306.4497

Kevin Ryan is currently a Facilitator and Director with the Society for Information Management’s (SIM) Regional Leadership Forum (RLF). He is a 2000 Graduate of RLF and has been involved with SIM at the Chapter and National level since then.

Kevin has extensive executive experience in business and technology at the Senior Management level. He has owned his own eCommerce business, was a Vice President at two Fortune 500 healthcare insurers, and has considerable leadership experience in civic and community roles.

As president of his own eCommerce company from 2007 - 2012, his firm received awards for sales and customer service, developed an eCommerce arrangement with Amazon expanding the relationship from simple re-selling to hosting, inventory management, order-fulfillment, and credit card processing via a full cloud computing environment. He successfully sold this business in 2012 and continues to work in IT consulting and leadership development

Ed Trainor  | Northwest Facilitator  |  ed.trainor@gmail.com | 410.507.9744

Ed Trainor has served as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in diverse industries over the past 25 years – i.e., airline, utility, entertainment and railroad. In the mid-1980s he served as CIO for Flying Tigers, the world's largest bulk cargo airline before they were acquired by Federal Express, after which he served as CIO for Southern California Gas Co, one of the nations largest transporters and distributors of natural gas. He next spent over 12 years leading Paramount Pictures’ information systems functions through numerous mergers, acquisitions and business transformation efforts and where he also helped initiate and develop Paramount’s anti-piracy efforts. In early 2007 he accepted the position of CIO for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (aka Amtrak) where he led an enterprise-wide business process transformation effort before retiring in mid-2011. He is a past national President of the Society for Information Management (SIM) and is the co-author of two textbooks on information strategy.  Ed now works as an educator and consultant as well as a facilitator for SIM's Regional Leadership Forum (RLF.)

 Corky Valenti | New York Metro Facilitator  |   cvalenti@chubb.com | 630.728.0262

Corky has more than 30 years of consulting and leadership experience in marketing communications, technical communications, training, and internal communications for technology firms and IT departments of other businesses.  He currently serves as Assistant Vice President, IT Communications Manager for the Chubb Corporation, responsible for managing IT internal communications and providing consulting and support for the IT leadership team and IT departments and projects teams.  Prior to Chubb, he held similar positions with Aon, Acxiom Corporation, Platinum Technologies, Andersen Consulting, and several software companies. Corky holds a B.A, in Psychology from the University of Illinois in Urbana and an M.A. in Engineering Psychology and Human Factors from Rice University. 

Corky has been involved with RLF since 2004, first helping to market the program at Aon and Chubb, then graduating from the program in 2007. He completed the Hartford LDR program in 2009.  Since then, he has continued to support the RLF program within Chubb and has worked with the facilitators on various curriculum and marketing projects and served as a substitute facilitator. He received the Friend of RLF Award at SIMposium in 2012 and currently serves as a facilitator for the NY Metro RLF forum. 

Madeline Weiss  | Mid-Atlantic Facilitator  |   madeline.weiss@verizon.net  | 301.229.8062

Madeline is President of Weiss Associates, Inc., a consulting firm ­specializing in strategy and change, particularly related to ­information management and technology. Utilizing her experience of over 30 years in management, organization strategy and change, and information technology, she consults for business, government, universities, and professional organizations. She is Program Director of SIM's Advanced Practices Council and has been an officer of SIM. Madeline has been an RLF facilitator since 1994.  She develops and conducts internal leadership programs for organizations as well.

Phil Zwieg  | Midwest Facilitator  |   pzwieg@wi.rr.com  | 414.840.4477

Phil is currently a principal with Z-Sharp, LLC. a consulting business that focuses on offshoring, IT strategy, IT measurement and IT organization. He retired as a Vice President in the Information Systems department at Northwestern Mutual, where he was responsible for all infrastructure and IT operations activities. Prior to joining the Northwestern, he was head of the Information Systems organization at We Energies. Phil received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his MBA from Marquette University. He is on the adjunct faculty of the graduate business school at Marquette University. Phil is a member of the Board of Directors of Lad Lake, Inc. and has been a member of the Society for Information Management and the Wisconsin Chapter for over 20 years, serving in board roles at both the national and local level. He currently serves as the President of the Wisconsin Chapter.