About CEF

Jeff Baer

Head of Global Logistics Services, Deutsche Bank

Jeff is responsible for Deutsche Bank’s Corporate Purchase-to-Pay, Travel and Corporate Real Estate activities. In this role, he is reengineering and outsourcing core elements of the sourcing, technology and associated processes for managing the Bank's third-party vendor spend in excess of €6 billion. In addition, Jeff is responsible for optimizing and servicing the Bank’s global real estate portfolio which houses some 80,000 staff in circa 2,800 buildings across 76 countries globally. In both roles, Jeff is leading Deutsche Bank’s overall sustainability strategy and internal transformation program. Jeff has held a variety of executive positions within Deutsche Bank including Chief Information Officer for Asset and Private Wealth Management, Global Co-Head of Investment Banking IT Infrastructure, CIO Americas and Integration Executive for the Bankers Trust merger.

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Wayne S. Balta

Vice President, Corporate Environmental Affairs and Product Safety, IBM Corporation

Wayne Balta has global responsibility at IBM for environmental affairs, energy efficiency, chemical management and toxicology, as well as product safety and related hardware compliance functions. He joined IBM in 1984 as project manager for design and construction in the real estate and construction division. In 1989, he was appointed executive assistant to the corporate vice president in charge of real estate. In 1990, he became responsible for IBM’s corporate environmental plans and strategy. Two years later, in 1992, he became Director of Corporate Environmental Affairs. Mr. Balta became Vice President of Corporate Environmental Affairs & Product Safety in 2001.

Mr. Balta has also played a leadership role in a variety of other organizations. He is presently the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the World Environment Center. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Environmental Law Institute. He is a member and past Chairman of The Conference Board's Chief Environment, Health & Safety Officers Council. He serves as IBM’s Liaison Delegate to the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. He is also on the Executive Board of the Eco Patent Commons.

In addition, Mr. Balta is a member of the President's Advisory Board for Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He also serves on the Dean’s Council for the College of Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon. He was the recipient of Carnegie-Mellon’s Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 2009.

Mr. Balta received a Bachelor of Science Degree in civil engineering with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University in 1982 and a Master of Science Degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Tau Beta Pi Fellow, in 1984. He was inducted into the Tau Beta Pi national engineering honor society, the Chi Epsilon national civil engineering honor society, and the Sigma Xi scientific research society.

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Rob Carter

Executive Vice President - FedEx Information Services & Chief Information Officer at FedEx Corporation

Robert B. (Rob) Carter, is Executive Vice President - FedEx Information Services & Chief Information Officer at FedEx Corporation. Carter is responsible for the corporations' key applications and technology infrastructure. FedEx applications, advanced networks and data centers provide around-the-clock and around-the-globe support for the information intensive transportation, logistics and business related product offerings of FedEx Corporation. Carter is also responsible for Customer Service, Billing and Revenue Operations. Carter joined FedEx in 1993 and has nearly 30 years of systems development and implementation experience utilizing a wide variety of technology. Mr. Carter serves as a member of the Saks, Inc. Board of Directors, First Horizon National Corporation Board of Directors, and the University of Florida Foundation Board of Trustees.

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Susan M. Cischke

Group VP, Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering, Ford Motor Company

Susan Cischke is responsible for establishing Ford Motor Company's long range sustainability strategy and environmental policy. She will help develop the products and processes necessary to satisfy both customers and society, and be Ford's chief liaison with global organizations seeking solutions to the challenges of sustainability, environmental stewardship and energy independence. In addition, Cischke is responsible for influencing future environmental and safety regulations and assuring that Ford Motor Company meets or exceeds all safety and environmental regulations worldwide. Cischke has served as Ford's top environmental and safety officer since January 2001. In that role, she has been responsible for establishing Ford's long term safety strategy, promoting aggressive standardization of product technology features delivering real world safety benefits. As Ford's chief safety officer, she leads the Driving Skills for Life program, a partnership between Ford Motor Company and the Governor's State Highway Traffic Association that teaches safe driving technique to teens. Prior to joining Ford, Cischke was senior vice president of Regulatory Affairs and Passenger Car Operations at DaimlerChrysler. Cischke serves on the board of the Chicago Climate Exchange and is a council member of the World Economic Forum.

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Steve Ellis

Executive Vice President, Wells Fargo Wholesale Services Group

Steve Ellis is Executive Vice President of Wells Fargo's Wholesale Services Group (WSG), which includes Enterprise Payment Strategies, Health Benefit Services, Technology Services, and Treasury Management Products and Services. He is also responsible for Wholesale Banking operations and support areas including commercial loan services, customer analytics, marketing, and risk management. Part of the Wholesale Banking Group, WSG focuses on strengthening and deepening customer relationships by integrating products and services across all channels and businesses, giving customers a consistent experience at all touch points. The 3,500-plus team members sit nationwide, with large concentrations in Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and San Francisco. A 20-year company veteran, his previous responsibilities included starting up and running the Wholesale Internet Solutions group, which launched Wells Fargo's award-winning Commercial Electronic Office internet portal in 2000. The fast pace of Wells Fargo's early move into online financial services was due in large part to his commitment to fostering workplace creativity. Prior to starting up Wholesale Internet Solutions, he held senior finance and operations roles in Wells Fargo's Commercial Banking, Real Estate Group, and Wholesale Banking groups. He is chairperson of the board of directors for NACHA, The Electronic Payments Association.

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Dan Gilbert

Executive Vice President, Operations and Customer Service
Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Dan is responsible for managing the Barnes & Noble warehousing and fulfillment to the 723 Barnes & Noble bookstores, Customer Service operations, the company's BN.com direct-to-consumer operations, and the end-to-end supply chain for the company's nook product line.

Prior to this, he led a worldwide team at Cisco responsible for driving supply chain excellence that directly fueled revenue and margin growth. In this role, Gilbert served as executive sponsor of Lean Forward, a breakthrough collaboration between Cisco and its distributors to cut supply chain inefficiency and reinvest savings to drive sales growth. By restructuring operations and building a company-wide reuse process, his team transformed reverse logistics from a cost sink to a function that delivered $120 million to Cisco’s bottom line annually. Gilbert also led the transition of the small business product line from Linksys to Cisco, and spearheaded the design and deployment of a faster and lower-cost supply chain that supported the profitable growth of small business sales.

Prior to joining Cisco in 2005, Gilbert served as VP of Customer Service and Quality at Palm, Inc. In addition to leading the turnaround of call center and repair operations worldwide, he launched closed-loop processes to improve hardware quality and redesigned web support to leverage on-line communities – all resulting in dramatically lower costs and higher customer satisfaction. Before Palm, Gilbert served as a consultant in the turnaround of European auction provider QXL Ricardo PLC, a FTSE 250 company. At startup Webvan, he was Director of Delivery Operations from first revenue shipments through company expansion, post-merger integration and restructuring. Gilbert began his career at McKinsey & Company, as a management consultant focused on operations.

Gilbert holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from MIT. He serves on the advisory boards of startup Comvergics Systems and the Howard University School of Business Center for Supply Chain Management, and is an active member of the Band of Angels, Silicon Valley’s oldest early-stage investment group.

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Neil C. Hawkins, Sc.D.

Vice President, Sustainability & EH&S, Dow Chemical Company

Dr. Neil Hawkins currently serves as Vice President, Sustainability & Environment, Health & Safety (EH&S) for The Dow Chemical Company. In this global role, he is responsible for driving Dow’s sustainability performance and governance, including implementation of Dow’s transformational 2015 Sustainability Goals. He is also accountable for Product Safety, Global Regulatory Affairs, Health Services, and Remediation. Hawkins joined Dow in 1988 and has previously held a wide range of Environment, Health & Safety, and Public Policy roles across the company. Hawkins serves on the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable for Sustainability Science and Technology and serves on the Green Chemistry Science Advisory Panels of both California and Michigan. Hawkins is a member of the International Advisory Board for The Nature Conservancy and Board member of the Keystone Center. He holds masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, School of Public Health, and a bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech.

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Kevin Kramer

President of Growth Initiatives, Alcoa

Kevin Kramer is President of Growth Initiatives for Alcoa. In this role, he is responsible for supporting commercialization strategies for organic growth, and identifying and developing new applications that respond to market trends and customers’ needs. In addition, Kramer supports the development and execution of global marketing programs for aluminum applications across existing and new markets. As part of this assignment, he will oversee the Alcoa Market Sector Teams. Most recently, Kramer was president of Alcoa Wheel & Transportation Products, responsible for forged wheels and aluminum structures. In this position, Kramer was also Executive Sponsor of the Ground Transportation Market Sector Team and a member of the Alcoa Employee Relations Council. He also acts as the Alcoa Sponsor for the Toyota relationship across all businesses.

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Matt Kistler

Senior Vice President, Merchandise Execution, Walmart

Matt Kistler serves as Senior Vice President Merchandise Execution. He previously served as Walmart's SVP of Marketing Operations and SVP for Sustainability heading up the company's global environmental sustainability strategy. In that position, he worked to integrate sustainability into Walmart's business unit strategy on a global basis encouraging the company's 100,000 suppliers to innovate, collaborate and support Walmart's key sustainability goals and to integrate sustainability into the brand and culture of Walmart engaging the more than 2.2 million associates globally. Matt joined Walmart in November of 2003 as the Director of Private Brands for SAM'S CLUB. In 2004 he became a corporate officer as the Vice President of Product Development, Private Brands, Packaging and Quality Testing. In 2006, Matt was appointed Vice President of Product and Packaging Innovation for SAM'S CLUB. In 2007, he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Marketing, Research and Insights for SAM'S CLUB and in October of 2007 he was named Senior Vice President, Sustainability for Walmart. Prior to joining Walmart, Matt held management positions with General Foods, Oscar Mayer and Kraft Foods. Matt has a B.A. in Marketing from Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, and an M.B.A. from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

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Ann R. Klee

Vice President of Corporate Environmental Programs, GE

Ann R. Klee leads GE’s global environmental, health and safety (EHS) programs and is responsible for ensuring that GE’s global operations comply with applicable EHS laws and regulations, managing the Company’s environmental litigation, and advising business leaders on environmental policy issues.

From 2004 to 2006, Ann was General Counsel of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She is also the former Chief Counsel of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works (EPW) and served as the Counselor to the Secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI). As General Counsel of EPA, Ann served as the agency lead on numerous Supreme Court and federal court briefs, including two landmark Supreme Court decisions concerning wetland protection under the Clean Water Act. From 2001-2004, Ann served as Counselor to the Secretary of DOI, where she was responsible for advising the Secretary and developing policy options on issues such as the Everglades, Endangered Species Act, Indian water rights settlements, off shore oil leasing and mining. Ann previously served as environmental counsel to Senator Dirk Kempthorne and Counsel to Senator Kempthorne’s Subcommittee on Drinking Water, Fisheries and Wildlife. She was one of the principal staff responsible for drafting and negotiating the Endangered Species Recovery Act of 1997.

Prior to joining GE in 2008, Ann was a partner and co-chair of Crowell & Moring’s Environment & Natural Resources Group in Washington, D.C., where she provided counseling, litigation and legislative representation to a wide range of companies and trade associations. Ann is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. She received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986, and her B.A. with High Honors from Swarthmore College in 1983.

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James (Jim) R. Miller

Vice President, Worldwide Operations, Google, Inc.

Jim Miller joined Google in 2010. He previously was EVP of Sanmina-SCI Corporation where he has responsibility for their Industrial, CleanTech, MultiMedia and Automotive businesses. Prior to that, Jim served as EVP of Supply Chain and Product Management at First Solar, an industry-leading supplier of CdTe Thin Film Photovoltaic modules and systems.

Jim was formerly VP of Product Operations for Cisco's worldwide supply chain organization, where he was responsible for new product introduction (NPI) and product lifecycle management for Cisco's hardware and software products. He also was VP of Cisco's Manufacturing Technology group, Supply Chain and Logistics organization and was the VP of the Midrange plant, where he had responsibility for the new product introduction and manufacturing for one-third of Cisco's hardware and all of its software revenue. Before Cisco, Jim served as Amazon.com's VP of Supply Chain, where he was responsible for the inception of Amazon.com's supply chain organization and was a key contributor to Amazon's rapid growth to a multi-billion dollar global company. Jim has also held key technical and production positions at IBM Corporation, Intel Corporation and Teledesic, a Seattle-based telecommunications startup.

Jim has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Purdue University and a Master of Science Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also holds a Master of Science Degree in Management from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a “MIT Leaders for Manufacturing” Fellow.

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J.P. Rangaswami

Managing Director, Service Design, BT Design

J.P. Rangaswami is the Managing Director, Service Design for BT Design - BT Group's IT design and delivery business. It has total responsibility for designing, building and implementing the IT and business processes, systems, networks (non-Openreach) and technologies. J.P. joined BT from Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein where he served as Global CIO demonstrating recognised market leadership in the use of innovative tools and techniques. He is a compelling advocate for community-based "opensource" development methods and practices. He is a fervent blogger (www.confusedofcalcutta.com) and a regular speaker at industry events, particularly on innovation and opensource. J.P. was named CIO of the Year by Waters Magazine in 2003, CIO Innovator of the Year by the European Technology Forum in 2004 and is named as one of the top 10 CIOs in silicon.com's CIO50 list for 2007. He is an Advisory Board member of CAL-IT and a Charter Member of TiE UK, along with memberships of the IoD, the ACM and the IEEE. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (BCS) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). J.P. is also a Freeman of the Information Technologists Company (a London City Livery Company, also known as the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists).

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Toby Redshaw

Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer, American Express Company

Toby Redshaw is Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of American Express Company as of January 2011. Before joining American Express, he was Chief Information Officer of the Aviva Group, where he unified and transformed Aviva's global approach to technology. Previously, Toby served as Corporate Vice President for Innovation, Data, Enabling Platforms and Architecture Services (I.D.E.A.S.) with Motorola, Inc., and before that was General Manager of a Silicon Valley start-up that provided software-as-a-service and supply-chain solutions. Toby initially spent 17 years at FedEx, where he had several high impact leadership positions both on the business and IT sides including CIO of a major (53-nation) business unit, international lead for product development for customer solutions and several operational responsibilities. He has had significant international assignments including Asia Pacific, Middle East and Latin America. Toby was past chairman of the Kellogg Innovation Network (at Kellogg Graduate School of Business), and chairman of the RosettaNet Council. During his time at Motorola he was executive chairman of MediaRiver, a media focused start-up company. He has extensive board and advisory board experience in the tech sector. He also served on the board for the World Cataract Foundation, a charity which works to cure blindness in developing countries.

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Dr. Len Sauers

Vice President of Global Sustainability, Procter & Gamble

Dr. Len Sauers is Vice President of Global Sustainability for the Procter & Gamble Company (P&G). He has been employed at P&G for 20 years and has a PhD in toxicology. Prior to his current assignment, he held senior management positions in human & environmental safety, biotechnology, regulatory affairs, and technical external relations.

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Jason Schmitt

VP Corporate Strategy & Business Initiatives, The Jones Group

Jason Schmitt is the Vice-President of Corporate Strategy and Business Initiatives at the Jones Group a leader in the apparel and footwear industry. He was formerly the Fund Manager for the ArcelorMittal Clean Technology Fund. ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steel company and a Fortune 100 global enterprise with 2007 revenues of $105 billion, EBITDA of $19 billion, 10% global market share, and 320,000 employees in 60 countries. Prior to joining ArcelorMittal in 2006, Mr. Schmitt was a consultant at McKinsey & Company focused on the e-commerce sector and served as Manager, Strategy and Business Development for Mattel, where he helped lead the turnaround of the Barbie brand. Mr. Schmitt holds a Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude from Harvard College and a Juris Doctorate cum laude from Harvard Law School.

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Tony Scott

Corporate VP and CIO, Microsoft

Tony Scott joined Microsoft Corp. in February 2008 as corporate vice president and chief information officer (CIO). Under Scott's leadership, Microsoft IT is responsible for security, infrastructure, messaging and business applications for all of Microsoft, including support of the product groups, the corporate business groups, and the global sales and marketing organization. Scott is also the executive sponsor for Microsoft's Operational Enterprise Risk Management efforts and supports the integration of management principles from the Quality & Business Excellence team, which drive continuous and breakthrough process improvements across the company. Scott helps ensure that Microsoft is the "first and best customer" of its own products. In addition to maintaining a globally integrated set of enterprise IT platforms built on Microsoft technology, his team deploys prerelease versions of Microsoft products throughout the company. Before joining Microsoft, Scott was the senior vice president and chief information officer for The Walt Disney Co., where he led planning, implementation and operations of Disney IT systems and infrastructure across the company. He also held the position of chief technology officer, Information Systems and Services, at General Motors Corp. (GM), where he was responsible for defining the information technology computing and telecommunications strategy, architecture, and standards across all of GM's businesses globally.

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Jeff Seabright

Vice President for Environment and Water, The Coca Cola Company

Jeff Seabright is Vice President for Environment and Water at The Coca Cola Company in Atlanta, Georgia. Jeff has held several positions in government and business, including as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. State Department and as Legislative Assistant to US Senators Timothy E. Wirth and John D. Rockefeller IV. In 1993, he joined the U.S. Agency for International Development, later serving as Director of the Office of Energy, Environment & Technology. He moved to the White House in 1999 as Executive Director of the Climate Change Task Force where he helped negotiate the Kyoto Protocol and later joined Texaco, Inc. in New York as Vice President for Policy Planning. He serves on the Environmental Trade and Technology Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Conservation International – International Leadership Council, World Environment Center, the Georgia Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy (Georgia), the Pace Academy in Atlanta, and the Sustainable Atlanta Advisory Council.

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Pat Tiernan

CSO - Field Operations, TPG Capital

Pat Tiernan is CSO for TPG Capital. He was most recently the Executive Director of Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a global consortium chartered to reduce the energy used throughout the IT industry, and President of Sustainable Results, a boutique advisory and consulting firm assisting companies embed sustainability as a strategic element of their business. A 20 year technology veteran, Pat joined HP in 1995, served in each of the businesses and held executive positions in sales, marketing, product development and operations. His most recent role there was VP of Sustainability where he developed and ran the company’s global programs garnering numerous awards and innovative firsts in the market. Before HP, he helped launch a successful networking and software company and managed a global device business with an industrial technologies company.

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