Advisory Council

Romil Bahl is an innovative, entrepreneurial, growth and results-driven executive with extensive experience building top performing information, product and professional services companies across a range of industries including IoT, Healthcare & Connected Car/Auto/Fleet Management. He is a high impact leader adept at understanding diverse market opportunities, translating business challenges into compelling strategies that change the trajectory of a company and its team to achieve consistent breakthrough results. A Quality Communicator with a reputation and long legacy of building trust-based relationships with diverse constituencies; a Global Citizen who has led global companies and business units in many countries across four continents; a Pioneer and Leader in the high secular growth platforms of Analytics and Healthcare having been a thought-leader for over a decade in the field of ‘making money from information’.

As a third time CEO, Romil has had both public company and private equity experience, and is an excellent coach for CEOs, as he is for his executive teams, many of whom have worked with him at multiple companies. His Board of Directors experience includes several small companies, the IoT M2M Council (IMC), the Institute of Financial Operations and the Advisory Council of the MS/MBA program at the University of Texas at Austin.

In his role as CEO of KORE, Romil has furthered his visionary IoT and analytics-centric career and has crafted a strategy to position the business as a one-of-a-kind solutions provider and global independent connectivity provider with a leadership position in delivering IoT solutions. Furthering the company’s legacy in advanced connectivity, KORE is now positioned to provide core networking services and importantly, is one of the world’s first providers of both multi-IMSI and eSIM-based intelligent switching.

Before KORE, Romil was CEO of Lochbridge, a company which he pivoted to a Connected Car focus and successfully exited to a strategic buyer in the summer of 2017. Prior roles include CEO of PRGX, a procurement and health care analytics company, and leadership of a $9 Billion unit of CSC. Before that, he ran the global Systems Integration unit of Infosys and was President of EDS’ Global Consulting unit.

Romil has an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin and a Bachelor of Engineering from DMET, India (admitted via the IIT joint entrance examination). Prior to coming to the US for his graduate studies, Romil worked in both India and France and speaks Hindi, French and Punjabi.

Jaikumar Bhatia is a Senior Manager with PwC’s insurance practice with over 20 years of industry and management consulting experience. Jaikumar is recognized for his abilities in facilitating, mobilizing and leading large-scale digital transformation programs. He has delivered a number of Mobile, Speech and Cloud based services and solutions to clients providing an end to end journey for clients to move to the Cloud, encompassing strategy and business case, target operating model, infrastructure and application transformations as well as operations. He has a proven track record leading high-performance teams within large organizations to deliver business value that helps clients grow revenue, increase operational efficiency, remove complexity, scale globally and reduce costs.

Kimberly Boone is currently General Manager of Chevron Energy Technology Company, Technical Computing Department, located in Houston, Texas. In this role, Boone leads Chevron’s Information Technology (IT) investments in Exploration, Reservoir Management, Drilling & Completions and Operations. She is accountable for lifecycle management of Exploration and Reservoir Management data and information management systems as well as high performance computing infrastructure for Boone also spearheads Chevron’s IT R&D practice, ensuring the company strategically harnesses the potential of emerging information technologies to fuel competitive advantage. As part of these efforts, she serves on the internal advisory board for Chevron Technology Ventures, a Chevron subsidiary that champions the innovation, commercialization and integration of emerging technologies across the company. Throughout her decade at Chevron, Boone has served in multiple business and IT leadership roles with vast experience spanning business planning, decision analysis, information management, governance, benchmarking, process monitoring and optimization, application design and deployment, and Major Capital Project management. Prior to joining Chevron, Boone worked as a Civil/Structural engineer at FluorDaniel and as a manager in the Energy Practice at Accenture. Boone holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from Texas A&M University.

Tim Brown is an Assistant Vice President of Information Technology Services at USAA, a leading financial services company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, with offices throughout the United States and Europe. The association has been serving military families since 1922 and has become well known for its exceptional service, offering its more than 10 million members a full range of insurance, banking and investment products, financial advice and planning, and other services designed to help them meet their financial needs.

Tim leads the IT Innovation Advanced Research team who excels in researching innovations, evaluating business and technical applicability and feasibility, conducts business and market assessments, and delivers emerging innovative capabilities into the company in close partnership with business stakeholders. Tim brings a unique blend of entrepreneur, marketer, technologist, strategist and business developer to the role.

Joining USAA in 1988 Tim has held many leadership positions during his tenure, culminating with his appointment to Vice President in August 2014.

Tim earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Analysis from Texas A&M University and a MBA from St. Mary's University.

Jeff Fleece currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer, Digital Technology, at Baker Hughes Company. He is responsible for the enterprises architecture, infrastructure, IT operations, and cloud organization and previously served in the same position for GE Oil & Gas. Prior to joining GE, Jeff led the Cloud & Infrastructure Consulting practice for Sungard Availability Services and has over 25 years of experience in information technology, product development, program management, and technology services delivery. Previously, he served as Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Texas Health & Human Services Commission and in multiple leadership roles at Dell, including leading the architecture, engineering, and operations teams for 16 global cloud services offerings (IaaS, SaaS). Jeff served as a cavalry officer in the United States Army after earning his B.S. in Mechanical (Aerospace) Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point; he also earned an MBA from the University of Texas. Jeff is an avid marathoner and enjoys various equine activities with his wife Nicole and twin sons.  

John Foster is the Head of Microsoft Platforms for BP where he is responsible for developing the strategic direction for global cloud consumption and developer platforms related to Microsoft services.

Mr. Foster joined BP in 2003 and has held management positions across the organization, including Integrated Supply and Trading, Alternative Energy, Exploration & Production, and Global Services. Prior to BP, he was a Partner at Enersoft Systems in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and worked for Price Waterhouse in Dallas, Texas.

Mr. Foster has held board positions in various organizations related to youth baseball in Katy, Texas, and is currently the President and Founder of the Blue Posse Buyers Group, which supports the Katy ISD FFA programs in helping to provide buyers for FFA animal projects. Mr. Foster received his bachelor’s degree in management information system from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and he has 28 years of experience in the oil and gas industry.

Hob is responsible for Cloud, IoT and Data Services at Dover Fueling Solutions. He has spent more than 20 years working in downstream oil and gas, delivering enterprise and SaaS solutions. These solutions have primarily focused on managing the sale and distribution of refined products, as well as connecting devices such as plant equipment, terminal automation systems, truck on-board computers, tank gauges, and dispensing units. Hob has worked as a consultant at Accenture and IBM, has run IT and engineering for an energy company, and has led engineering, product management and architecture teams for software companies. Hob did his undergraduate work at The University of Texas and his graduate work at The University of Houston.

Ashish Lahoti is a Senior Vice President at Wells Fargo and Head of Product Management and Program Execution of the Enterprise Data Environment, which fuels company-wide data for governed provisioning, analytics and ML/AI. Previously, Ashish was the Senior Vice President/CIO of Global Data Technology at Charles Schwab, where he led company-wide data, customer and marketing platforms.

 

Ashish has led 5 functional/organizational transformations and launched 10 greenfield platforms across multiple financial services businesses to democratize tech/data-enabled business innovation and agility. In addition to financial services, Ashish has held business and technology positions at IBM, Ford, Motorola and a Start-up acquired by Accenture.

Christine has been leading and managing large global system implementations and managed services engagements for Fortune 500 companies for over eighteen years. Built on a significant background in Oracle applications and understanding complex technological ecosystems, she is primarily focused on leveraging the ServiceNow platform to enable organizations to become more streamlined. This includes an emphasis on bringing automation to back-office non-revenue generating functions like IT service management. Her work has been cross-industry where her clients have all been market leaders. Christine received her BBA from The University of Texas at Austin majoring in Management Information Systems and has been a guest lecturer for the MIS374 class for over 5 years.

Biography coming soon

Elliot Oshman is a Principal Technical Program Manager at Amazon, based in Austin, TX. He oversees a portfolio of programs inside the Consumer Electronics division of Amazon, and is currently driving a strategic initiative for CE Head Suppliers. He also teaches the New Hire Orientation and How Amazon Hires classes at Amazon. Prior to Amazon, Elliot spent four years at a B2B social media curation and moderation startup in Austin, running the Client Services and Technical Advisor groups. He was the Enterprise Architect over the Hoover’s API product, providing business data to sales and marketing organizations. Elliot spent his first ten years post-graduation in IT consulting, building custom software applications for dozens of clients using Java, .NET, and Ruby and managing teams and projects in the same space.

Elliot received his BBA from The University of Texas at Austin in Management Information Systems and Business Honors in 2000.

 

Marty Sixkiller, Director of Engineering Engagement with H-E-B Digital, has spent the past 4 years at H-E-B focusing his passion and energy around educational opportunities to help build technical development for the various software engineering teams in H-E-B, as well as managing community outreach and engagement opportunities with local educational, non-profit and diversity organizations.

Prior to joining H-E-B, Marty served as a Sr. User Experience Manager at Rackspace for 2.5 years, managing an engineering team and several public-facing products for the self-serving Rackspace customers.

Marty also spent over 15 years in the feature animation industry serving various roles from effects animator, technical director, pipeline engineer and R&D Supervisor. He has over twenty feature-length animation film credits to his name, including the Academy Award®-winning ‘Shrek’. Since joining H-E-B, he continues to thrive helping to locate and strengthen talent to provide the highest level of software engineering and technical customer service for the internal & external customers at H-E-B.

Doug Thompson is a passionate storyteller and can be found sharing his passion in his LinkedIn videos and mentoring other professionals develop their storytelling skills. He believes that everyone has a story and it is just a matter of unlocking it from the grips of the subconscious mind. Like all superheroes he has an alter ego as an AI Ambassador and Technology Strategist Director for the Education team at Microsoft. In these roles he leverages his storytelling skills to share how Microsoft technologies can transform the student experience to empower teachers and students of today create the world of tomorrow.

Doug and his wife, of more than 37 years, enjoy spending time with their two children and 7 grandchildren whenever possible. He is also a retired triathlete and is a 2-time Ironman Triathlon finisher and now plans on being the next Ninja Warrior known as “The Great Baldini”.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thedougthompson/

Instagram and Twitter: @thedougthompson

Jason is currently the SVP of Technology at Overhaul, where he leads the technology teams focused on providing the business with robust and scalable solutions in the cloud, third party integrations, and innovative data products.

Jason was previously the VP of Technology and Data Science at Volusion. There he managed change across culture and technology, resulting in improved efficiencies and employee development. There, his teams were responsible for driving the company's next generation, cloud-based SaaS products. Prior to that, Jason was Chief Technology Officer at RealMassive, leading the company’s team of scientists and engineers to ensure that RealMassive’s commercial real estate customers were receiving best-of-breed technology solutions customized to their specific business needs. Dr. Vertrees started his technical leadership career as Principal Scientist and Product Manager, then becoming Director of Core Modeling Products at Schrodinger, in New York City.

Dr. Vertrees graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with two Bachelor's degrees, one in Computer Science and the other in Japanese. He received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Biophysics from the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Vertrees spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher, shared between Dartmouth College and Boston University, researching machine learning applications for the prediction of protein function annotation.

 

Jason lives in Austin, Texas, where he enjoys spending his time introducing his daughter to all sorts of fun STEM knowledge and jogging around Town Lake.