Directory & Identity Training - Speaker Bios

Stuart Kwan joined Microsoft in 1996 after completing a BASC in Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. He has been involved with Active Directory since its inception and has contributed to several related distributed systems technologies. Prior to joining full time, he interned at Microsoft on four separate occasions, contributing to the Active Directory Service Interface (ADSI) project.

Session Speakers (Alphabetical by First Name)

Andreas Kjellman

Andrew Page
Technology Architect, Microsoft

Andrew is a Technology Architect with the Microsoft Technology Center – Chicago. He has focused on architecting solutions and advising IT leaders on effective alignment of computing infrastructure and business objectives for almost 20 years. Andrew has advised hundreds of IT organizations in Chicago area on enabling business solutions through technology, in industries such as insurance and banking, airlines, telecommunications, publishing, professional services, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Andrew has been an instructor for Microsoft Official Courseware and has developed various internal Microsoft courses. He holds a bachelors degree from Illinois State University, and significant graduate work at both DePaul University and Chicago Graduate School of Business. He has contributed several works to industry books, magazines, television, and reference materials, and speaks publicly on topics ranging IT services delivery.

Andrew Weiss
Application Developer, Avanade

Andrew Weiss is a software developer at Avanade, Inc. While at Avanade, Weiss has focused on Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager and how it can be used to facilitate Exchange migrations. Weiss graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science. He lives in Chicago.

Andy Schan
Senior Consultant, Titus International, Inc.

Andy Schan has over 25 years experience in technology, and over 12 years experience in IT systems engineering and architecture focusing on identity management, Active Directory and Exchange. Schan is presently a Senior Consultant with Titus International, where he has deployed or led some of the largest RMS deployments in the world, including Windows Server 2008 AD RMS while it was still in beta as part of the TAP and RDP programs. He also has an extensive background in Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange design and deployment, dating back to Exchange 4.0 and MS Mail, and has co-authored a book on Exchange Server 2007. Prior to joining Titus International, Schan led the first deployment of Exchange Server 2003 in the Canadian federal government, was a messaging and directory engineering team lead for EDS Canada, and worked for Cognos in various technical roles.

Anthony Morgante is the Microsoft Identity and Access Solutions professional for the New York/New Jersey region. He specializes in Identity Management, Strong Authentication, Information Protection and Remote Access technologies. Prior to Microsoft, he worked for Ernst & Young as a lead architect for its Active Directory Infrastructure as well as the firm’s MIIS/ADAM global implementation. Prior to E&Y, Anthony worked for Citibank and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holding various technical management roles.

Bahram Rushenas, has spent more than 10 years in the IT industry deploying Identity and Access Management solutions for dozens of Enterprise customers across various industries in the US.

Through these engagements Bahram has gained a wealth of customer experience in designing, building, and deploying custom solutions using the latest technologies in the IAM space.

Most recently Bahram has been assisting the ILM "2" Product and Marketing teams with various initiatives around the early adoption of the product.

Now in is his third year as an ILM MVP, Brad Turner is a project-oriented veteran of the Information Technology industry. He has taken a lead technical role in successful projects for large government and education entities, as well as mid-sized and enterprise corporations. His areas of expertise include enterprise, Directory, and Identity Management architecture, systems integration, as well as domain and systems management. Turner's solutions have won several worldwide partner awards.

Brian Desmond is a Senior Consultant with Moran Technology Consulting in Chicago. He has been a Microsoft MVP for Directory Services since 2003 and is the author of Active Directory, 4th Edition from O'Reilly. Desmond is an Active Directory and Exchange focused consultant leading and delivering on projects primarily for higher education and large enterprise (40K - 500K seat) customers. His website can be found at: www.briandesmond.com.

Brian Komar is the president of Komar Consulting Inc. in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Komar has worked in partnership with Microsoft over the past three years as a subject matter expert on network security and Windows 2000 Active Directory design. Over the past year, Komar has spent the majority of his time researching the deployment of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and the various technologies that depend on a PKI to provide authentication and encryption services. Between writing assignments, Komar speaks at industry conferences around the world, such as WinConnections, MCP TechMentor, Microsoft Tech Ed, and the Microsoft Enterprise Conference (MEC). He is known for delivering the "under the hood" sessions that look at the details of technology and reveal how systems really work in a network.

Brian Puhl is a Technology Architect in the Identity and Access Management team of Microsoft IT, responsible for the internal forests which support Microsoft's 60,000+ employees. He joined Microsoft just after the release of Windows 2000 and was the primary Active Directory support engineer during the Server 2003 and 2008 dogfooding and release cycles.

Chris Calderon, Senior Consultant at Ensynch Inc., specializes in the delivery of Microsoft-based technologies and enterprise solutions around Identity and Access Management and Directory Services. Chris has extensive experience in designing and implementing technologies involving Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM), Active Directory Federation Services, and infrastructure security around the Windows platform.  In July 2008, Chris was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award, Identity and Access – Identity Lifecycle Manager.

Danny Kim is a Microsoft MVP and recognized industry expert on Windows Group Policy, Active Directory, and PowerShell. Kim has helped more than 30 Fortune 100 companies, including Bank of America, Boeing, and Wal-Mart, design and deploy their Group Policy and DataCenter infrastructure. He has also architected and developed several leading Windows policy management products which have been licensed by Microsoft, NetIQ, Citrix, HP, Sony, Toshiba and others. Kim holds a BS in Computer Science from Cornell University.

Darren Mar-Elia is President and Chief Technology Officer of SDM Software, Inc. (www.sdmsoftware.com), and has over 20 years combined experience in information technology and software development. Prior to founding SDM, he was Senior Director of Product Engineering at DesktopStandard (acquired by Microsoft)and prior to that, served as Chief Technology Officer for Windows management solutions at Quest Software. He was also a director of distributed systems at Charles Schwab & Co. and helped guide that company's use of Microsoft Windows technologies. Mar-Elia has written or contributed to 12 books on Windows management topics and is a Microsoft MVP for Group Policy technology. He also created the popular gpoguy.com website for information and utilities related to Group Policy.

Dave Jones has worked in the field formally known as Directory Services for the last 17 years, charting a course through Banyan Vines, Novell NDS, Netscape Directory Server and Active Directory. Jones is now the Identity Services architect at Cisco and is responsible for all the Identity Management infrastructure architecture to programmatically maintain the lifecycle of digital identities representing people and computers. Prior to joining Cisco, Jones was the Principal for a network management company he founded, Bisant Networks (bisant.net) and has consulted to a large number of Fortune 500 companies with assets in Northern California and Miami.

David Espinoza
Program Manager, Microsoft

David Espinoza is a Program Manager for the Exchange Technology Adoption Program (TAP). The goal of the TAP program is to work closely with a set of customers to help test, deploy, and provide the product team feedback on Exchange Server throughout the product development cycle.

Outside of the TAP program Dave reviews Books on Exchange for authors; Dave also works closely with the Exchange Ranger program and the Exchange Center of Excellence.

Prior to working in the Exchange Product group Dave was a Group Manager of Messaging Engineering for the Messaging & Collaboration Services Group. He was responsible for delivery of technology platforms, testing of vendor solutions, and documentation for new designs and architecture for corporate e-mail systems. The engineering team makes recommendations to development groups for improving existing products and design configurations.

David has been with Microsoft for 15 years and has a wealth of IT experience. He started as Service Manager for Telecom operations, and later managed a variety of operation teams including Exchange Server operations, Network operations, Server operations, Telecom operations and Data Center operations.

Prior to joining Microsoft, David worked for AT&T for 15 years where he managed many groups from Main Frame operations to Central Office teams and Service Management.

David has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science with an emphasis in Information systems.

David Lundell, ILM MVP, is in his 3rd year speaking at TEC. He has trained people from hundreds of organizations worldwide on how to implement ILM 2, ILM 2007 and SQL Server. Lundell has an MBA and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Arizona, where he was also a National Merit Scholar. His certifications include MCSE, MCITP: Database Administrator, MCITP: Database Developer, MCITP: Business Intelligence Developer, and MCSD. Lundell is also an author. As a Solutions Architect for Ensynch, he has designed and led several recent Identity Mangement projects including a full blown production implementation of ILM 2, and developed add-on reporting capabilities for ILM 2.

Dean Wells has been working in the information technology industry since 1987. His roles and experience have been varied and include software development, training, systems security consulting and enterprise-systems design & implementation. Wells has been training and presenting for about 15 years and has hosted hundreds of technical training courses for end-users and Microsoft technical staff alike. He is also a commonplace speaker at popular industry events such as NetWorld Interop, TechEd and the Directory Experts Conferences. He has been working with Active Directory since its inception, and earlier in various beta releases, since 1999. A few years later, Wells was awarded Microsoft's MVP designation in Directory Services and Security. Most recently, he joined the Directory Services product group at Microsoft where he now works as a Senior Program Manager.

Dennis Glendenning is a Group Manager and Technical Architect with Avanade, the joint-venture of Microsoft and Accenture. Glendenning has provided design-build expertise for enterprise solutions for more than 11 years. He is broadly skilled in a wide range of technologies and maintains a depth of skill in core infrastructure, enterprise security and project management. He is an automation expert and has award-winning communication and project skills. He has led teams with up to 25 technologists and has led several global projects to date. Glendenning co-authored Professional IIS 7, 2008, Wrox Publishing, and Microsoft Windows Vista Administration, 2007 McGraw-Hill. Glendenning’s background also includes a concentrated blend of project and technical management with 14 years experience, two graduate degrees, and professional certifications including the PMP and MCSE. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife, Melissa, and twin children Jessica and Nicolas.

Dmitri Gavrilov is a development lead in Exchange, responsible for mailbox migration. Previously, he worked is a developer in Active Directory group. He was responsible for various code components of AD, including Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), currently known as “AD LDS”. He was the lead for AD UI in Windows Server 2008 release. He joined Microsoft in 2000. Some exciting projects that he has participated in are AD on SQL prototype and ADAM. Prior to joining Microsoft, he worked as a software developer at Axia Multimedia Corp, Calgary, Canada. He also worked as a Computational Scientist at MACI (Multimedia Advanced Computing Infrastructure), an HPC lab at the University of Calgary, Canada. Gavrilov holds a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Moscow State University, Russia, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Calgary, Canada. In his spare time, he enjoys sailing and spending time with his wife and two sons.

Dmitry Sotnikov is a PowerShell MVP, regular blogger (http://dmitrysotnikov.wordpress.com and http://cloudenterprise.info), and a presenter at various events. Being in charge of Quest’s Technology Research he has already made the company an industry leader in Migration, SharePoint and PowerShell space, and is now leading the company into the cloud computing era.

Dmitry Kazantsev, a Program Manager at Schakra Inc; He is responsible for the planning, design and implementation of Directory Service and Identity Management solutions for Schakra's Fortune 500 clients and leading educational institutions in the United States and around the world.
In previous years Dmitry worked on multiple IdM projects and design advanced solution for the Microsoft Identity and Access platform. His previous projects included development of number of Extensible Management Agents, SSO products and array of IdM engagements. Most recently he joined the ILM'2' project within Microsoft.

In the past couple of years Dmitry was a key speaker on number of Live@Edu forums around the world as well as a lead trainer for Microsoft Partner Airlifts in US, Japan, Russia and Malaysia.

Donovan Follette is a Sr. Technical Evangelist focusing on Microsoft’s Identity and Access technologies. He engages with both partners and large customers to enable understanding and adoption of Microsoft’s identity platform.

Eric Huebner has been with Microsoft Consulting for the past 12 years.  For the past four years, he has been heavily focused on the Identity Management space.  Most recently he has worked with the ILM "2" product and maketing teams to assist in the Rapid Deployment Program for ILM "2" and has assisted in developing early technical training for  consultants and partners that will assist customers in that effort.

Eric Schwarz is the Enablement Tech Lead for State Farm in charge of technical oversight of all Microsoft technologies during enterprise deployments. During 2007 he led research and design efforts into security and Active Directory for Windows Server 2008. He began his career in IT as a trainer for Microsoft technologies (MCT) in 2001. Following two years of teaching he received a job with a major midwestern insurance company supporting their newly deployed Windows 2000 Active Directory infrastructure. In 2003 he was promoted to Team Lead and maintained the domain controller deployment and operations through 2005. At that time his responsibilities increased to include security for all enterprise Windows Servers, overseeing the migration from Windows 2000 to Windows Server 2003.

Felix is a senior analyst at Kuppinger Cole and covers identity and access management, virtual directories and federation. With more than 21 ears of experience in the industry he is an all-arounder who has done extensive coding, systems and network administration, and has been working with LDAP directories since 1998. Before joining Kuppinger Cole he worked for Symlabs on its virtual directory product, and has helped many large customers simplify and integrate their directory and identity infrastructure.

Gil Kirkpatrick is a well-known expert in the design and development of large-scale distributed software for enterprise networks. He is Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and has more than 27 years of software development expertise. He is a recognized authority and renowned speaker on commercial network directories, including Banyan StreetTalk, Novell eDirectory, and Microsoft Active Directory. In his previous position as Director of Engineering, Kirkpatrick was responsible for the development of directory management products for NetPro and served as the architect and lead engineer for its flagship product, DirectoryAnalyzer. Kirkpatrick joined NetPro in 1994 when the company acquired his previous employer, High Technology Systems. He is the author of Active Directory Programming, published by MacMillan USA.

Guido Grillenmeier is a Master Technologist within the Advanced Technology Group at Hewlett Packard. Based in Germany, Guido deals primarily with global Windows infrastructure deployments for large enterprise customers. His current focus is helping HP customers to make a smooth transition to 64-bit Windows and Windows Server 2008. Guido has often spoken at Quest’s Experts Conference (formerly DEC) and has been a speaker at various other Microsoft-technology related conferences, such as Microsoft Tech-ED, IT Forum and Windows Connections. In the last few months he has been leading the development and delivery for HP's Windows Server 2008 Academies to HP’s own Services division. He has been a Microsoft MVP for Directory Services since 2004 and is the co-author of “Microsoft Windows Security Fundamentals” (Digital Press).

Holger Reiners is a Senior Consultant at Microsoft Consulting Services in Germany. He has provided Security and Identity consulting services for the major organizations in Germany since he joined Microsoft in 2001. Holger has lead several Active Directory design and migration projects and implemented Identity solutions based on the technologies Identity Lifecycle Manager, Certificate Lifecycle Manager and Certificate Services. Most recently he has been a member of the architecture board in a consolidation project coordinating the Identity technologies.

In his spare time he likes riding motorcycles and has some fun with digital photography.

Ivan Lam is a Program Manager at Microsoft in the Directory Services product development group based in Shanghai China. He drives the product development of Active Directory in the areas of UI and tools in the Windows Server 2008 R2 release. Prior to Microsoft, he was working in the industry of distributed database system for 10 years and took a lead technical role on several projects for data management and diagnosis in distributed technology of enterprise solutions.

James McColl
Program Manager, Microsoft

James McColl is a Program Manager at Microsoft in the Directory Services product development. He drives the product development of the Active Directory team’s PowerShell story for Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as the team’s Community program.

James McLaughlin is a member of the Global Alliances Team at Gemalto. In this role, McLaughlin and his team promote Gemalto and its solutions to Microsoft, finding areas of synergies to strengthen the partnership for the benefit of both and their mutual customers. With more than 24 years experience, McLaughlin has been instrumental in strategic developments at Gemalto that bring effective smart card and PKI-based solutions to the customer. As a global marketing product manager, he was responsible for the smart card client software to support PKI solutions using the Java card and introduced the Gemalto .NET smart card to the market, interfacing with customers, regional sales, business development and engineering. His engineering background includes development on real-time systems, knowledge-based data interpretation subsystem, and PKI products, including one of the first smart card cryptographic service providers shipped in Windows 2000.

Jeremy Moskowitz is a Group Policy MVP and is the Chief Propeller-Head for Moskowitz, inc. and GPanswers.com. He is one of less than a dozen Microsoft MVPs in Group Policy. Since becoming one of the world''s first MCSEs in both NT and 2000, he has performed Windows NT, Active Directory, and Group Policy planning and implementations for some of the nation''s largest organizations. His latest books are Group Policy Fundamentals, Security, and Troubleshooting and Creating the Secure Managed Desktop: Group Policy, SoftGrid, and Microsoft Deployment and Management Tools. Learn more about the books and download eChapters at www.GPanswers.com/books. GPanswers.com was ranked as one of "The 20 most useful Microsoft sites for IT professionals" by ComputerWorld magazine.

Jeremy Palenchar is a Senior Infrastructure Architect at Avanade, Inc. where he focuses on Directory Services and Identity Management. Palenchar is responsible for the planning, design and implementation of Directory Service and Identity Management solutions for Avanade’s Fortune 500 clients. He is CISSP and MCSE certified and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University. He lives and works in sunny, downtown Seattle.

Joe Kaplan works in Accenture’s internal IT organization, building enterprise applications using the .NET Framework. He specializes in directory services programming, for which he has been recognized as a Microsoft Most Valued Professional and Active Directory Federation Services. He is the co-author of The .NET Developer's Guide to Directory Services Programming (Addison-Wesley, 2006). An industry veteran of 15 years, he has helped build and deploy a variety of applications that support complex identity lifecyle management processes and federated identity scenarios. He also specializes in web application security and application authorization. Kaplan enjoys helping the directory services programming community solve their problems and welcomes the challenge of scenarios he has never considered.

Joel Silver is a Technologist on the Microsoft IT Identity Management Team where he is responsible for the Microsoft IT implementation and architecture of ILM.  The Microsoft IT ILM implementation is the primary tool used to sync Active Directory objects and attributes within all internal forests at Microsoft.  Silver has been involved in multiple Identity Management projects that deal with ILM, metrics, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other IT solutions.  Silver has extensive experience with IT applications at Microsoft.  Prior to joining Microsoft , he was a test lead for a Seattle company that specialized in connecting IT systems.

Jörg Finkeisen is a Security and Identity Management architect at Microsoft Services in Germany. He joined Microsoft in 1998 and since then has been working with many customers to implement solutions based on Microsoft products in the security and identity domain, like Active Directory, Certificate Services,  Identity Lifecycle Manager, and Certificate Lifecycle Manager. Most recently, he has been working in the ILM”2” Rapid Deployment Program with a world-wide operating Microsoft customer in Germany. Jörg leads the Identity & Access Management Community inside Microsoft Services in Germany.

In his spare time, he enjoys travelling with his wife and twin daughters, digital photography and loud progressive rock music.

Jorge de Almeida Pinto is a Senior Consultant within Oxford Computer Group and is based in The Netherlands. He has been active in ICT since 1997. He worked 2,5 years for OGD as a technician, 8,5 years for CMG/LogicaCMG/Logica as an Infrastructure Consultant and started working for Oxford Computer Group in may 2008 as a Senior Consultant. He has worked with Windows infrastructures since 1997, and he specializes in Windows Server and Active Directory. He is MCSE certified and has been an MVP for Directory Services since 2006. He enjoys writing articles about Windows Server, Active Directory and/or ILM in a dutch magazine (NetOpus). He is also a frequent speaker at "The Experts Conference" from Quest and "TechDays" from Microsoft. Additionally, on a voluntary basis he is a frequent contributor and active member of the ActiveDir forum/mailing list and Microsoft Active Directory newsgroups on the internet. His blog can be found at: http://blogs.dirteam.com/blogs/jorge/default.aspx

Kevin Kampman is a senior analyst for Burton Group Identity and Privacy Strategies. He covers identity and role management, directory services, provisioning, and electronic commerce. Prior to joining Burton Group, his duties included systems engineering, engineering management, integration and development, and project management with AT&T, Control Data Systems, Compaq/DEC, NCR, and TRW. From 1998 to 2007, Kampman managed Burton Group’s Identity and Privacy, Security and Risk Management consulting teams in their interactions with enterprise customers. With over 20 years of experience, Kampman was a past chair of the Directory Services and Collaborative Computing Work Groups at the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG), a Michigan-based consortium of over 1,500 manufacturers. This work led him to being named two-time recipient of the AIAG Outstanding Achievement Award for contributions to the industry. He also co-authored All About Network Directories, published by John Wiley and Sons. Kampman is currently engaged with a international community of organizations chartered to develop a shared perspective on identity services.

Laura E. Hunter, an Architect at Oxford Computer Group North America, provides Active Directory and Identity Management design, planning, implementation, and troubleshooting services for a worldwide client base.  Hunter is a five-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in Directory Services. She is the author of the Active Directory Field Guide (APress Publishing) as well as co-author of the Active Directory Cookbook, Second and Third Editions (O'Reilly).  She is based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

Manny Vellon is a co-founder of Likewise Software and has 24 years of software development and investment experience. He began his professional career at Hewlett-Packard before joining Microsoft in 1987. At HP, he was a developer for the Personal Software Division, where he worked on embedded terminal software, word processors and database products. At Microsoft, he first worked as a program manager on the software development kit for Microsoft Windows 1.0 with the mission of facilitating the development of Windows applications. He joined the Developer Tools Group as group program manager and then later moved back to R&D as a development manager. Vellon co-founded the Virtual Worlds Group in Microsoft Research to study social interaction, collaborative work and real-time communication on the Internet. After leaving Microsoft in 1998, Vellon started his own consulting business to help startups and venture capital companies with the due-diligence process. Having worked with Northwest Venture Associates on various projects, he joined the company as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence in 2003. Vellon earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton University.

Markus Vilcinskas is a technical content developer on Microsoft’s Identity and Access Management User Assistance team. After working for several years as technical consultant, he joined Microsoft in 1999. For the past six years, he has been involved in many Directory Service and identity-integration related projects. His expertise includes researching and documenting product features and functionality. He also develops and documents solutions for both common customer scenarios and more specialized solutions tailored to customer environments. Vilcinskas is a regular contributor to the ILM newsgroup on www.Microsoft.com  and can be reached through that forum if you want to discuss ILM related identity management issues or solutions.

In his 16-year career with Gemalto, Marvin Tansley has held varied international marketing, sales and operations positions around the world. Before assuming his current role, Tansley was the vice president of network access solutions. Providing strategic leadership for product development and management initiatives, Tansley played a significant role in positioning Gemalto as the global leader in smart card-based digital ID solutions. Under his direction, Gemalto has developed and marketed solutions that addressed the rapidly growing network authentication markets, particularly in the areas of corporate ID, internet service providers and financial institutions. Past roles included vice president of IT and public sector at Gemalto in Houston,  manager of sales and business development for mobile communication in Montreal, Canada. Prior to working in the smart-card industry Tansley was based in France, as vice president of marketing for Gas Meters and Electronics worldwide.

Matt Steele is a senior program manager on the federated identity team at Microsoft.  Matt is currently working on the upcoming release of “Geneva” Server.  

Michael Brengs is a Managing Partner with Optimal IdM, L.L.C. and has over 17 years of experience in the software industry.   Mr. Brengs has been deploying identity management solutions since joining OpenNetwork Technologies in 2000 (acquired by BMC Software), and later with Oblix (acquired by Oracle).
                                                             
Michael is a recognized identity management expert and is a frequent speaker at events and conferences. He has been a guest speaker at Oracle Open World 2006, Digital ID World 2008 and the Directory Experts Conference 2008.  Mr. Brengs is a Microsoft Certified Professional holding the following certifications: Microsoft Certified Professional 2003, Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator 2003 and Security+.

Mike Dube is a Principal Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services specializing in Identity and Access Management. Dube has worked on complex IdM solutions for many customers across retail, financial, healthcare and other industries. Dube has been with Microsoft for five years and has been working in the Identity Management space for more than nine years.

Nathan Muggli joined Microsoft in 1998 and has been involved with Active Directory since that time. Currently his role is a Senior Lead Program Manager in the Active Directory Product Group managing a team focused on Windows 2008 R2 and Future planning. During Longhorn he was the project manager for Read-only Domain Controllers and contributed to several related distributed systems technologies.

Nick Nikols, Novell’s Vice President of Product Management for Identity and Security, has more than 15 years of experience in the software industry, architecting solutions and developing innovative products for directory services, identity management, provisioning, and directory/application integration. Before his current position at Novell, Nick spent three years as a senior analyst with the Identity and Privacy Strategies Service at Burton Group, where he authored many reports ranging from topics such as fine-grained authorization and identity services to identity management governance. Prior to his work at Burton Group, Nick was a software architect and engineering manager at Novell.

Nick has extensive speaking experience and has presented at numerous industry events, including Novell's BrainShare conference, Directory Expert's Conference, Interop, Burton Catalyst and Digital ID World conferences.

Pamela Dingle is a consultant for Nulli Secundus (http://www.nulli.com) who specializes in Enterprise Identity strategy and implementation by day, and works with Information Cards and other emerging user-centric paradigms by night.  As the founder of the Pamela Project, she works to information card-enable common open source internet frameworks such as Wordpress, Joomla, and MediaWiki.  Pamela is a community board member of the Information Card Foundation (http://informationcard.net) and an active proponent for community-wide interoperability testing via her efforts with OSIS (http://osis.idcommons.net).

Patrick Harding is the Chief Technology Officer of Ping Identity, responsible for Ping Identity Labs, emerging technologies, architecture and standards, and developing the technology strategy for the company. Previously, Harding was a VP and the Security Architect (Enterprise Architect Division) at Fidelity Investments where he was responsible for aligning Identity Management and security technologies with the strategic goals of the business. Harding was integrally involved with the implementation of federated identity technologies at Fidelity – from "napkin" to production. Harding has more than 15 years experience in software development, networking infrastructure and information security. His industry experience includes financial services, travel services and consulting. Harding has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

Paul Divan, Solutions Architect for Ensynch, is in charge of the development lifecycle compentency and is a member of the VSTS inner circle for Microsoft and functions as a Virtual Technical specialist for the VSTS team. Additionally, Divan has lent his development expertise to several Identity Management projects.

Peter LaCrosse is the Director of Sales for Oxford Computer Group with responsibility for North & South America and the Far East. Peter recently joined Oxford from Ernst & Young where he had spent the last fifteen years of his professional career working in Global IT. His responsibilities included the strategy and architecture for the global Active Directory and Windows Server environments, the comprehensive Single Sign On infrastructure and most recently E&Y’s Directory and Identity Management (IdM) initiatives. To better support the IdM activities Peter was also named the Chief Architect for Identity & Access Management. Peter has also maintained his MCSE certification since Windows 2000.

Philip Stradling is a Program Manager within the Identity Strategy team of the Identity and Security Division. Philip has been with Microsoft for 14 years and has experience of working on identity themes and the incubation of new ideas and projects. Philip is from the UK and transferred to Redmond 3 years ago.

Randy Wiemer is an Architect at Oxford Computer Group North America.  Prior to his current role, Wiemer was the Associate Director of IT for the University of Missouri System where he led their adoption of Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory.  In the 1990s, he built the University's data warehouse and developed the first Web-based administrative systems.  Wiemer holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Drury College and a Law degree and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Wiemer has taught both Mathematics and Law, but his true passion is computing.

Richard Harrison is a Microsoft Infrastructure Consultant based in the Midwest United States. He is focused primarily on Identity Management and Access technologies. Harrison has worked and assisted customers with Identity Federation solutions utilizing Microsoft ADFS technologies and other WS-Federation compatible technologies. He has been with Microsoft for more than years. Prior to joining Microsoft, Harrison was the sole proprietor of software consulting firm in Detroit, Michigan.

Rob Allen
Director, Active Identity Management, Inc. (ActiveIdM)

Rob is one of the core partners at Active Identity Management, Inc., a recognized industry expert in Directory and Identity Management technologies, particularly Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM). Allen has developed several tools and directory “widgets” focused on Identity deployments centered around Microsoft's Identity offerings.  He has provided identity architecture and design for clients in the healthcare, federal, and commercial space.  He has more than 14 years of experience in the IT industry. Prior to partnering with ActiveIDM, Allen founded a successful Identity and Directory Services company, worked in the healthcare industry, and also worked in the software development space.

Robert Nottoli is a System Architect with Microsoft. He has been with Microsoft for more than 10 years focused on Windows Server and Active Directory technologies. During his 10 years with Microsoft, he has worked with the large accounts in the Chicagoland area. Before joining Microsoft, Nottoli was employed with EDS as a System Engineer, helping design large scale enterprise IT projects.