Annual Conference 2008 Speakers

Aileen Cahill co-authored the transformative marketing text used by leading MBA programs, Internet Marketing: Building Advantage in a Networked Economy, which presents a customer-focused framework for integrating marketing both online and offline. She is a classically trained brand marketer from the Fortune 500 and Customer Relationship Management pioneer who founded the Pepper + Rogers Group consulting division. Aileen is currently an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the University of Southern Maine and the Founder and Managing Partner of the integrated marketing services firm Customer Ergonomics. Her MBA in marketing is from Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Experimental Psychology from the State University of New York at Binghamton (SUNY Binghamton).

John Dorrer is an economist and research administrator focused on workforce development, human capital and labor market policies at the state and region level. He is responsible for overseeing the State of Maine’s statistical systems for measuring employment, unemployment and labor market developments including forecasting skill requirements and workforce needs.

Prior to joining the Maine Department of Labor, he served as Deputy Director, Workforce Development at the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington, DC where he consulted with America’s largest cities and states in areas of workforce and economic development. He has consulted for the U.S Department of Labor on workforce information systems development and has performed a number of international consulting assignments for groups such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

He spent 20 years in Maine as senior vice president of Training and Development Corporation, a non-profit organization focused on workforce and regional development and has served as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maine and is invited to speak frequently on Maine workforce issues and labor market dynamics.

Arthur Fink is a consultant specializing in usability, user interface design, and involving users in the system design process. He also has broad experience implementing database applications for order processing, insurance, hospital messaging, material requirements planning, church management, and other areas, and a reputation as an expert in the Progress database system. An independent consultant for the last 28 years, he had previously managed an international consulting group for General Electric Information Systems, a marketing communications department, and a training group. He's known internationally as a speaker and trainer, offering such talks as Computer Assertiveness Training and Being Lazy and Absent-minded ... and a Great System Developer, and has also been an expert witness testifying in cases where software development projects have gone astray. Currently he is working on the user interface for a hospital messaging and communications system. Arthur has another life as a dance photographer, which shows his committment to listening and looking very carefully.

As founder and CTO, Peter has led Quantrix from its concept stage through development of the commercial application used today in more than 50 countries.  Previously, Peter was CTO of Subx, a company that developed Java applications. Prior to Subx, he served the B-to-B Seafood Exchange Gofish.com as their CTO, successfully aligning their technology plan with their business goals.

Peter was also founder & CEO of New England Internet Services (NEIS), an early ISP and consulting organization, which was acquired by CommTel in 1999. Prior to NEIS, Peter was lead engineer at Lighthouse Design, where he led the development of Quantrix for the NeXTSTEP operating system. Peter graduated from Stanford University with a degree in symbolic systems and artificial intelligence.

Peter was named CxO of the Year for 2008 by TechMaine for his contributions to the local software industry. 

Todd Paige is the founder of Pet Health Network, a company dedicated to helping veterinarians improve client compliance and education for better patient health and wellness care.

Mr. Paige is a marketing and communications professional with over 15 years of experience in the veterinary industry, including early-stage businesses and new products.

Before starting Pet Health Network, Mr. Paige was at IDEXX Laboratories, where he served for two different periods. In the more recent, five-year period he managed the IDEXX brands through his leadership of the marketing and communications department while also leading integrated, quarterly planning of 12 lines of business comprising the Companion Animal Group.

Mr. Paige's first tenure at IDEXX started in 1989 while it was an early-stage biotech company with revenues of less than $20MM. During this first IDEXX experience, he built the in-house marketing communications team, led a team in operations to establish a statistical control process, managed overseas brand development while expatriated to France, assisted in the IPO process, developed and implemented a first-ever SPC program in operations, and led many company-wide initiatives.

Before returning to IDEXX, Mr. Paige spent two years at Biopure where, as manager of communications, he supported the commercialization of a revolutionary blood substitute and an IPO. From 1987-1989, he founded and developed a five-person advertising agency.

Mr. Paige holds a BA from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and various certificates of completion for executive education courses, including the Harvard Executive Program, Brand Matters. He lives in Maine with his wife, two children and two black labs.

Robert Sansone is the chief Human Resources executive for Tyler Technologies, a software development company with more than 400 of its 1,900 employees based in Maine. He is responsible for developing and implementing policies and practices that enable the company to attract and retain employees in a wide range of geographic markets. Mr. Sansone has been in this role with Tyler and its predecessor company, MUNIS, for 14 years.       

 Mr. Sansone has thirty years of experience in human resources management. Prior to joining Tyler, he worked for ABB/ Combustion Engineering, Inc. as Vice President, Human Resources for the Environmental Services Division in Portland, Maine, and as Director, Corporate Compensation in Stamford, Connecticut. He earned a B.A. in Psychology from Villanova University.

Tobey started Gilchrist Scott, Ltd. in New York City in 1988 focusing on a wide array of accounting software solutions and network technologies. With a desire for a family focused quality of life, he and his family searched for the perfect spot and found it in Cape Elizabeth, Maine in 1990. Prior to venturing off on his own, Tobey received his Masters in Business Administration from Pace University in NYC and was a Senior Consultant with Arthur Young Consulting.

Gilchrist Scott Ltd, based in Portland, Maine since 1990, is a Microsoft Certified Partner working in the Microsoft Business Solutions arena. We are focused exclusively on helping our clients succeed in the businesses using Microsoft Dynamics GP, formerly Great Plains Dynamics, and the multitude of solutions designed to work alongside it.

Mike Werner is a Platform Strategy Advisor for Microsoft’s developer and cloud-services technologies. Mr. Werner recently rejoined Microsoft in this roll to accelerate Microsoft’s impact with major enterprise customers, industry partners, and the innovation ecosystem to identify and promote opportunities surrounding the Azure Services Platform.

Prior to this role, Mr. Werner spent the previous two years advising and meeting with technology companies, internet elite and enterprise customers as well as traversing the developer and entrepreneur communities across the country. Mike also was an Executive in Residence with Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, Massachusetts working on IT, Cloud and Internet investments. Mike was at Microsoft Corporation from 1990 to 2006 in a variety of strategic roles in Redmond, Silicon Valley and Boston, where he most recently was responsible for Microsoft’s Venture Capital and Emerging Business in New England focused on investment, M&A, IP and product team integration with venture-backed businesses.

Mike spent seven years in the Microsoft field where he built and established the Microsoft Technology Centers in Silicon Valley and Boston. Mike also led high performance marketing and enterprise sales teams which focused on driving Microsoft server and tools revenue and deployment in Fortune 100 accounts. Throughout his tenure in Redmond, he worked on many parts of the business, with an emphasis on platform and developer oriented technologies.

Mike is known as Microsoft’s ‘father of developer community’ where he built some of the industry’s most successful developer programs and brands, including the Microsoft Developer Network, which has supported millions of developers and entrepreneurs worldwide.

Mike is a frequent speaker and panel participant at industry and academic events in the New England area.