Officers
- Chairman - Sunil Notani
- President - Cindy Finkelman
- Treasurer - Jim Carey
- Secretary - Stuart Haas
Directors
- Director Programs - Robert Galvin
- Director Membership - Carlos Fernandez
- Director Membership - Hsing Hsing Li
- Director Marketing - Geoff Scott
- Director Marketing - Robert Field
- Director Partnerships - Bernadette Rotolo
- Director Partnerships - Patricia (Lee) Wasterlain
- Director Outreach - Herb Hofmann
- Director Outreach - Ricardo De La Cruz
- Director Technology - Wolfgang von Stuermer
- Director Events - Lauren Saenz
- Director National Programs - Dan Gorecki
- Director National Programs - Cindy McKenzie
- Director Academic Affairs - Rashmi Jain
- Director Academic Affairs - Anand Padmanabhan
Sunil Notani
Chairman
Co-Founder of The Transformation Group
Sunil Notani is an accomplished business and technology executive with over 30 years of experience in Fortune Global 500 (Oracle, FedEx, Lufthansa) and high-growth multinationals. He had leadership roles in these organizations and was responsible for driving their business transformation and leveraging technology to gain maximum benefit.
Sunil has a track record of solving seemingly unsolvable problems. He is a technology influencer having served on advisory boards of several enterprise software companies to influence their product strategy and direction. He serves on several boards focused on technology leadership to leverage his broad experience to drive innovation and transformation. He supports the venture capital community on helping portfolio companies gain a massive competitive advantage by rapidly accelerating customer traction. He is passionate about giving back to the community by helping support several non-profit organizations with their mission. He makes it a priority to help educate, encourage, and support the next generation of technology entrepreneurs and leaders by sharing his experiences through several courses at Columbia University. Sunil holds a Master's in Technology from Columbia University. He also has an MBA in Marketing and a Bachelor degree in Management & Computer Systems.
Contact: chairman [at] nysim [dot] org
Cindy Finkelman
President
Managing Director, Alvarez & Marsal
Cindy Finkelman is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Corporate Performance Improvement. She is a growth minded executive that helps organizations build scale in their business using innovative technology, efficient operating models and highly curated information supporting decision-making. Cindy collaborates at all levels of an organization, including the Board to stand up business functions, align strategies and goals, drive process and data maturity and modernize technologies via transformational programs. Prior to joining A&M, Cindy was the Chief Information Officer with FactSet Research Systems. She also served in leadership roles at New York Life, ALICO, Merrill Lynch, Marsh & McLennan, Prudential, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and MetLife.
Cindy earned a bachelor's degree from SUNY/Albany and an MBA in corporate strategy and entrepreneurship from NYU's Stern School of Business. She was recognized as CIO of the Year by Markets Media Women in Finance for her transformative impact at FactSet, mentoring of women technologists and philanthropic work. She is a Board member of the Society for Information Management New York; participates in SIM Women, the HMG Strategy Advisory Board, and the Evanta CIO Governing Body; and serves on the Board of Success Academy.
Contact: president [at] nysim [dot] org
Jim Carey
Treasurer
Executive Director - Strategy & Planning, Payments Technologies, CIB, Major Wall Street Bank
Jim is a collaborative leader with deep transformational expertise across Financial Services, Insurance, and Retail Industries. Much pragmatic experience in Project / Program / Product Management, Infrastructure Oversight, Risk & Compliance, Technology Strategy & Planning, BAU Operations, Data Management / Warehouse / Analytics, and Decision Support Systems.
Jim has many years of management consulting coupled with an application development & integration background has further enabled exceptional delivery of IT / business process reengineering solutions at scale on large, complex, global initiatives with dispersed teams. He maintains an effective and collaborative relationship with business, technology, and regulatory stakeholders.
Contact: treasurer [at] nysim [dot] org
Stuart Haas
Secretary
Senior Director, IT - Dotdash Meredith
Stuart Haas is a senior IT executive with over 20 years of IT leadership experience. Stuart's career has focused on international technology startups. His early IT career crystallized in Israel after serving in the IDF. Stuart later returned to the US, where he specialized in working with startups, putting in place solid IT foundations to lead them through IPO or acquisition. Stuart's experience has taken him across industries, including e-commerce, music, publishing, e-learning, software, and real estate.
Over his career, Stuart has led IT at Shopping.com, Vibe and Spin Magazines, Wimba, Limewire, Borderfree, Knotel and others. Stuart holds a BA in Film Studies from Queens College and resides in Northern New Jersey with his wife and two children. In his spare time, Stuart enjoys hiking and Crossfit. He is also actively involved in his community and supports various non-profit organizations.
Contact: secretary [at] nysim [dot] org
Robert Galvin
Director Programs
Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Robert Galvin is the CTO for the Port Authority of NY and NJ, which builds, operates, and maintains the airports, rail, bridges, and tunnels between the two states, as well as seaport facilities, and the 16-acre World Trade Center site. While at the Port, Robert deployed mobile apps for PATH, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and mobile websites JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports, worked with the Chief Security Officer to develop and implement an agency-wide Cybersecurity program and begun moving the organization to a secured cloud environment.
Prior to joining the Port Authority, Mr. Galvin was CTO of the NYC School Construction Authority, where he reorganized the Technology Department and modernized their enterprise applications by deploying data warehousing, cloud, and mobile technologies. Before entering the public sector, Mr. Galvin served in senior leadership for one of the largest specialty design-build contractors in the world – and as an executive at a leading supplier of ERP and field service management software for the construction industry. Mr. Galvin has over 25 years' experience in both public and private sectors, and mentors graduate students at Columbia University seeking degrees in Technology Management. He holds a BS degree from Central Michigan University, majoring in MIS.
Carlos Fernandez
Director Membership
Program Manager
Carlos Fernandez has been in technology for over 20 years in digital printing and financial space. Carlos currently serves as Delivery Program Manager for Thomson Reuters delivering with a global team across Order to Cash, Tax and Accounting, Legal and Latin America LATAM. Carlos's entrepreneurial spirit more recently inspired him to join a startup which he helped take a $3M start-up to $50M and have it listed on Nasdaq.
Carlos is a lifelong New Yorker and holds a BS from the City College of New York in Engineering Technology and more recently an Executive Masters in Technology Management (EMSTM) from Columbia University. He has had the opportunity to give back as an Alumni Panelist for the Columbia EMSTM program.
Hsing Hsing Li
Director Membership
Chief Operations Officer and Managing Principal, Aceler8.ai
Hsing Hsing Li is digital strategy leader, operations integrator, and transformation leader with 20+ years of experience accelerating scale and new revenue, modernizing business architecture, and driving global technology strategy and corporate innovation for Fortune 500 companies such as Goldman Sachs, AIG, Fidelity, Marsh McLennan, Omnicom, Publicis.
Hsing Hsing has driven digital products and roadmap execution across 130 countries, leading C-suite strategic planning for AI, D&A, client experience, and cost efficiencies. She has helped high-tech players develop digital B2B2C marketplaces, transform B2B to DTC, and industries managing disruption increase digital and recurring revenue. She is a speaker on the topics of digital strategy and operations, portfolio performance, and innovation. She has served on fiduciary and advisory boards of organization such as SIM, Governance Matters, and the United States Venture Council. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern and an BS in Engineering from Columbia University.
Geoff Scott
Director Marketing
Entrepreneur, GS Ventures.co
Geoff Scott is a versatile entrepreneur and helps CEOs and their teams find the right direction and go fast. As an entrepreneur, executive, engineer, and leader with over 30 years of experience, he built 3 startups, launched dozens of products and business units for established companies, and played a key role in some of the fastest growing companies in the world, as well as some of the largest companies in the world.
As founder and CEO of Hackerati, Geoff worked with clients ranging from idea-stage startups to the Fortune 500, impacting the full product value stream, from strategy and design, to engineering and operations. His personal clients included companies like Viacom, Huffington Post, Narrativ, and Kepler Group. Before founding Hackerati, he served in executive roles at DoubleClick, CBS, Donnelley Marketing, and The Princeton Review. Geoff started his first company, an Internet Service Provider called The Internet Connection, in 1994, where he developed some of the earliest Web-based CRM, content management, and commerce applications for clients like Apple, Attachmate, IDG Books, Plantronics, Informix, The Santa Cruz Operation, and UniDirect. Geoff is passionate about growing purposeful companies and improving diversity in business.
Robert Field
Director Marketing
Vice President of Global Information Technology and Digital Solutions, Precipart
Robert Field is an Information Technology executive with a well-documented history of accomplishments and 20+ years of experience directing the technology infrastructure, operational strategy, and leading-edge, information-based solutions that directly support the technology road maps of organizations in higher education, entertainment and production, digital media, and manufacturing industries.
As a business strategist and leader, his background spans all aspects of strategic planning, organizational design, and operational streamlining across multiple disciplines. With a collaborative leadership style and a reputation as a trusted adviser, he is strong in defining an entrepreneurial environment that aligns team members with a sense of ownership and inspires clients and leadership to drive high-performance and outcome-based solutions. He has had executive leadership roles with measurable career success directing CRM solutions, large scale ERP solutions, and business process/migration strategies delivering cloud-hosted solutions that successfully integrate with diverse internal systems, SaaS applications, and 3rd-party data sources.
Bernadette Rotolo
Director Partnerships
SVP, Warner Music Group
Bernadette Rotolo is a global Fortune 500 technology executive with experience at Accenture, Adecco Group and Warner Music Group. Currently, Bernadette is the SVP, Global Tech Enablement at Warner Music Group collaborating with the senior management team on strategic transformational initiatives. Bernadette is also an active speaker on driving Tech transformation, a member of the CIO Innovation Advisory Network at Lightspeed Venture Partners and on the advisory board for BoldStart, an early-stage Venture Capital company. In 2019, Bernadette was named Business Role Model of the Year by Women in Technology Silicon Valley chapter. Bernadette holds her Masters from New York University and her Bachelor's from the State University of New York at Binghamton.
Patricia (Lee) Wasterlain
Director Partnerships
Founder, Team Empowerment Collective (TEC)
Patricia is the Founder of TEC, a consulting firm focused on Change Management, Team Coaching, and Leadership Development for IT Organizations.
Patricia is a senior executive and advisor with 20+ years of experience, including deep expertise in higher education, state, and local government, not-for-profit, transportation, and logistics. She has held Executive IT positions at Columbia University, Spruce Technology, Descartes Systems Group, Sea-Land Services (Maersk), and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She holds a Masters in Organizational Change from the New School and a Bachelors in Accounting from SUNY Oswego.
Herb Hofmann
Director Outreach
Vice President, Information Technology, Loews Corporation
Herb is responsible for leading all aspects of the Company's corporate information and technology requirements and strategy. Herb is also on the board of the SIM NY Metro chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM). In this role he co-leads the SIMNY Outreach team in bringing together IT Leadership resources with partnerships and alliances focused on giving back, moving the needle on issues with STEM and DEI, locally, nationally, and globally.
Contact: outreach [at] nysim [dot] org
Ricardo De La Cruz
Director Outreach
Director, Information Technology, Barbarian
Ricardo oversees all internal tech operations within the business. As the head of IT, he specializes in partnering with leadership to empower teams through tech strategy. He specializes in improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and bringing corporate visions to life, from concept through implementation and sustainability.
With a variety of leadership experiences across multiple teams, Ricardo is a strong believer that the core principles of successful leadership are strategy, empathy, commitment to the team, and execution. He is committed to opening doors for others and amplifying the voices of the unheard. He holds a strong passion for diversity in tech and actively works with nonprofit organizations to break the barrier between underserved communities and technology.
Contact: outreach [at] nysim [dot] org
Wolfgang R. von Stuermer
Director Technology
Chief Information Technology Officer, CISO, Ethical Hacker
Wolfgang R. von Stuermer is the former global CIO, CISO, and Chief Digital Risk Officer for WPP's Sudler & Henessey, a pharma-specialist operating company (also part of Young & Rubicam Group). Wolfgang is a dynamic, entrepreneurial, and transformational leader with 20+ years of deep, hands-on technology experience and a strategic focus on digital risk mitigation, cybersecurity, data protection, IT compliance, and ethical hacking. For over two decades he held CIO and CTO positions with various marketing technology companies and was repeatedly appointed as a scientific technology advisor to the EU Commission.
A current New York University CyberFellow he is pursuing a Masters in CS/Cybersecurity at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering. Wolfgang is a professional member of the ACM, IEEE Computer Society, OWASP NY, ISACA, and the offensive security lab (OSIRIS) at NYU's Center for Cybersecurity as well as an advisory board member of Harvestworks, a digital media arts organization. He holds a B.A. in Composition & Computer Music from the University of Music, Karlsruhe/Germany.
Lauren Saenz
Director Events
Managing Director, Layer-Z
Lauren Saenz is the Managing Director of Layer-Z, a New York based project management firm offering services to the cybersecurity, Telecom, IT and Privacy industries. She is known for optimizing processes and for her impressive network of IT & InfoSec Leaders.
Lauren has experience in process management and high-performance optimization and worked with CSS and BMW. Lauren holds a degree in Political Science from CUNY Hunter College and lives on Long Island. She is passionate about Data Privacy and the Privacy vs National Security dynamic.
Dan Gorecki
Director National Programs
Chief Information Security Officer, Ascot Group Limited
Daniel Gorecki is the Chief Information Security Officer at Ascot Group Limited, a specialty insurance & reinsurance organization. In this role he leads a global team overseeing the company's cyber security, and data privacy functions for the organization. Prior to joining Ascot Group in November 2020, he held the role of CISO at Aramark Services and both CISO and CIO roles at Intercept Pharmaceuticals. Dan maintains the certification for Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer (CDPSE), has completed SIM's Regional Leadership Forum for IT Executives, and holds a B.E. in Computer Engineering from Stony Brook University.
Cindy McKenzie
Director National Programs
Chief Information Officer, Curaleaf
Cindy McKenzie is the CIO for Curaleaf and is currently leading a multi-year transformation program implementing enterprise-wide solutions including a finance and operations ERP, a customer engagement program including a loyalty program, a customer ecommerce site and a mobile app, and a Retail POS system. Cindy has over 25 years’ experience in IT leadership roles across diverse industries including Media and Entertainment, Engineering, Financial Services and Cannabis. Cindy was previously the CIO for Deluxe Entertainment, which was the largest global post-production and creative studio, where she was responsible for IT globally. Under her tenure, previously siloed IT and Security functions were centralized globally to support Deluxe’s digital transformation.
Cindy is on the board for SIMNY, serving as Co-Director of National Programs and is Vice President for SIM Foundation. Cindy previously served on the SCSIM Board for over 10 years. Cindy is co-founder and Vice President of STEM Advantage, which is a non-profit which provides scholarships, internships and mentors to women and underserved communities in STEM majors. Cindy has won several awards including Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders, SIM Leader of the Year, and the Advanced Imaging Society’s Distinguished Leadership Award.
Rashmi Jain
Director Academic Affairs
Professor, Montclair State University
Dr. Rashmi Jain is currently a Professor with the Department of Information Management and Business Analytics at the Feliciano School of Business at Montclair State University (MSU). Prior to joining academia, she was at Accenture Consulting for Fortune 100 companies in energy, telecom, utilities, and the financial services sectors. Dr. Jain’s research and teaching interests are systems architecture and design, business analytics, and technology management. She is a visiting professor to the Graduate School of System Design and Management, Keio University, Japan since 2007.
Dr. Jain is a board member and VP of Academic Matters for Society for Information Management (SIM) New York and a member of the SIM National Academic Council. She also heads the Education and Training area as the VP on the board of New Jersey Big Data Alliance (NJBDA). She has been recently appointed by the Governor of State of New Jersey to the first governing board of New Jersey Integrated Public Health Database (iPHD), the statutory body created in 2016 to oversee and manage the state’s health data. She is also a member of the Steering Committee, Technology for Business Roundtable for Commerce, and Industry Association of New Jersey (CIANJ).
Anand Padmanabhan
Director Academic Affairs
VP & Chief Information Officer, Fordham University
Anand Padmanabhan is a global technology leader and a creative, strategic, and entrepreneurial chief information officer. He has built a reputation for taking on transformative assignments that require decisive action to achieve significant results. He has ded several organizations through digital transformation efforts, conceptualizing strategies and delivering platforms that align technology with business objectives. Anand designed and delivered a global multi-site (China, UK, and the U.S), multinational technology strategy and architecture. He is experienced in startup, high-growth, and non-profit organizations across sectors. He is focused on driving operational excellence, building experiences and revenue generation.