HDI Strategic Advisory Board

Roy Atkinson is one of the most recognized thought leaders in IT, service management, and customer experience, and serves as CEO, Clifton Butterfield, LLC, a business advisory practice.

He is a prolific writer, speaker, webinar presenter, and podcaster as well as an industry analyst. His expertise has been featured by The Economist, BizTech Magazine, Social Media Today, Computerworld, Oracle Customer Experience, SAP Business Innovation, and others. He was described by CIO Insight as a "model for the future digital leader." He is one of HDI’s “Top 25 Thought Leaders in Technical Support and Service Management for 2020.” Nextiva named him one of the "Top 50 Customer Service Experts of the Decade 2010-2020" and SurveySensum included him in its list of “Top 150 Global Customer Experience Thought Leaders and Influencers of 2020.” He is a Fellow of the Institute for Digital Transformation. Roy was HDI's 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award honoree.

He holds a masters certificate in advanced management strategy from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business. Follow him on Twitter @RoyAtkinson.

Rae Ann Bruno is the president of Business Solutions Training, Inc (BST), an organization focused on training and consulting in various areas of experience, ITSM, Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS), service desk improvement, internal marketing, metrics, and process improvement. Rae Ann is a long time HDI Business Associate for training and consulting. She was named one of HDI's Top 25 thought leaders in 2016, 2021, and 2022, and she was inducted into the HDI Hall of Fame in 2017. She was also named one of Cherwell's IT Legends in 2017. Rae Ann is a host for XLA.TV and an APMG-certified trainer for Essence of Experience and XLA Foundation. She holds several HDI, ITSM Academy, and ITIL certifications, is a frequent speaker at leadership and support conferences, and is the author of many articles and white papers.

Liz is the President of HDI Local Chapters. She has been involved with the local chapters for over eight years and has a passion for growing the community. Liz is committed to helping the 30+ HDI Local Chapters across the US bring the knowledge, experience, and networking opportunities from HDI Conferences to the local communities.

LIz is also the KCS Manager at Motive. She has been a KCS practitioner for over 15 years, helping organizations become more efficient by creating a knowledge sharing culture. Liz has guided organizations to save millions of dollars in support costs through KCS. Liz holds multiple industry certifications including ITIL, KCS Principles, and Problem Management. She is an HDI Certified Instructor and an HDI Top 25 Thought Leader in 2023.

An industry expert and trusted consultant, David has been at the forefront of helping organizations understand and adjust to significant shifts in the technology industry over the past three decades. David is known for crafting industry best practices for Strategy and IT Operations and uses them extensively to make organizations function more effectively and efficiently. He has led consulting practices in Forrester, Hewlett-Packard, and BMC Software.

David believes that a successful digital strategy is an enterprise initiative that integrates technology and data from multiple internal and external sources to achieve business success.

David is the co-author of the ITIL 2007 Service Operation book, author of the ITIL 2011 Service Strategy book, and lead editor of the ITIL 4 Digital and IT Strategy book. The itSMF awarded him two lifetime achievement awards.

Marni has spent the past two decades of her career in progressive leadership roles in technology with concentration in IT Operations, Identity & Access Management, IT Service Management and Customer Experience. She joined T-Mobile in 2017 and is currently serving as Sr Director, Technology Customer Experience (TCX) leading the teams providing support to the enterprise.

Prior to her venture into the telecommunications industry, Marni spent over a decade in healthcare, where she was celebrated for her tenacity and passion for driving service excellence, forging relationships, and developing high performing teams. She finds the most enjoyment out of investing in the development of her leaders and employees, while transforming teams and operations to best serve the needs of the business. Marni holds a B.S. in Business Administration along with a Certification in Supply Chain Management from Central Washington University.

Nick D'Amico is the Senior Director of Information Services & Technology at Thomas Jefferson University (TJU.) With the recent acquisition of Einstein Health Network, TJU has grown to 18 hospitals and 2 universities with 43,000 employees. Nick has 25 years of healthcare IT experience in a variety of areas including Infrastructure, clinical applications and clinical engineering leadership. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Rutgers University and MBA from the New Jersey Institute of Technology..

Nick is married with three children and is very active in his community. He is an EMT at Magnolia Ambulance and a Board Member at Magnolia School Board of Education where his is currently President since 2020 and a member since 2016. Nick loves spending time with his family.

Peter McGarahan is the Senior Director of Workplace & Collaboration Services for First American Financial and an IT Service Leader and Customer Advocate. He is an industry expert and thought leader in global IT Service Management Strategy, Structure, People, Processes and Tools. He was the founder of McGarahan & Associates and offers 32 years of business, IT, and service leadership experience.

Pete began his professional IT career at PepsiCo. He brought many innovations to the organization’s IT structure. He was then transferred to Taco Bell, where he divided his tenure between IT and Business Planning. He was accountable for technology planning and service delivery for all IT services to the brand’s 4,500 restaurants, regional and corporate offices.

Pete later served as Director of Marketing for the Vantive Corporation and Executive Director of Help Desk Institute (HDI) before joining STI Knowledge and Help Desk 2000 in 1997. As Executive Industry Fellow, Vice President of Business Development and Chief Marketing Officer for STI, Pete managed Analyst Relationships, which led to the company’s achieving leadership placement in the Gartner Help Desk Outsourcing Magic Quadrants two years in a row.

In addition, Pete has authored countless industry white papers, position papers and articles. As a practitioner, product manager and support industry analyst and expert, McGarahan has left his service signature on the support industry / community.

Rocky is a Cincinnati, Ohio native. Starting his adult career in management of Chick-fil-A, Rocky gained a love for leading people and helping implement best practices. That passion has followed Rocky to the IT industry when he accidently stumbled into a role as a Service Desk Agent in 2015. In the years following Rocky would serve in Level 1, Level 2, Admin, Team Lead and Training/Quality roles. In June 2021 Rocky joined Unisys in the role of Operations Manager, leading a group of 200 Service Desk leaders and agents supporting 10+ customers. In October of 2022 Rocky moved into the role of Experience Manager where he is focused on driving experience excellence, improvement and innovation for Unisys and their customers.

Rocky has a passion for leading people, investing in leaders and evangelizing the importance of experience. Through his journey of growing through various roles within the service desk industry, Rocky has gained valuable insight on what it means to build a world class service desk and customer experience.

Outside of leading his teams at Unisys, Rocky enjoys spending time with his beautiful wife Allie and their 1 year old, Willow. In his spare time, he enjoys playing disc golf and catching tournament coverage on the Disc Golf Network or indulging in endless Simon Sinek content. Rocky is expecting baby #2 in June of 2023!

Ric Mims has more than 28 years of experience in service desk management, ITSM, consulting and operations. Ric has held various positions throughout his career, from team leader to help desk manager to ITSM consultant. He's also served in many capacities for HDI, including as a member of the HDI Faculty, a frequent speaker at HDI conferences, and a former local chapter president. Ric's most recent work encompassed project leadership for planning, design, and implementation of ITSM initiatives for Occidental Petroleum, Charles Schwab, and Cepheid BioTech, to name a few. Currently, he is a solutions director for SDI Presence, based in Chicago.

Monica Morrison is Director, IT Delivery for Marriott International. She has more than 25 years of experience implementing ITSM best practices that have improved service delivery and support in large companies as well as non-profit organizations. Monica is a dynamic, passionate leader with remarkable strategic vision and focus on customer satisfaction, process improvement, and solutions implementation. She has extensive experience coaching and mentoring individuals and building strong, high-performing teams. Monica is also a published author and popular industry presenter at HDI national conferences and local events. She holds ITIL and HDI Support Center Manager certifications and currently serves as President of the HDI Capital Area local chapter.

Stephen Paskel took his 15+ years of experience as a Senior IT Executive with a Fortune 500 organization. He started CMIT Solutions of Biltmore, an IT Service Provider organization that can handle the technology needs of small and medium-sized organizations across North America. He has gained in-depth experience establishing and leading best-in-class operations centers domestically and internationally. As the Head of Operations for Allstate's Chandler Service Delivery Organization, he is responsible for building, growing, and developing the support center of the future.

Esther is a PMP Certified Professional and HDI-Support Center Director certified with over 14 years of experience working with large private and public sector organizations across North America and the U.K.

Esther first joined WBM to lead the onboarding of the company’s first Enterprise Service Desk engagement, ultimately leading the implementation of technologies and processes in growing from a team of 8 to 91 total staff today. Esther leads a Service Management team of 101 staff.  In 2021 the WBM team had embarked on their HDI journey to create world class customer experiences.

Angee Phong is the Global Head of IT Service Desk at SS&C Technologies, the world’s largest hedge fund and private equity administrator. She provides the vision and strategic direction in a multiplatform environment. Prior to SS&C, Angee transformed teams at The Walt Disney Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, First Advantage and PSCU over the course of her 20+ year career. She is extremely passionate about educating, empowering and inspiring not only her team at SS&C but also IT professionals across the industry. Angee truly enjoys developing high performing teams and driving operational excellence. She has been a member of HDI for over 15 years, was a member of the HDI Desktop Advisory Board and a HDI Team Award recipient in 2021/2022. Angee holds a B.S. in Movement Studies Exercise Science from East Stroudsburg University, is a certified advance PADI diver and World Paddle Association paddleboard instructor.

Bruce Randall is currently the Head of Product & Solutions Marketing for Service Operations, IT Service Management (ITSM) and AIOps at ServiceNow and has been a featured speaker in hundreds of industry events. In his 25+ year career, he has enjoying working with customers to understand their needs for technology solutions and has helped drive many new product capabilities. Additionally, Bruce has had both technical and non-technical roles supporting products in financial services, cloud backup and recovery, DevOps, PPM, application lifecycle management, storage, web filtering and technology hardware and has numerous certifications including ITIL, Scrum Product Owner, and Mandel communications training. He holds degrees from Brigham Young University in both International Business and German.

N.J. Robinson has over 15 years of IT leadership, operations, and customer support experience. He is a proud Air Force (AF) Veteran, IT Leader, and entrepreneur. In 2017, he joined the National Air & Space Intelligence Center as the Director of IT Operations where he leads the organization’s IT Strategy development, customer support, and Business Continuity operations.

Prior to his current role, and after his AF career he served as a Regional Business Relationship manager overseeing IT Support for Cox Communications HQ and East Coast regions. N.J. is also the president of Hi-Tech Leadership LLC, where he develops new and upcoming IT Leaders in the areas of leadership and communication, helps businesses optimize service operations, and develop competitive strategies.

N.J. commits himself to continuous development and enjoys mentoring and serving others. He currently serves as the V.P. of Sponsorship for Capital Area HDI serving DMV’s IT Support and Service Management professionals. He holds a B.A. in IT Management, a PMP, Security+, and ITIL certifications and is currently pursuing his M.B.A. at George Washington University.

Christopher Savio is a Director of Product Marketing for GoTo’s IT Solutions with a diverse career background from innovation consulting to customer research to product management. Chris partners with product leaders to shape the product direction and drives the development and implementation of go-to-market plans for GoTo’s IT solutions which include remote support industry leader, Rescue, and the new all-in-one IT management solution, GoTo Resolve.

Chris’s prior background in evidence-based consulting laid the foundation for his passion of having a customer-centric mindset in all that he does. He brings this approach to all facets of the GoTo product marketing organization to push forward strategic decisions and product innovations which help IT leaders have solutions to address key business problems and improve their overall day-to-day operations.

As interim senior director for User Support at the University of Minnesota, Larry provides strategic vision and leadership for teams of IT professionals (approximately 150 full-time staff and 50 student employees) who support the use of technology to enhance the teaching and learning, research and discovery, and outreach mission of the University of Minnesota.

Larry has over 30 years of experience as both an IT practitioner and leader in higher education. He received his Master of Science in Management of Technology from the University of Minnesota in 2015 and his Master of Arts in English Literature from George Mason University in 1998.

Carol Williams, Associate CIO in the Office of Information Technology at Princeton University is responsible for leading the Service Management Office.This organization provides the framework, processes and associated systems which ensure the delivery of IT services are integrated with the strategic goals and objectives of the University. The Service Management Organization is also responsible for the Service Desk and ServiceNow platform.

Prior to joining Princeton University, Carol was the principal of an independent consulting firm where she led several projects with broad organizational and stakeholder impact. Carol began her career as a project manager at AT&T and Lucent Technologies.She then worked at Deloitte Consulting as a senior manager in their Change, Learning & Organizational Performance practice.

Carol received her BA from the University of Maryland at College Park and her MS in Organizational Development from American University. She currently resides in Princeton, and is originally from Neptune, New Jersey. She is a current chapter President of Jack and Jill of America, Mercer County. She has also served as a Trustee of The Philadelphia School.