Iris L. Hanney

President, Unlimited Priorities

Iris L. Hanney is the founder and president of Unlimited Priorities Corporation. 

Prior to founding Unlimited Priorities Iris served as President, Information Publishing Group of Techbooks and Senior Vice-President, Sales and Marketing.  As key administrator for every aspect of the group’s operations, both domestically and internationally, Iris directed production, project management, sales and marketing, with additional key responsibilities in IT, human resources, invoicing and collections.

Before joining TechBooks, Iris was General Manager, U.S. Operations, for Pacific Data Conversion Corp. (PDCC), where she had full responsibility for sales and marketing while also managing the administrative, financial and production functions of the company.  She joined PDCC during its founding in 1993, remained through its acquisition by SPI Technologies in 1998, and left to join TechBooks in 2002.  During an extensive career in information publishing, Iris has had increasingly responsible roles with a number of information industry leaders including The H. W. Wilson Company, R. R. Bowker, BRS Information Services and Saztec International.

Originally from New York City, Iris earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from H. H. Lehman College, Bronx, NY, and an MBA in sales, marketing and communications from Fordham University in New York.  She resides in Florida with her husband and three dogs.

Frank Zirpolo

Frank Zirpolo is a Senior Technology Executive specializing in sales support, infrastructure, customer service and operations.  Frank serves as Webmaster at Unlimited Priorities.  He is currently Senior Director, Sales Business Systems at WebMD.  Prior to joining WebMD, Frank was with Reed Business Information where he held positions as Vice President, IT Network Infrastructure, Vice President, IT Operations & Planning, and Vice President, Program Management and Mergers & Acquisitions.

Prior to joining Reed, Frank was Senior Director, Client Services at Ziff Davis where he supported a technology information sales team, their customers and their products.  Frank has also held positions of increasing responsibility at BRS Information Technologies, JA Micropublishing and R.R. Bowker.

Frank holds Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from The City College of New York, and currently resides in New Jersey with his wife.

Bert Carelli

Bert Carelli is a Business Development professional specializing in content acquisition, licensing and strategic partnerships. He has been in charge of content acquisition and strategy for two of the three largest global professional information services - Dow Jones/Factiva and Dialog – as well as several smaller companies. Most recently he was responsible for partner strategy for media analysis software company Biz360, Inc., where he negotiated the content licenses enabling the launch of new analytic services covering broadcast content and blogs.

Bert has successfully negotiated content distribution rights with most of the top news and trade publishers in the United States, and also represented the publisher side, as a licensing executive with InfoUSA, Inc. At Dialog, he was responsible for all of the business content providers, and helped launch more than 20 new databases, including the successful Responsive Database Services (RDS) files and new vertical business files in Telecommunications, Finance, and Health. At Dow Jones Interactive (later Factiva), he expanded the content partner network in Europe and Latin America, laying a foundation for the successful rise of the company from the number three to become the number one aggregator in the industry.

An accomplished jazz musician, Bert was a cofounder of the Stanford Jazz Workshop, a 35-year old nonprofit organization recognized for its cultural and educational contributions to youth. Bert received his BA from Stanford and his MBA from St. Mary’s College of California.

Bert comments on new developments in the content industry on his blog, World of Content.

Joe Cavallo

Joe has sales and sales management experience spanning 40 years. He was part of the early Xerox Sales group that introduced the 914 and plain paper copying to the business and academic communities. Joe moved to the Xerox Publishing Group in 1979 joining UMI (now Proquest) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was National Sales Manager when he left in 1989 to join Edwards Brothers, an Ann Arbor book manufacturer. Joe ran their Northeastern Sales operations and offices in New York, Boston and Cleveland for eight years.

With Softline Information Inc of Stamford, Connecticut he served as a sales consultant and later as the Director of Sales, through 2001 when the database company was purchased by Proquest.

Joe started Information Sales Group in 2002, a nationwide network of independent sales people with a strong emphasis on group and consortium sales.
 

He currently resides in Northport, Long Island with his wife and two of his seven children. Joe is a graduate of New York University.

Cheryl D. Crosby

Cheryl D. Crosby is the founder and principal of CDC Consultants, a Maryland based consulting firm, focused on developing targeted sales strategies that are customized for each client. Areas of expertise include identifying what’s needed to increase sales and implementation in the library and publishing markets, proposal writing, tactical planning and relationship building.  Cheryl is honored to be a part of Unlimited Priorities, team of experts.

Since June of 2004, Cheryl served as the outsourced National Sales Manager for Paratext. As National Sales Manager, Cheryl created a tactical plan for Paratext which more than doubled Paratext’s sales. Cheryl is now responsible for managing Paratext’s consortial sales.

Cheryl has an extensive background in sales, as well as 18 years of sales experience in the library and publishing industry including working in a sales capacity with companies such as Dynix, Gaylord Information Systems, Chadwyck-Healey, TechBooks and Polaroid.

Cheryl is a native of Wisconsin and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her Master of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Cheryl resides in Maryland with her husband and their two sons.

Bonnie B. Hawkwood

Bonnie has spent her career serving the library and electronic publishing communities by developing and producing databases for librarians, business professionals, students, and physicians. Her specialties are eBook platforms and periodical aggregation. Bonnie was employed at Thomson Gale in roles ranging from business development to product management. Before joining Gale, she directed the startup of the editorial department for MD Consult in St. Louis. Her career began with abstracting, indexing, and editorial management at Data Courier, which was acquired by UMI (now ProQuest).

Originally from Cincinnati, Bonnie earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at Vanderbilt University. She is currently a consultant and lives in Louisville, Kentucky, close to her daughter's growing family.

Thomas A. Hess

Tom Hess has been an Independent Corporate Trainer/ Consultant for the past 14 years. With a total of 16 years of corporate training experience. Combined with 18 years of experience in the Quality Arena. His experience has taken him nationally & internationally. Tom educational background is in Drafting & Designing, plus Industrial Engineering.

Tom’s experience ranges from developing, delivering, identifying training needs & monitoring Training Programs with Fortune 500 Companies, plus many smaller organizations. His experience has been with Corporate personnel ranging from labor through to the top Executive level.

Tom’s focus of his career has been in the Quality Arena, mainly with Problem Solving & Process Improvement Techniques. He is considered a Master Level Trainer with Ford Motor & Caterpillar in Ford’s Global 8D Problem Solving Process. He is also involved with Ford as a Trainer in their Six Sigma Program, working with Green Belts & Black Belts, also with Washington Mutual in their Operational Excellence Program (their version of Six Sigma). He has also developed/ delivered many other courses over the years, such as, Team Building, Supervisory Skills, Leadership, Shop Math, SPC, Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerance, Lean Manufacturing, ISO Auditing plus courses in the Human Resource Arena, such as Sexual Harassment, Substance Abuse, Interpersonal Relationships, Budget Management & Training other Trainers.

Tom continues to receive rave reviews for his dynamic delivery style & ability to convey the message to participants, which is demonstrated with the high level of referral work he maintains.

Marjorie Hlava

Marjorie (Margie) Hlava founded Access Innovations, Inc. in 1976, two years after joining the Special Libraries Association.  She served as Chapter President for the 79-80 year, and by 1983 she was Chair-Elect of the Information Technology Division.  She has been active in the association since, serving as Chair of the Technical Standards Committee for eight years, on other committees as needed, on the Board of Directors, and currently as Chair of the Bylaws Committee.  Paula Hane, writing in the November 2004 ITI Newslink, called her “a leading light in many industry organizations”.

Margie makes at least a half dozen presentations each year, from explaining the basics of thesaurus development and indexing to introducing the newest concepts in information organization and delivery.  She speaks at university symposiums, continuing quality improvement seminars, conference workshops, and industry gatherings.  Among her awards is Lazerow Lecturer at Long Island University in 2002.

Margie is the holder of three patents.  She has guided her company’s software development efforts to produce thesaurus management, machine-aided indexing, and XML database tools that unlock the riches of specialized libraries for their users and sponsors.

An advocate of clear and relevant industry standards, Margie represented SLA at the National Standards Institute during her tenure as Technical Standards Committee Chair and contributed significantly to maintaining current and responsive thesaurus construction standards as well as advising on other related NISO/ANSI standards.

The integration of thesaurus and search engine, as exemplified on SLA’s website, improves the retrieval rate of related items in a collection.  The integration of the rule base created for machine-aided indexing with the search engine adds a way to link search words with the thesaurus and in context.  Margie’s vision of this valuable improvement drove the development of a new feature in her company’s Data Harmony software suite. 

Michael C. Kremin

Michael C. Kremin is a consultant specialized in offering strategic planning, technology assessment and implementation solutions to clients in the communications and media industries. With more than 25 years experience in business development, strategic planning, marketing and implementation of production and distribution technologies in the digital media and entertainment industry, Mr. Kremin has held senior positions in both the management consulting and corporate sectors. Focusing on the realm of broadband technologies for media and content distribution – digital rights and asset management, hosted applications, e-commerce services, and network security and managed services and multiplatform delivery of media products – Mr. Kremin assists clients in the broadcast, cable, Internet and wireless segments identify digital media opportunities and the transition to digital platforms.

Prior to forming his own consultancy, Mr. Kremin served as vice president of strategic consulting services for National TeleConsultants, an international broadcast communications consulting firm, with responsibility for expanding services into strategic planning, technology assessment, workflow analysis, and digital rights and asset management systems for established media and entertainment clients. At National TeleConsultants, Mr. Kremin provided consulting support to clients transitioning to digital media platforms, legal professionals managing complex media technology cases, and strategic vendor relationships with industry leaders including Cisco, Microsoft, EMC, Intel, and others to extend their solutions into rich media applications and services.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Kremin launched sales and marketing efforts for Internet web hosting services, including dedicated hosting, shared hosting and other Internet-based network services for Exodus Communications and Verizon Internet. Mr. Kremin has an affinity for start-up organizations, which have included Exodus Communications (web hosting services), Verizon Internet (Internet access and hosting), SpaceWorks (business to business online communications), and BRS Information Technologies (online retrieval and electronic publishing).

Mr. Kremin is a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He earned his M.B.A. at New York University’s Stern School of Management and his B.S. at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Donna Lynn  

Donna Lynn applies her twenty-five years of experience to help organizations achieve revenue growth through successful business development and partnering; implement strategic change to increase customer satisfaction and achieve operational excellence and bottom line growth; and execute M&A and exit plans for business owners.  Her background encompasses new venture establishment, P&L and operations management, strategic planning, global sales and business development, product development and commercialization; venture capital raising and M&A.  

Donna was a co-founder, President and COO of KnowledgeMax, Inc., an eBusiness, supply chain firm providing knowledge resources, print-on-demand services, and knowledge management to Fortune 500 corporations.  She led the raise of early stage capital rounds and the successful capture of a multi-year, multimillion-dollar contract with IBM to launch the company.

Donna was President of the U.S. operations of SilverPlatter Information, Inc. where she developed new business and financial plans for the U.S. company and built the sales organization.  Donna restructured operations and business processes to serve customers and business partners more effectively and realize bottom line growth through productivity improvements.  

Donna was co-founder and later CEO of Online Computer Systems, Inc., a pioneer in the development of electronic publishing and multimedia technologies, integrated library systems, and custom information systems.  Online was acquired by Reed Elsevier and Donna led the company for eleven years after the acquisition.

Donna began her career in the aerospace industry at Cape Kennedy, having studied mathematics and business at the University of Florida and Florida Institute of Technology.  She continues to serve on Boards of Directors and Advisors to emerging market companies.  She and her husband live in the Washington, D.C. area and Florida.

Delores Meglio

Delores Meglio is a recognized expert in the field of digital publishing and production, database management and content aggregation. With more than 25 years in the electronic publishing, Ms. Meglio’s recent consulting ventures have been: creation of  specialized health database, production staff, procedures, policies, systems for small minority-owned company; new corporate startup to create and build a cultural arts database for consumers with PDA access. Prior to consulting, Ms Meglio, as Senior Vice President for Ziff-Davis and Thomson Corporation, produced more than 100 highly profitable online and Web-enabled databases in the key industry areas of technology, business, health and the general consumer interest areas of culture, books, travel, food and biographies. Additionally, as Vice President of the New York Times information division, she developed ground-breaking databases for the White House, oil, gas and energy industries.

Ms. Meglio is a graduate of City College of New York, holds a Masters Degree in Information Science from St. John's University and attended the INSEAD European Management Institute in Fountainbleu, France. In 1992, Ms. Meglio won the YWCA Tribute to Women in Business Award.

Paul Owen

Paul is a seasoned veteran (gray hair) in the content space. For 27 years, Paul has been a leader in the online content world even before “content was cool.”  Paul has worked in every facet of digitizing and generating revenue from content beginning with newspapers, magazines and journals and then the premium priced content sources such as newsletters, research reports, brokerage reports and now books.  Every segment has learned that the traditional “package” is now restricting growth and there a many other ways to repurpose their content to generate new revenue streams from new channels. The future is all about virtual packaging to meet the needs of the particular audience served. This requires development of new business models and flexible pricing to reach the vast user market, most often with more potential than the historical core market served.   

Paul joined the Unlimited Priorities group to focus on helping clients set their content acquisition, packaging and distribution priorities to maximize revenue. His vast experience in managing corporate sales, marketing, training, business development and content licensing teams in very large to entrepreneurial sized companies is now being applied to a range of leading information industry clients (see credentials document). With Unlimited Priorities Paul is heading up the deliverables to clients that include; content acquisition and distribution strategies, licensing, channel strategies and execution, new product development, revenue planning, and deployment of pricing models. 

Paul has a Bachelor of Science and MBA from Bowling Green University in Ohio and has taught for a number of years at the University level and trained thousands of users of online databases.   

Sue Polanka

Sue Polanka is Head of Reference and Instruction at Wright State University Libraries in Dayton, Ohio.  She has over 17 years of library experience in reference and instruction at public, academic, and state libraries.  While at the Texas State Library, Sue provided continuing education and training to librarians across the state through workshops and videoconferencing events.  She currently serves as the Chair of the Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board, where she has served on the Board and been active in book reviews for over 6 years.  Sue is a frequent contributor to RBB, ALA publications, and frequently presents at library conferences.  Her writings and presentations focus on specialized product reviews of print and electronic sources, the use of technology in reference and instruction, and Ereference books.  She is currently on the NFAIS and Academic Library Association of Ohio conference planning committees, and is active with the OhioLINK consortium in both interface development and training.
 

Christopher G. Pooley

Before his consulting career Chris was Vice-President of Business Development at Thomson Scientific and Healthcare where he was responsible for acquisitions and strategic partnerships.  While at Thomson, he managed strategic acquisitions that included: IHI, Current Drugs, BIOSIS and Delphion.  

Previously he was CEO of Books 24x7, an aggregator of computer trade books that was acquired by SkillSoft.  Leveraging the content from major computer trade book publishers including Macmillan, Osborne, McGraw-Hill, O’Reilly & Associates, Wiley, Sybex and others, Books24x7 developed a subscription service for IT professionals.

At Pro CD, an aggregator of telephone books, Chris managed sales and distribution while adding telephone content from Canada and Germany that was distributed on CD-ROM, the Internet, and licensed to 3^rd parties including AOL, Yahoo, and InfoSpace.  As the 3^rd employee at SilverPlatter Chris held a variety of senior positions as the company’s product line grew to over 300 databases for delivery on CD-ROM and the Internet to global library subscribers. 

Chris is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and holds an MBA from Babson College in Wellesley, MA. 

Jay A. Rosenfield

Jay received his B.S.E. from the Wharton School.  He went on to work for Ringe Media, a national republican consulting firm, assisting in campaigns for many gubernatorial, senate and congressional candidates, including Governors Carroll Campbell and Bob Martinez.

After moving back to Rhode Island, Jay founded a computer company focused on the legal and municipal markets.  He was the IT consultant for several cities and towns, providing oversight for some of the first microcomputer implementations in the state.

In 1994, Jay co-founded CompBase, a company that provides easy access to public information.  CompBase works with state and local governments to help them sort and organize their paper documents and, in turn, convert them into useful, searchable web-based information.

In addition to his primary companies, Jay founded Compass Medical, a regional distributor of Physio-Control Lifepak defibrillators and he was also vice-president of operations for Galen Technologies, a start-up medical technology company.

Jay is a born entrepreneur with a passion for “behind the scenes” aspects of a company.  Jay resides in Cranston Rhode Island, with his wife, two children and a dog.

Stephen Simon

Stephen Simon specializes in designing and implementing XML-based workflows. Stephen has more than 25 years of experience in typesetting, data conversion, and database publishing. He also has more than 10 years experience managing off-shore production.

Stephen currently works as a consultant. Until recently he was Director of Production and Development for the Information Publishing Group of TechBooks (now Aptara) in Falls Church, Virginia. Stephen was with TechBooks for more than 12 years. Before that he was Technical Support Manager for the Publishing Services Division of ATLIS Systems now in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Stephen graduated from the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He now lives in Virginia with his wife, five cats and a dog.

Peter Stevens

Peter Stevens has held sales, marketing and management positions at a number of companies within the information industry, including UMI, IAC, ISI, JA Micropublishing, RR Bowker, Newsbank, Ethnic Newswatch and Pacific Data Conversion Corp. He formed his current consulting company in 2002.

 
Peter and his wife, Louise, live in Bryn Athyn, PA. He holds a B.A. in English from Drake University

Jay Ven Eman

Jay Ven Eman, CEO, Access Innovations, Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been with Access Innovations since December, 1978. He has been active in all aspects of its business. He has overseen Access' database production services where he was responsible for the design and conversion of large, legacy databases for a variety of government and private organizations. He writes, conducts workshops, consults, and helps build large scale, complex, information rich databases. He has presented papers and workshops at ASIS&T, SLA, ASIDIC, InternetWorld, Online - London, AGSI - Netherlands and many others. Before joining Access, he worked for the University of New Mexico at the Technology Applications Center, where he specialized in technology transfer and information dissemination of space technology to the commercial arena. He received his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Jay joined Access Innovations in December, 1978. As Chief Executive Officer, he has contributed to every aspect of the business. He has overseen Access' database production services where he was responsible for the design and conversion of large, legacy databases for a variety of government and private organizations. He writes, conducts workshops, consults, and helps build large scale, complex, information rich databases. Jay works closely with the professional staff, developing and presenting workshops and seminars on database development, legacy file conversions, SGML and HTML, and other related topics.

E. George Woodley

Mr. Woodley’s first exposure to products and processes was in implementing a statistical process control  (SPC) system for the W.C. Wood Co. in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Subsequent SPC programs were also developed for Diemaco  Inc., a defense industry company; for Chicopee Manufacturing, an aerospace component manufacturer; and Automation Tooling Systems, a tier one supplier to Ford Motor Company.

It was with Ford Motor Company where George was hired on as a trainer/facilitator in the problem-solving arena. His focus was on training Ford engineers and suppliers in the Global 8 Discipline process.

Other technical courses that George became certified in included Failure Mode and Effects Analysis, Reliability, Process Control Methods and Design of Experiment.  George was certified as a Master Trainer/Lead Instructor for the Six Sigma Black Belt Train-the-Trainer program, offered by Ford Motor Company.

Other major clients include Motorola, Washington Mutual and R.R. Donnelley, Alltel, the U.S. Coast Guard, the American Red Cross, Capital One, CIBC Mellon, Freddie Mac, the Royal Bank of Canada, and the Federal Reserve. George has conducted various Black Belt and Master Black Belt training courses for companies such as American Super Conductor, Quality & Productivity Solutions, and the American Red Cross.

George graduated from the University of Guelph in 1980 with a B. S. in Statistics and is an American Society for Quality Certified Six Sigma Master Black Belt.