Scott currently leads the 1ERP manufacturing and logistics team of highly-skilled enterprise application analysts supporting his company’s digital transformation initiatives. Scott’s team is actively aligned in supporting the migration of SAP S/4HANA into the NGC landscape, building this foundational platform that includes integration into PLM and MES (PEO) applications.

Scott is a seasoned professional with over 30 years of experience and has a broad-based knowledge in many aspects of manufacturing and supply chain disciplines, product commodities, and system architypes.

Scott holds a bachelor of science in liberal studies from Athens State University and currently lives in the Madison Alabama area with his lovely wife Cheryl.

As vice president of digital supply chain and business network solution management for SAP NS2, Naveen Agarwal is responsible for managing all aspects of solution management for SAP’s entire portfolio of supply chain and business network solutions. He leads a team of experts focused on building supply chain and business network solutions for customers with advanced security requirements. He has a strong understanding of both the business and cloud security requirements across all the supply chain solutions – planning, procurement, manufacturing, logistics, asset management, and service.

Naveen started working for SAP since 2003 in value engineering focusing on supply chain solutions for manufacturing industries that included aerospace and defense. He served as head of value engineering at SAP regulated industries from 2010–2014. After serving in various leadership roles in multiple supply chain start-ups, Naveen rejoined SAP in 2018 as VP of supply chain solutions at SAP NS2.

Naveen holds a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, and a masters in operations research from Case Western Reserve University. He also has a second masters in logistics from MIT.

Chris Avery is a senior director of IT at General Atomics in San Diego, CA. Chris is currently responsible for IT solutions, applications, and enterprise architecture, as well as a co-lead for the Business Process Council – a governing body designed to help manage and prioritize the IT work across the enterprise. Chris is also the co-chair on the SAP customer advisory council for the aerospace and defense industry. Chris has 20 years of functional and technical experience in the information technology and aerospace and defense industries, having worked at Westland Helicopters, Raytheon Technologies, UTC Aerospace Systems (Goodrich), Bell Helicopter, NORDAM, Halliburton, and Lockheed Martin. Chris holds a bachelor of science degree from Aston University and a master of science degree in technology management from Manchester University in the UK.

Tami is a global technology leader with over 35 years of experience in product innovations, go-to-market strategies, customer and partner programs, and transformational business models. She joined SAP in 1994 and has held roles in SAP services, software engineering, and sales, and she currently serves as the head of global RISE programs. Her focus is transitioning the company’s more than 60,000 legacy core and line-of-business application customers to the cloud. Tami works in close collaboration with our partners to ensure we meet our customer’s strategic business outcomes while moving them towards a clean ERP core and persistent innovation. She lives in Denver, CO, with her husband, Steve, and their three dogs.

Damian has more than 20 years of SAP experience in aerospace and defense (A&D), delivering digital technology solutions for Pratt & Whitney’s business units and partners. Damian is currently leading a digital transformation project at one of Pratt & Whitney’s logistics centers in Oklahoma City.

Damian’s professional experience within the A&D industry includes supply chain logistics, materials management, configuration, mobility, and partner integration. Damian has a passion for working with his business partners and team to deliver unique and innovative solutions every day.

Damian graduated from the University of Connecticut with a degree in computer science and engineering. He currently resides in Connecticut with his wife and two children.

Dave is an energetic and creative industry advisor with over 25 years of diverse experience in fast-paced aerospace and defense environments. He has a passion for developing, coaching, and educating executives and stakeholders to continuously improve their best practice strategies. A hands-on collaborator and effective communicator, Dave strives to assist people to make informed decisions. His experience spans roles in engineering, cost account management, supply chain logistics, manufacturing, assembly, test and integration, tooling, equipment, and DCMA customer liaison representation, as well as other critical project manufacturing-related responsibilities.

Mary Brigden is the AVP of enterprise sales, leading the federal vertical for DocuSign. Mary is an enterprise software veteran, leading organizations in the ERP, business intelligence, AI, and data management space. She has held senior leadership roles at Oracle, SAP, and Verizon. Mary started her career as a naval flight officer and is a commander in the Naval Reserves with over 3,000 hours in the EC-130 aircraft. She received her BS in engineering from the US Naval Academy and an MS in information systems management from George Washington University.

Alok Buch is an IT solutions director at General Atomics, San Diego, CA. Alok is currently responsible for all IT solutions and applications, and architecture for the manufacturing, sustainment, quality, and logistics value stream. Alok also leads SAP’s next generation architecture and SAP S/4HANA transformation strategy for General Atomics. Alok has 20 years of IT experience, mostly in the aerospace and defense sector architecting and deploying integrated solutions across PLM, ERP, MES, and manufacturing IoT landscape with SAP and non-SAP applications. 

Cliff Burton is the sales lead North America at Plataine. Cliff Burton is an experienced technology leader in the enterprise technology and composites industry. He has 20 years of experience in software, international business, customer relationship management, and sales operations. He strives to move enterprise organizations from visualizing the art of the possible to execution in their business. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Campbell University and a MBA from Colorado State University.

Ryan Chandler is the ERP PMO director for Northrop Grumman, responsible for managing the ERP portfolio, including demand management, financial planning and budgeting, suppliers, project standards, and overall governance. He has been with Northrop Grumman since 2001, and throughout the years, held various positions of increasing responsibility in project management, operations, and program management. Ryan stepped away from ERP for a few years and leveraged his strong program management background, supporting a large Northrop Grumman acquisition, and most recently, led the implementation of Workday to all of Northrop Grumman.

Ryan’s analytical thought process and methodical way of working stems from his earlier days at Michigan State as a packaging engineering student. His first job out of college landed him as a Packaging Engineer at a poultry company, which was implementing SAP at the time. He spent two years there, and eventually joined the aerospace and defense industry with Northrop Grumman as an SAP procurement analyst. He loved his summer days growing up in southwest Michigan, frequenting the shores of Lake Michigan, but turned them in to go east. Ryan now resides in Maryland, married to his wife of 20 years, where they are raising their three daughters.

Tom Chapin is the public sector lead for OpenText's enterprise presales organization. He is a former Navy F/A-18 Hornet pilot and 24-year retired Navy reserve captain. After 10 years of active duty flying, Tom transitioned to consulting public and private sector clients while being employed by System Planning Corporation, Whitney, Bradley & Brown, Inc, OpenText, Ernst & Young, and IBM Global Services. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Tufts University (Psychology) and a Master of Science from the University of Texas at Austin (Science and Technology Commercialization). He is a former adjunct professor of enterprise content management at the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University. His current assignment with OpenText's enterprise presales team is assisting account executives and solution consultants understand the unique business needs of public sector customers.

Michael Cisek (pronounced Chiz-ik) is a senior associate at AeroDynamic Advisory, a boutique management consulting firm specializing in aerospace and aviation.

During his time in consulting, Mike has supported and managed many different projects to assist a global set of OEMs, MROs, and investors covering corporate strategy development and execution, acquisition search and transaction support, market analysis, economic development, and customer satisfaction. His primary focus has been in military production and MRO activity.

Michael holds a bachelor of science from the US Naval Academy and an MBA from The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Matthew joined the SAP practice of HCLTech in 2018 and is the principal aerospace and defense (A&D) business architect, providing consulting and program support for complex business transformation initiatives. Matthew is a technology executive with over 35 years of broad operational experience in A&D. He is known as an innovative, visionary, and articulate leader who enjoys the role of change agent. He has both functional and leadership experience in engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, manufacturing engineering, flight operations, program management, and IT. In his career, Matthew has successfully managed numerous large aircraft and technology-related programs as well as many business processes and IT-related improvement initiatives.

John has spent the past 20 years utilizing a variety of improvement techniques to facilitate change and generate improved financial performance for a variety of companies. Whether implementing Theory of Constraints, Lean, TQM, or sales and operation planning; leveraging technology to provide a competitive advantage; or simply changing metrics to change the focus, John has demonstrated the ability to look beyond the obvious to ensure the right tools and techniques are used to ensure long term success. John is committed to ensuring that a deeper understanding and stronger foundation are left behind in any project or program in which he is involved.

John is currently working as the leader of the master scheduling and demand planning organizations at Spirit, working to transform the front end of the supply chain to provide better signals for better performance and increased customer satisfaction.

John’s professional experience includes positions as cost accountant, controller, director of planning and IT and director of logistics for Polytainers, Vanguard Piping Systems, and Viega, and as a TOC consultant working with clients in aerospace, oil and gas, and manufacturing for Pinnacle Strategies. He holds a business degree from the University of Kansas, is a CSCP and CPIM instructor for APICS, and holds CLM, CDDP, and CSCA certifications from ISCEA. John has also served as President of InFocuS, the North American Industrial and Financial Systems (IFS) users’ group and has presented at several IFS world conferences and is currently serving the Wichita ASCM(APICS) chapter as the president.

Paulina was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She graduated with a bachelor's of science in industrial engineering from the University of Texas at El Paso. Paulina began her career in Lockheed Martin in 2017 and has worked in four business areas within the company including aeronautics, rotary missions systems, space, and currently in enterprise operations as the supplier enablement lead for the multi-year supply chain transformation. Paulina is currently pursuing her masters of science in engineering technology from Purdue University. Outside of work, Paulina enjoys travelling with friends, hiking, and spending time with her dog Lilo.

Chris Dorsey is responsible for the successful development and implementation of the company’s IT strategy in alignment with its business goals and objectives. Dorsey has over 20 years of IT experience ranging tom help desk support to virtualization technology.

Prior to joining the Vertex team, he worked for the Northrop Grumman Corporation where he held multiple leadership positions, including director of virtualization; infrastructure services director, engineering and manufacturing director; client, mobility, and print services director; and service delivery senior director. Dorsey also worked at Dell Technologies and Celera Genomics, where he assisted with the supercomputing to help map the human genome.

In addition to his technical experience, Dorsey spent 10 years in the U.S. Navy where he served as plane captain on the F-14 Tomcat and as an aviation electrician, aviation warfare systems operator and rescue swimmer on the H60 Blackhawk. Dorsey holds many technical certifications including VMware VCP, Microsoft Certified Engineer, and Citrix Certified Engineer. Chris has earned his bachelor of science in information technology from University of Phoenix and a master of business administration from the University of Maryland.

As part of the SAP Business Technology Platform center of excellence, Colin represents a breadth of solutions within the SAP portfolio. He is an evangelist for the SAP digital transformation strategy and vision, as well as a passionate advocate for the value and best practices of corporate customer data strategy and analytics capability maturity. He has held a variety of technical and strategic consulting roles at a number of market leading enterprise software vendors, gaining extensive experience over a 25-year period working with many of the world’s leading corporations.

With 32 years of IT experience and 19 years of SAP experience, Chris has a strong functional background across procurement, manufacturing, finance, estimating, learning, and change leadership. Having more than 25 years of proven success with application development for in-house and software as a service (SaaS) system implementations, operations, and maintenance, Chris has proven her ability to infuse strategy, new technology, and process simplification into the day-to-day (tactical) working environment via thought leadership and active listening.

As the director of SAP center of excellence, Chris manages around 350 SAP skilled resources for support enterprise, business areas, international strategy, and daily operations. She was also responsible for the development of multiple enterprise offerings including SAP Solution Manager, eGRC, eIDM, vulnerability and security team, SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA core team, UX, and SAP sandboxes. Her work scope includes managing all basis, basis security, database administration SAP work for corporations, partnership with SAP, and the enterprise supply chain management IT systems including experience with supply chain bolt-on systems, Exostar, and SAP integration.

Chris graduated from Siena College, Albany, NY with a bachelor of science in business administration and finance in 1986.

Kevin Hunt was named the chief information officer in March 2020. He is responsible for setting the objectives and strategies for the global IT department, selecting and implementing suitable technologies to streamline all internal operations and helping optimize their strategic benefits.

Kevin joined Spirit in 2007 from the United States Air Force (USAF) after 12 years as a prior enlisted communications officer. He served in many diverse roles in the USAF: as a machinist running IT networks and managing air traffic control systems; serving as an executive officer performing intelligence analysis.

Since joining Spirit as an IT security manager, Kevin has held numerous other positions in IT, security, fabrication, program management, manufacturing, operations, and supply chain.

Kevin earned his bachelor’s degree in computer science from California State University at Fullerton and has an MBA from Webster University.

He is very active with youth sports and volunteers his time with multiple organizations in the community. He and his wife Michelle have three children.

Esther has over 17 years of experience implementing SAP, primarily focused on aerospace and defense with on-premises and cloud solutions and integrations. She spent time at leading A&D companies including Goodrich Aerospace, United Technologies Corporation, and General Atomics. At Cognitus, recent digital transformation projects to SAP S/4HANA include Danbury Mission Technologies, VACCO Industries – a subsidiary of ESCO Technologies, and L3Harris.

Esther graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor of science in business administration with an emphasis on information systems in 2002.

Carmen Krueger leads SAP’s U.S. regulated industries practice, which encompasses federal, state, and local government, as well as the higher education, aerospace and defense, healthcare, and utilities industries. She is responsible for leading strategy, business operations, revenue performance, customer relationships, and overall customer satisfaction throughout the United States.

Carmen has been with SAP since 2005 and returned to the regulated industries space after several global roles at SAP, most recently as the chief operating officer for the newly created marketing and solutions board area. Prior to this role, she ran the North America Center of Excellence, delivering product expertise and demand generation for SAP S/4HANA, SAP S/4HANA Finance, SAP Business Technology Platform, SAP Digital Supply Chain, SAP Human Experience Management, and Intelligent Spend Management. Carmen also led the North American enterprise sales organization for Qualtrics, where she was responsible for the geographies within North America as well as the government and healthcare verticals.

Previously, Carmen served as the chief operating officer for the North America east market unit, and as the first General Manager of the SAP NS2 cloud line of business, where she was responsible for cloud operations, delivery, go-to-market, and revenue. Carmen started her software career at Siebel Systems after serving in the United States Navy JAG Corps. She resides in Virginia with her husband, two sons, and their dog.

Lou is a seasoned manufacturing professional with over 25 years of experience both in industry and in consulting, where he advises the world’s top companies on the subjects of manufacturing strategy, supply chain, and smart manufacturing. Currently, he is a principal at Deloitte and holds various positions across the firm’s supply chain and industrial products practices.

He has spent most of his career focused on the automotive, aerospace, and industrial products sectors in roles across operations, quality, and complex program management. His area of expertise is the optimization of complex supply chains extending from product development through operations and delivery. He leads smart factory efforts at original equipment manufacturers to improve near-term performance and step change transformation across the entire value chain.

Leonard Maganza is the chief customer officer at Syniti where he helps large enterprises in all industries manage their most critical asset – their data.

He joined Syniti as the company’s fifteenth employee. During his tenure of over twenty years, he’s held various roles including leading sales and consulting services in the Americas where he helped shape the direction and expertise of the company’s now more than 1,000 delivery experts. He has been a driving force in establishing Syniti as the premier partner for complex data migration and governance initiatives at some of the world’s largest enterprises.

Leonard has a deep understanding of how businesses operate at the commercial and transactional level, and a unique ability to translate the language of IT into clear business purpose and outcomes. Prior to working in the enterprise information management space, he spent five years implementing ERP systems and 10 years as a certified public accountant. A Brooklyn native, he currently resides in Texas.

Glenn McDonald is a principal at AeroDynamic Advisory, a consultancy focused on the aerospace and aviation markets. Glenn supports projects covering corporate strategy development and execution, acquisition search and transaction support, market analysis, economic development, and regulatory analysis and development. His primary focus has been in program forecasting, aerospace supply chain, sustainability, and Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO). He graduated from the University of Michigan with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aerospace engineering.

John is an experienced in management consulting and enterprise solutions. Before SAP, John was a senior manager in Deloitte Consulting's strategy and operations practice. John supported global manufacturers, A&D companies, process and industrial companies, and other clients in areas of supply chain and business model transformation. His project experience included consulting engagements in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Previously, John was a management consultant with BearingPoint until that company was acquired by Deloitte.

Before embarking on management consulting career, John served 20 years as an active-duty U.S. Army officer. He separated from the military as a lieutenant colonel. His defense related work included strategic planning, defense industrial base management, supply chain, and logistics. He held global tours of duty in Europe and the Middle East as well as an assignment in the military headquarters, Pentagon.

John earned a BA in economics from Vassar College as well as a MBA degree from the University of Maryland (Robert H. Smith School of Business). He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (resident course). He holds a graduate level certificate in international security from the Harvard University Extension School.

He lives with his family in Monument, Colorado.

His specialties include value advisory, business process transformation, supply chain management, ERP, logistics and distribution, and cost modeling.

Jeff Miller is a managing director with Accenture's aerospace and defense practice, where he is responsible for strategic growth, new market expansion, and sustained value creation for Accenture’s aerospace and defense clients. He has over 35 years of DOD and defense industry experience with specific expertise in large-scale business and digital transformation.

Prior to Accenture, Jeff served 10 years as a Navy supply corps officer. He holds a BA in history from The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, and an MBA in finance from The George Washington University.

For more than 20 years, Narjinder has worked with supply chains in various industries to improve processes and optimize performance, leveraging technology.

Consulting and implementing supply chain optimization solutions, Narjinder has brought significant value to his customers’ bottom line via enhancing demand management, inventory optimization, customer delivery improvement, and improving supply chain visibility.

Currently, he works as the director of cloud supply chain solutions at SAP National Security Services (SAP NS2), continuously bringing their secure, world-class set of supply chain technologies to A&D customers.

He holds a master’s degree in industrial engineering from Purdue University, Indiana, and is passionate about learning every day.

Greg has more than 27 years of SAP experience in enterprise application software operations management, sales, business development, marketing, product management, and professional services. Greg earned the prestigious honor of SAP’s top performer status more than 10 times, in more than seven roles throughout his career. Greg is currently vice president of sales for the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry segment in the US, working with the largest commercial and defense clients as well as their extended supply chain. His team is responsible for all sales of both on-premises and cloud-related software, and commercial arrangements within the A&D client base. Greg has the responsibility to develop the vision, strategy, and operational plan for the entire A&D sales team while ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction, and consistent financial performance.

Greg was the global account executive for strategic industries responsible for direct sales and overall relationships of A&D accounts. He worked on numerous large-scale aerospace and defense customers spanning commercial, defense, and MRO-related organizations, and was responsible for all commercial agreements related to licensing sales.

Prior to these roles, Greg had roles in operations management, solution management, presales, and implementation consulting during his tenure at SAP. He has strong domain expertise in SAP’s ERP solutions and has extensive knowledge of SAP’s A&D industry solutions.

Greg earned his MBA from Drexel University in Philadelphia, with a focus on accounting, and he graduated from Villanova University with a degree in finance. He currently resides in the Philadelphia area with his wife and five children.

Jose Rocha is the leader of PwC’s “Solution Studio”, an organization that is responsible for co-innovation with SAP and other cloud technologies. He is also an active advisor for digital transformation for several SAP A&D customers ranging from Tier 1 Defense OEM’s to new space sector innovators. Jose co-invented visualization software and remains curious and creative about software innovations and implementation. Jose lives locally in Southern California and is a University of California, Los Angeles, or UCLA, alumnus.

Tarek has been with SAP for 11 years as senior account executive within SAP Strategic Customer Program, focused on the aerospace and defense industry.

Michalene Schechter is the SAP platform architect for Accenture’s internal global IT organization, where she manages the product and capability strategy that supports finance technology. She collaborates across the global IT organization, with the business, with the Accenture go-to-market consulting team, and with product vendors to identify and architect solutions that provide value to the business and showcase Accenture global IT as Accenture’s first, best case study for innovation.

Michalene was the solution architect for Accenture’s SAP journey to SAP S/4HANA and continues to support clients in their SAP journeys as a subject matter expert. Previously, she was part of Accenture’s SAP consulting practice, including more than five years working with aerospace and defense customers. She is based in Washington, DC.

Will is a senior director and currently leads the SAP center of excellence for Northrop Grumman.

Will has been with Northrop Grumman for 16 years where he has led the ERP manufacturing and supply chain service lines prior to taking over the entire SAP center of excellence. Before joining Northrop Grumman, Will was a consultant for 11 years with both Accenture and Deloitte.

Will holds a master of science degree from University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and a bachelor of science degree from Iowa State University.

Pranay has more than 25 years of global experience, focusing on supply chain domain and in various industries to improve processes and optimize performance by leveraging technology.

He has a strong understanding of both the business and cloud security requirement across all the sourcing and procurement solutions. He has completed several source-to-settle and procure-to-pay process transformation initiatives for Fortune Global 500 companies, enabled by SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Ariba, SAP Fieldglass, and non-SAP technologies (Coupa, Icertis, OpenText).

Currently, he works as the director of ISBN (SAP Ariba) solutions at SAP National Security Services (SAP NS2), continuously bringing their secure, world-class set of supply chain technologies to A&D customers. Before joining SAP NS2, he worked for Deloitte, Infosys, and Norfolk Southern.

He is Six Sigma Black Belt certified, an APICS Certified Supply Chain Professional (CSCP), and PMP certified.

Mitchell Smith is the composite technology and sustainability leader at Middle River Aerostructure Systems (ST Engineering), bringing over 30 years of advanced composite materials, design, and manufacturing experience over a broad range of markets, materials, and processes. He specializes in composite materials, design, and manufacturing. Mr. Smith is experienced in leading a team of engineers that develop new materials and process technologies for aerospace structures, supporting engines, nacelles, and aerostructures. He holds a BSME in mechanical engineering from Boston University.

Matt, the president and CEO of VACCO Industries, is a visionary leader with more than 20 years of experience in the aerospace industry. He's the mastermind behind a global organization with over 475 employees and a proven track record of dynamic growth. With balanced expertise in OEM/aftermarket and commercial/military, Matt has climbed the ranks from contracts to general management. Now, as the head of VACCO Industries, Matt is steering the ship towards continued success with full P&L responsibility, leading the organization to new heights of growth and profit improvement.

Kerri is a dedicated, passionate leader who believes in meeting people where they are to inspire, motivate, and achieve radically positive transformation. As senior vice president and general manager of SAP Business Technology Platform, or SAP BTP, North America, Kerri is responsible for driving all facets of the NA cloud-based platform business, including software sales across all customer segments, evolving and executing on go-to-market strategy, developing talent, expanding sales channels, and cultivating a strong partner ecosystem. Kerri’s team enables SAP customers to leverage the power of a single, connected platform with cutting-edge cloud solutions while tapping into real-time data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and analytics.

Kerri’s performance record has driven teams to decades of exceptional sales results, top tier employee feedback, and high customer satisfaction. Since joining SAP in 2007, Kerri has held a variety of industry core and line-of-business roles across software sales, services, and support. Kerri leads with a deep understanding of customer challenges, bringing a unique perspective with more than a decade of consulting experience, in addition to her tenure in software sales. From initial problem solving through the sale and beyond to adoption and consumption, Kerri is committed to both customer success throughout the entire customer journey and the optimization of a scalable, sustainable platform business.

Based in Chicago, Illinois, Kerri received a degree in computer science and office technology from Illinois State University. She is a leader in several women in leadership groups and maintains a rigorous mentor program for career and life coaching.

Shawn Thudium is currently a lead account partner in the IBM Consulting division of IBM. He was an IBM professional hire from the aerospace industry during the widespread adoption of computer aided design and manufacturing where IBM became a market leader. Always looking for opportunities to improve quality, cost, and productivity, he learned early on the power of CAD/CAM and the efficiencies gained by maintaining a digital thread through the entire process. After joining IBM as a CAD/CAM application specialist he progressed quickly to a role where he led the North America PLM application engineering teams supporting automotive, aerospace, electronics, and industrial products clients. He’s earned numerous leadership awards and was one of the first in IBM to deliver engineering services as IBM evolved from a hardware and software centric business to a complete solution business.

He has over 35 years of experience in delivering solutions to transform product development and manufacturing processes in the aerospace and defense and automotive industries. He has worked with over 150 clients during his career.

A proven change agent and willingness to take on complex business challenges, Shawn’s endless passion continues to be engaging with clients in defining strategy and delivering services and capabilities supporting their business initiatives through a broad range of digital transformation solutions incorporating process automation, data analytics, optimization, and cognitive systems. He currently resides in Wichita, KS with his wife Dwyn.

William VanBuskirk is a senior manager in PwC's product development and manufacturing consulting group. He has led several digitally enabled operations transformations with a focus in aerospace and defense.

Within operations, he has a strong background in manufacturing and Industry 4.0. He has a passion for leading and driving cloud-based transformations that focus on tangible value creation.

He currently resides in Chicago, IL, with his wife and son.

Torsten joined SAP Americas in 2004 and assumed the role of global head of aerospace and defense (A&D) industries in 2015. With over 25 years of experience in consulting, sales, IT, and program management, Torsten brings depth and breadth of experience to the key leadership roles that he has held in the North American A&D segment – to deliver industry cloud solutions that help SAP customers sustainably innovate and grow their businesses, operate safely, and develop their people.

Prior to joining SAP, Torsten spent 12 years with Deloitte, managing several large SAP implementations as well as strategy engagements across different manufacturing industries.

Torsten graduated from the University of Applied Science in Pforzheim, Germany, focusing his academic studies on the areas of international business, organizational design, and information technology.

John Wirthlin is a United States Air Force veteran (1986–1993) and the industry principal for the manufacturing, transportation, and logistics markets where he is responsible for providing forward-thinking, strategically oriented technology recommendations to our clients and partners. John Wirthlin has 30 years of experience in healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, and information technology where he has led multiple strategic initiatives. John Wirthlin is viewed as a trusted advisor to his clients and organizations in which he has served.

Rich is the chief customer officer for SAP NS2, responsible for customer success across the SAP NS2 Secure Data Cloud portfolio. Rich has been with SAP for 19 years, 10 years with SAP supporting supply chain transformation globally with SAP Supply Chain Management and SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization, and the last nine years in SAP NS2, supporting the aerospace and defense industry in various leadership positions, including as the vice president of customer success and head of premium engagements.