Jim Melillo, Co-Founder and Chairman
Mr. Melillo co-founded Executive Conversation and has both management and Program Executive responsibilities. He is responsible for the ongoing development of new and advanced program content. Prior to joining Executive Conversation Mr. Melillo was CFO and director of NPI where he built it into the largest Pizza Hut franchisee in the world and took the franchisee public. Previously Mr. Melillo was in Strategic Planning and Technology Acquisitions at Marion Merrill Dow where he was involved in structuring and negotiating licenses or joint ventures. Mr. Melillo is a highly regarded consultant and lecturer in both business and educational environments. Mr. Melillo holds an MBA from Columbia University; a MA in Economics from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in Philosophy from Sarah Lawrence.
Suzanne Sheppard, Co-Founder and Director
Ms. Sheppard co-founded Executive Conversation and is responsible for managing the strategic direction of the company. Ms. Sheppard's belief that sales professionals must understand the impact that one has on a customer's business represents the core driver behind the company's formation. Dedicating her professional career to creating long term, mutually profitable relationships, Ms. Sheppard's distinguished sales career ranged from Xerox Corporation to Eastman Kodak to IBM's (former) ROLM division where she excelled at managing enterprise customers. Ms. Sheppard holds a BA in Sociology from Ithaca College.
Greg Stephens, Director
Mr. Stephens has over 25 years of software industry experience with nworks and Hewlett-Packard Company. He was founder and president of nworks, growing it from an enterprise management consultancy and training services provider in 1994 to a worldwide provider of virtualization management software for the HP OpenView and Microsoft SystemCenter ecosystems. He guided nworks sale to Veeam in June 2008 and served as an Executive Vice President of Veeam through February 2009. Prior to founding nworks, Mr. Stephens spent ten years at Hewlett-Packard in R&D and HP Consulting implementing HP OpenView solutions for customers in the Western US. He also worked as a computer scientist for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He holds a BS in Business Management Information Systems from California State University, Sacramento.
Bob James, Director
As Vice President, Alliance Marketing Division, AT&T Global Information Solutions Mr. James was head of the sales and marketing team that developed reseller channels for all of AT&T's computer hardware and software products in the United States. He built an organization that achieved cumulative annual sales growth of more than 50% a year, reaching annual sales in excess of $1 billion. Earlier in his career, he was Treasurer of NCR Corp. and subsequently led the Fortune 100 company's product marketing function for all products. He was also CEO of an entrepreneurial startup focused on office automation and continues to serve as Director of two reseller companies. Mr. James received an MBA from Ohio State University and studied Economics at Wittenberg University.
Conrad L. Smith, Director
After achieving distinction as a leader in a career with the U.S. Navy, Mr. Smith moved into the private sector and rose rapidly through the corporate ranks. At James River, a multi-national paper and packaging corporation, Mr. Smith was VP of Operations, responsible for operations and sales within the $1.7 billion packaging business. He was point person for buying decisions on a $50 million project to streamline in-line production processes, representing the single largest investment any company had ever made in packaging technology. Mr. Smith was also Systems Analyst in the Space Systems Group of General Electric, where he managed the deployment and operations of national security assets. He holds an MBA from Webster University, an MS in Computer Sciences from Virginia Tech and received a BS in Engineering and Mathematics from the U.S. Naval Academy.