Ray joined CNA in 2008 as senior vice president of Application Development & Maintenance, responsible for guiding Business Delivery, Quality Assurance & Testing. Prior to joining CNA, he spent 23 years with ABN AMRO/LaSalle Bank Group in a variety of technology and business leadership roles that supported LaSalle’s growth from a $1.5 billion organization in 1985 to $120 billion in 2006. Prior to joining ABN AMRO, Ray held several IT leadership roles over a nine-year period with the Chicago Board Options Exchange, the premier and largest options exchange in the world. He has served as an advisory board member to Cisco Systems, Hewlett Packard, Fidelity and Sprint Communications and, was one of the founding members of Chicago First, a non-profit entity whose purpose is to maintain continuity of the financial district in the event a catastrophic event threatened to disrupt Chicago’s financial operations. Ray currently serves on the Mayor’s Technology Council which partners with the public and private sectors to further the use of technology within education and commerce. One of the objectives of the council is to attract venture capital funded start ups to Chicago. Ray has also recently joined the board of Lumity, a not-for-profit technology and financial shared services organization that serves other nonprofits throughout the city. Less   View all posts

Bill Oates is the Chief Information Officer for the City of Boston, Massachusetts. Oates was named Boston’s first Cabinet level CIO by Mayor Thomas M. Menino in June of 2006. As CIO, Oates is charged with spearheading the City’s technology initiatives and is responsible for the delivery of IT services in support of the various city functions. Under Bill’s leadership, the City of Boston has been recognized as a leader in leveraging technology to improve citizen engagement and access to services. In 2011, Oates was recognized as one of the “Top 25 Public Sector Innovators” by Government Technology Magazine and named the New England CIO Innovation Award winner by Mass High Tech. In 2012, Bill was inducted into the CIO Hall of Fame by IDG’s CIO Magazine and was also recognized as a finalist for the MIT Sloan CIO Award for Innovation. Prior to joining the City, Oates served as the Senior Vice President & Chief Information Officer for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Based in White Plains, NY, Starwood is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world. Named CIO in June, 2000, Bill was responsible for delivery of the Company’s global information technology services. A graduate of Boston College, Oates is also an attorney and member of the Massachusetts Bar. He received his JD from Suffolk University Law School in Boston and was awarded his LL.M in Global Technology Law in 2005. In 1996, Oates was inducted into the hospitality industry’s “Technology Hall of Fame” for his vision in applying technology to the business. Less   View all posts

Roger Seshadri is a “ Premier 100 Global Leadership Award” winner with 25 + years of Global experience in senior leadership positions in Entertainment, Hospitality, Retail, Gaming, & Management Consulting– including Build , Operate and Transform model operations for multi billion dollar corporations in Netherlands Antilles, USA, Canada, South America, Central America , Hong Kong, India and China. Had recently (2006) setup a development center and a BPO center in India for a leading American corporation involving development of Gaming systems , Electronic games and Business Process transformation possibilities. Roger started his career in 1981 in Management Consulting /Financial Management straight after University as a CPA Intern for 3 years, had the opportunity to visit diverse range of firms in various industrial sectors, which has given an invaluable insight into the senior level decision making across various verticals. Currently Roger is the Senior Vice President & CIO reporting to CEO (Member of the Corporate Executive committee ) for Melco Crown Entertainment (listed in NASDAQ) ,Recognized with several international awards for Innovation , Business insight, Early adoption, Green Technology, Governance, Cost containment and a pioneer in setting up one of the largest converged infrastructure/private clouds under one roof in Asia Pacific. Leading various other projects ( in pipeline) including but not limited to projects on Value creation through Business Process transformation and Digital transformation through Mobile CRM, Social media Strategy , Location-based marketing, and Visual business intelligence. Has been a public speaker for more than 20 years in various leading business forums across the globe on Breakthrough Transformational leadership, participated in various industry case studies published by major corporations like Gartner, Cisco and Microsoft and is also member of couple of executive councils on Thought leadership. Less   View all posts