Dr. Ash Rofail
Chief Executive Officer
Ash has a broad executive background leading technology, strategy and overall management for corporations. Ash served as Chief Technology Officer for User Technology Associates, a $100 M software consultancy with over 1000 employees. Ash was responsible for setting technology strategy and technical leadership. Ash has provided strategic technical vision for several successful and innovative products as Chief Architect for Best Software (acquired by Sage), Product Architect for Solomon/Great Plains (acquired by Microsoft), and State of the Art Software (acquired by Sage). Ash is a thought leader in enterprise software as a member of Microsoft's Visual Basic advisory board since 1997; patent holder for artificial intelligence technology; author of 6 software engineering books on topics such as XML, .NET, COM/DCOM, building n-Tier Applications and Service Oriented Architectures; and Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Business. Ash holds a PhD Artificial Intelligence and MS Computer Science.
Mark Guirgis
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Guirgis brings to Santeon more than 22 years experience in finance, treasury, M&A and capital markets transactions. Most recently, Mr. Guirgis served as Treasurer and Vice President, Planning & Analysis at Primus Telecommunications Group, Incorporated (“Primus”), a $1.3 billon facilities-based provider of integrated communications services, where he spent more than 12 years. During his tenure at Primus, Mr. Guirgis helped the company grow from $400 million in revenues to more than $1.3 billion in revenues in less than 4 years through a combination of acquisitions and organic growth. In addition, Mr. Guirgis was part of the core management team that raised more than $2 billion in debt and equity, in both the public and private capital markets, over twelve years. He was responsible for a number of operational and strategic finance projects that were critical to Primus’ success. Prior to his time at Primus, he worked at MCI Communications Corp. for six years as Manager of Consolidations Planning & Financial Analysis. Mr. Guirgis has a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Investments from The George Washington University in Washington, DC and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from The State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Wessam Micheal
Chief Operations Officer
As a key member of the Santeon executive management team, Wessam oversees the corporate operation and strategic growth and investments in the European and North Africa region. For over 17 years, Wessam has been a thought leader in process improvement and optimization holding several key management positions at fortune 500 companies. As one of the key executive managers at Schneider Electric Egypt Wessam was responsible for process optimization and efficiency throughout the production and various business lines achieving outstanding results; managing the business growth in both the local market as well as the export markets. Prior to joining Schneider Electric, Wessam held various management positions at Xerox Cooperation including his role of Lean Six Sigma Deployment Manager and Black Belt. During his tenure at Xerox, Wessam transformed and optimized several processes in various business practices and areas. Wessam received his bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering then completed his MBA from the American University in Cairo (AUC). Wessam is a regionally recognized expert in process improvement as one of only few Six Sigma “Black Belt” trainers. Wessam teaches process efficiency at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and other training organizations.
Dr. Ahmed Sidky
Executive Vice President, Agile Services Delivery
Along with many years of experience in software development, Ahmed Sidky has a Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in value-based process frameworks for effective agile adoption. Ahmed’s work has gained popularity and respect in the agile community as a pragmatic approach for organizations of all sizes attempting to adopt agile. Ahmed is frequently referred to as, Dr. Agile, on account of developing a free online agile readiness assessment tool named Doctor Agile (www.doctoragile.com). He is a frequent speaker at numerous national and international agile conferences as well as the co-author of a new book on practical agile adoption titled Becoming Agile.
Jeff Nielsen
Vice President, Software and Solutions
Jeff Nielsen is Vice President of Software and Solutions at Santeon, where he alternates consulting for client organizations with leading our software development teams. Jeff has over 20 years of hands-on software development expertise, and has extensive experience building, coaching, and managing high-performance, agile development teams.
Jeff spent three years as Head of Engineering at TrapWire Inc., overseeing over 50 high-quality production releases of the company's flagship product. Prior to joining TrapWire, Jeff served as Executive Vice President at Stelligent, and Vice President/Client Executive at Command Information/Digital Focus. He pioneered Digital Focus's use of agile methods in early 2001 and was the driving force in their establishment as an industry-leading agile development consultancy. He has worked with a number of different organizations to successfully improve their software processes--from startups to multibillion-dollar international firms.
Sherif Abushadi
Vice President, Business Process Management Products and Solutions
Sherif brings over 15 years of process-driven solution design, development, delivery and training experience to Santeon. He has a diverse background leading teams, collaborating with customers and designing solutions in both the commercial and federal space as a lead architect, consultant, small business owner and adjunct professor. As lead architect of a $12 M project for the Department of Education, Sherif developed a domain specific language for efficiently expressing case management business logic to reduce thousands of pages of documentation into a dozen diagrams that helped drive the solution towards completion. In preparation for the 2004 election, Sherif lead the design and development of the nations largest-ever grassroots voter registration management system, funded with $20 M to automate the collection, analysis (including custom fraud detection algorithms) and reporting of millions of voter records collected by hundreds of organizations across the US. Sherif very much enjoys sharing what he knows with others, whether in groups of 5 or 50, students or software professionals. He holds a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario and enjoys playing a fast game of pool or strumming a growling acoustic guitar on the weekends.
Tom Tillman
General Manager - eBenefits Network
Tom joined Santeon in 2010. He is a seasoned executive with over 25 years of experience in Information Technology and Telecommunications, including 13 years marketing and managing HR, benefits and payroll software and services. Tom recently served as Director of Product Marketing for Employer Solutions at Sage Software in St. Petersburg, Fla. Prior to joining Sage in 1997, Tom served in various marketing and product management director roles at Racal Data Communications in Sunrise, Fla. Tom earned a bachelor’s degree in business management information systems from Florida State University, and an MBA from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, FL. Tom also holds a PHR (Professional in Human Resources) certification.
