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Michael I. Pirron, MBA, PMP

Chief Executive Officer

As founder of Impact Makers, Michael has developed a new business model that takes social entrepreneurship to a new level. Impact Makers is a for-profit company with no shareholders, governed by a volunteer board of directors, and contributes all profits to to community charitable partners.

Michael spent the early years of his career as a Senior Consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) based in Sophia Antipolis, France. His tenure allowed him to consult, with increasingly complex engagements, throughout the EMEAI (Europe, Middle East, Africa, and India) region. As a result, Michael has lived or worked in seven countries and spent significant time in over 25 nations. He became conversant in French, and when he moved on to be a Product Manager with ViryaNet Systems in Jerusalem, Israel, he added Hebrew to his language skills. Later, while an independent consultant, Michael completed an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

Michael returned to the States and accepted a position as the Manager of Application Development at Health Management Corporation (HMC), a leading disease management company and subsidiary of WellPoint Blue Cross / Blue Shield (one of the nation’s largest providers of health insurance). Prior to launching Impact Makers, Michael was the Director of Product Development at First Health Services Corporation.

Carl Miller

President

As President of Impact Makers, Carl uses his considerable program/project management and operational experience to continue to build our delivery capabilities and help grow our business.  Carl leads our engagements in the Health Information Exchange (HIE) market where he focuses on helping HIEs launch their services and implement business operations.  Carl gained a wealth of consulting experience in the Federal and State markets early in his career.  This was followed by five years with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida where Carl led the design and development of their physician/provider database as well as authoring BCBSF’s Information Engineering development methodology.   Carl relocated his family to Richmond, VA in 1997.   Since that time Carl has gained increasingly responsible management experience by leading large, complex, business critical technology and business programs at Circuit City, iXL, East3 and Capital One.

Immediately prior to joining Impact Makers, Carl was a member of the executive management team at Cinea, Inc. (a division of Dolby Labs).  Carl served in multiple roles including directing operations and leading Cinea’s largest line of business and driving strategic partnerships and licensing deals with Fortune 500 customers.

Rodney Willett

Vice President, Business Strategy

Rodney joined Impact Makers in 2011 as Vice President of Business Strategy and oversees the company’s business development efforts nationally. Rodney has more than 22 years of experience working with government and commercial entities and helping to meet their management and technology needs. Most recently, Rodney served as public sector lead for Virginia for North Highland, a global management consulting company. At North Highland, he worked with dozens of state agencies and universities to assist them in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations and implementing their business strategies. Prior to joining North Highland, Rodney directed Virginia’s state government Internet portal (www.virginia.gov) and served as president of Virginia Interactive, LLC, the Virginia subsidiary of the e-government company NIC. The Center for Digital Government recognized the Virginia portal and its e-government services as the best state Internet portal in the nation because of its innovations in delivering citizen and business services online.

Rodney is a licensed Virginia attorney and has represented state and local government clients for more than 15 years. He practiced with the law firm of Hunton & Williams, where he primarily represented and advised Virginia municipal governments and local school boards on contractual, administrative, and constitutional law issues. Rodney also is an advocate for educational and public health interests. He is a past chairman of the Richmond Montessori School Board of Trustees and completed 12 years of service to the board. Rodney founded the Pulley Family Endowment at the College of William and Mary in order to fund public service work by student volunteers world-wide. He also helped to create and lead a legal assistance program for the homeless in Northern Virginia. Rodney currently serves on the Children’s Health Insurance Program Advisory Committee (CHIPAC) and the Public Policy Committee of the Board of the United Way of Greater Richmond and Petersburg. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Nature Foundation at Wintergreen Resort.

Rodney attended the College of William and Mary for his BA and JD degrees. He completed high school at the Collegiate School in Richmond.

 

Ross Decker

Client Solutions Lead

Ross rejoined the company in 2012 as Client Solutions Lead with responsibility for expanding Impact Makers’ commercial and healthcare practices. Ross brings Impact Makers over a decade of experience in strategy and product management.

Prior to rejoining Impact Makers, Ross was the Vice President of Product Management for Molina Healthcare’s Medicaid fiscal agent business (acquired from Unisys). At Molina, Ross was responsible for product strategy and strategic alliances for multiple offerings including Health Information Exchange (HIE), Electronic Health Records (EHR), and other health information technology activities; decision support systems; pharmacy benefit management strategy; and care management. Ross also was responsible for assessing health reform legislation and developing the company’s responses.

Ross was Impact Makers’ founding Board Chair and one of the early employees of the company.

Ross began his post MBA career working for General Electric where he was a product manager in the Fairfield/New Haven based Corporate Initiatives Group. Prior to earning his MBA, Ross was an English teacher in Richmond, California and Detroit, Michigan.

Ross holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Michigan.

Kate Foster, PMP

Director, Client Relations

Kate joined Impact Makers in 2012 as Director of Client Relations. She is a certified project management professional with over 20 years in the technology  industry. While working within the private (Fortune 100) and public sectors, Kate successfully managed complex, multi-million dollar, cross-functional  projects with enterprise impact.

Kate has extensive experience in leadership development and is a professional facilitator and coach, holding certifications from the Society of Information  Management as well as the New Agreements Coach Training and Leadership Institute. Kate holds a Masters Certificate in Project Management from George  Washington University. She is a certified Project Management Professional, Scrum Master and Leadership Coach.

Andy Savage

Principal Consultant

Andy  joined the company as a Principal Consultant in 2012. He is a Certified Master Scrum Lean/Agile Coach and an entrepreneur with vast experience in creating profitable businesses through the organic application of technology to meet customer needs. Andy combines his vast experience, new technologies and project management methodologies stemming from Lean practices first invented by Toyota to meet his customer needs. Andy is a leader, inventor, creator and advocate for software solutions that have changed customer problems into true competitive advantages.

Andy graduated from Bucknell University with a BS in Chemical Engineering and has worked on software projects in the Nuclear, Pulp & Paper, Pharmaceutical, Chemical, Power, Food & Beverage, Government, Financial and Web Services industries. He owned his own companies and has also worked within Fortune 500 companies such as Dupont, Capital One, International Paper, Fair Isaac, Merck, Honeywell, Altria, and Dominion. Additionally, Andy has been involved in several successful startups including Snagajob and Cardlytics.

Andy comes to Impact Makers after selling his own successful, award-winning software company. He has experience in high availability platforms as well as applying the latest artificial intelligence to hard-to-solve problems.

Ben Smith

Principal Consultant

Ben joined Impact Makers as a Principal Consultant in 2012. He is a senior program manager with 20 years of experience in healthcare and technology and extensive experience in Federal and state government. He has led projects for multiple Federal programs, including transparency and performance measuring projects related to the Affordable Health Care Act and Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Records.

Prior to joining Impact Makers, Ben served as Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). He served as a project director of a $10 million portfolio of complex projects with high profiles and national implications.

Ben holds a Masters in Sociology from the College of William and Mary and has published extensively, both as technical reports and in peer-reviewed journals.

Howard Powlesson

Principal Consultant

Howard joined Impact Makers as a Principal Consultant in 2012. Howard is a broadly experienced technology executive with over 35 years of experience in assignments spanning multiple industries. He has extensive experience in IT management, with the ability to define, design, develop and deploy IT plans that achieve strategic business goals. His areas of expertise include IT strategy, Enterprise Architecture (technology, infrastructure, business process, and strategy), complex program and project management, IT and business process outsourcing, business process management, process re-engineering, service delivery and service management, ITIL-compliant process assessment and re-engineering, executive management and consulting, and contract negotiation.

Howard holds an Executive MBA in Finance from Rutgers University Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Howard is Project Management Professional (PMP) certified.

Jim Blizzard

Principal Consultant

Jim Blizzard joined Impact Makers as Principal Consultant in 2012. Jim is a visionary and goal-oriented Senior Information Technology Leader. He has more than 22 years of demonstrated experience in planning, developing and implementing forward-looking information solutions to address business opportunities.  He delivers bottom- line results through effective design, development and execution of high quality, cost-effective solutions. Jim merges a coaching leadership style with excellent communication skills to continually drive focused teams toward performance excellence. He has a proven record in streamlining operations, relating technical information to business users and leading projects to fruition.

Prior to joining Impact Makers, Jim was a Director and Enterprise Architect at Markel Corporation. In that role, he directed corporate application development, oversaw development, delivery and support, and implemented the foundations of Enterprise Architecture. Additionally, he drove the creation of roadmaps that delivered a multi-year technology refresh and improvement strategy, consolidating and modernizing enterprise systems.

Jim holds a B.S. in Accounting from Furman University.

 

Cathie Brown, CGEIT, PMP, CISM, CISSP

Principal Consultant

Cathie joined Impact Makers as a Principal Consultant  in 2012. She has more than  25 years of experience including work within State Government as Deputy Chief Information Security Officer of the Commonwealth of Virginia and experience within a Regional Healthcare System where she held various positions in IT.  Most recently, she has focused on management consulting engagements bringing value to clients in state government and healthcare entities.  Her specific areas of expertise include technology management, program development, IT governance, program and project management, information security, risk management and compliance (HIPAA, SEC501, NIST800-53) and disaster recovery/business continuity.

Cathie is Certified in Governance of Enterprise IT (CGEIT), a Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) and Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP). She has a Bachelors degree in Business Administration from Averett University and an Associates degree in Data Processing from Central Virginia Community College.

Cathie is active in local professional groups, including 2012-2013 President of the Virginia Chapter of the Information Security Audit and Control Association (ISACA), a member of the Advocacy Committee for the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Board President  of the Region 2000 Technology Council.