BusinessForward

On April 29th Pittsburgh’s top retail CIOs will gather at Sheraton Station Square to discuss the impact of technology on retail.

http://www.pghtech.org/events/default.aspx

The discussion will be moderated by BusinessForward’s John Huckle and the panel will include  Anuj Dhanda of Giant Eagle, Jim Wenner of Sheetz and Paul Yater of GNC,  Please see their bios below:

Anuj Dhanda – Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Giant Eagle Inc.

Anuj Dhanda was recently appointed Chief Information Officer of Giant Eagle Inc. In this role, he is responsible for the firm’s information technology including application development and support, strategic initiatives, corporate infrastructure and architecture. Giant Eagle is ranked 29 on Forbes magazine’s largest private corporations list and is one of the nation’s largest food retailers and distributors with $10 billion in annual sales and over 400 supermarkets, and fuel and convenience stores in western Pennsylvania, north central Ohio, northern West Virginia and Maryland.

Prior to joining Giant Eagle, Dhanda served as the Chief Information Officer for The PNC Financial Services Group. In his 18 years at PNC, Dhanda led a number of business and technology functions leading to his appointment as the PNC Bank CIO in 2005 and the PNC Financial Services Group CIO in 2008.

Dhanda also worked at JPMorgan Chase (formerly Chemical) for six years, where he was Senior Vice President with marketing and strategic planning accountabilities for the Consumer Banking group in New Jersey. Prior to that, he was the Senior Planning Officer in the Technology & Operations Division.

Dhanda serves on the board for Carnegie Museum of Art and is a member of the Advisory Board of Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. In recent years, he has also served as the Chairman of the Board of the Mattress Factory Museum of Contemporary Art, member of the BITS Executive board and the board for United Way of Allegheny County.

Dhanda received his Ph.D. in Management (Finance) and MBA from Rutgers University, New Jersey and his undergraduate degree at University of New Delhi, India.

Jim Wenner – Vice President of  Information Technology, Sheetz, Inc.

Jim joined the Sheetz Information Technology team in June of 1996.  His responsibilities include strategic direction of corporate and store technology, alignment of IT goals with corporate goals and Personnel/Resource/Budgetary planning and execution.

Prior to being the Vice President, he was Director of Programming, where he handled the administration and planning of software programming for corporate systems, Oversight of relationships with main Point of Sale and Back Office vendors as well as support of Distribution Warehouse implementation.

Previously worked in healthcare and defense contracting.

Education – B.S. Computer Science, University of Miami

Board of Directors – Special Olympics of Pennsylvania

Paul Yater  – Senior Vice President and CIO, GNC. 

Paul joined GNC in August of 2013 and leads the information technology function for all business units and more than 8,200 locations, of which more than 6,200 retail locations are in the United States and international franchise operations in 55 countries.

Prior to joining GNC, Paul worked in specialty retail at Dicks’ Sporting Goods for 9 years, where he was vice president of application development.  Prior to that, he served as Director of Supply Chain Systems.  He has previously held roles at Heinz North America, IBM and Deutsch Bank.

Paul received his MBA in Strategy and Information Systems from the University of Pittsburgh, Joseph M. Katz graduate School of Business.  He holds his undergraduate degree from Dickinson College.

John Huckle – Founder and Managing Director, BusinessForward

John founded BusinessForward in 2006 to put empathy and a focus on results back into consulting.  A native Pittsburgher, and Duquesne University graduate, John began his career at Deloitte Consulting and worked for FreeMarkets, now SAP, prior to launching BusinessForward.  Those experiences shaped his belief in the power of consulting to make a positive impact on client’s personal and professional lives.

Across his entire consulting career, John has been privileged to learn and help thousands of individuals and their organizations in government, retail, financial services, and higher education.  In fact, John’s proudest professional accomplishment is the promotion of 75 of his clients.

Under John’s leadership, BusinessForward’s mission to “improve the personal and professional lives of clients, team members, and the communities we serve” has become reality. In just over seven years, BusinessForward has​ helped save $750 M and generate $500 M of new revenue through a unique, customer centric combination of process improvement, organization design and technology enhancements.