Sopheon helps the world’s leading innovators align resources, information, and impact to bring the right ideas and products to life at the right time. Our customers can innovate predictably, going to market faster with a strategically aligned portfolio of products and innovations. Executives and team leaders have the transparency they need to make informed decisions and adapt to changing market conditions. Acclaim Products is Sopheon's product management software, serving as mission control for product people. Acclaim Products tracks product health, prioritizes trade-offs, and informs stakeholders so you don't have to spend hours cobbling information together. 

 Forum Sponsor

Sean Ammirati is a Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Director of the Carnegie Mellon Corporate Startup Lab (CSL) at the Tepper School of Business.

In addition to his work at CMU, Sean is also a Partner at Birchmere Ventures which he joined in 2012. Birchmere focuses on seed-stage SaaS and marketplace startup investments. Prior to joining Birchmere, Sean spent 12 years founding, building, and selling businesses in the software and media industries. He was Chief Operating Officer of ReadWriteWeb, acquired by the private-equity rollup SAY Media to strengthen its technology channel. Prior to that, Sean was the co-founder and CEO of mSpoke, which was LinkedIn's first acquisition. His first startup, Peak Strategy, was acquired by Morgan Stanley.

His first book, The Science of Growth, was released by St Martin's Press in April 2016 and was subsequently translated and published in Korean and Mandarin. Finally, Sean is also the host of one of the most popular podcasts on corporate innovation - Agile Giants which you can find on your favorite podcasting platform.

Lou Musante is an adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business.

In addition to his work at CMU, Lou is also managing partner of Echo Strategies, a consulting boutique focused on research, transformational innovation strategy, engagement, and leadership development. Currently Lou is co-founder of Echo Healthcare DTx, a digital therapeutics startup in the mental health space focused on loneliness and anxiety management,

During his 40+ year career, Lou worked as a corporate entrepreneur and a traditional serial entrepreneur. Early in his career he catalyzed change and growth at General Tire and Rubber’s Research Center, Arthur D. Little (Cambridge MA), a NASA Industrial Applications & Technology Transfer Center and was CEO A.C. Nielsen’s Tec Data Unit. Today, Echo maintains a collaborative relationship with the Innovation Research Exchange formerly known as the Industrial Research Institute, now part of the National Association of Manufacturers.

Tony Muscato is a forward-thinking, performance driven President, CEO and Board Director with a 30-year track record of consistently achieving exceptional commercial, operations, and financial results in both the US and Europe. He excels and thrives on transforming food & beverage companies into strong, financially healthy organizations with the capabilities to reach their full potential. Tony’s wheelhouse is professionalizing and scaling companies of all sizes/complexity from middle-market to larger, industry leading brands in highly competitive markets. He wins by inspiring innovation & demand creation, cultivating top-to-top customer partnerships, steering sustained margin/cash improvement, coaching high-energy talented teams, clear execution, and fostering a purpose driven culture. He is engaged on the Boards of several companies and provides investment & Operating Partner support to private-equity firms, including Kainos Capital and Main Street Capital. He is privileged to support the community as a mentor to students at Carnegie Mellon University, a member of St. Kilian parish, and a Board member at Ronald McDonald House Charities of Western Pa/Morgantown, WVa. Tony’s a passionate foodie, and enjoys exercise, travel, and music.

Dave Mawhinney is executive director, Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, and executive director, Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship.  Dave is also associate teaching professor at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business.

Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Dave was co-founder, chairman and CEO of mSpoke, an internet content and advertising recommendation engine, that was acquired in 2010 by LinkedIn, the world’s leading professional social networking site. In 2006, Morgan Stanley’s MSCI/Barra business unit acquired mSpoke’s first business line, a quantitative investment recommendation engine. Before mSpoke, Dave was general partner of PNC Technology Investors. Earlier in his career, he co-founded three successful startup ventures, including Premier Health Exchange (acquired by Medibuy), Hawk Medical (acquired by McKesson), and Industry.Net (merged with AT&T Business Network to form Nets, Inc.).

Dave holds an MBA with Distinction from Carnegie Mellon University, winning a 2017 Tepper School Alumni Award.

John Zimmerman is the Tang Family Professor of AI and HCI. He is a UX/service designer by training and conducts research on human-AI interaction, human-robot interaction, and innovation with analytics and AI. For more than twenty years, he has designed novel, intelligent systems ranging from one of the first TV show recommenders to a crowdsourced, real-time transit arrival system to a decision support tool for implanting mechanical hearts to a system that keeps parents from forgetting to pick up their children. He’s published 150+ papers, 40+ patents, and is a member of the ACM CHI Academy. While working for Philips, he invented a method for scrolling touch screens that’s in use on all smartphones and tablets. He teaches courses in service design, lean startup, and on the design of AI products and services.

Raelin Sawka Musuraca is a researcher and strategist with more than 20 years of experience helping companies develop a deep understanding of their customers through human-centered research and design. Examining the full customer journey, Raelin turns research insights into actionable initiatives designed to improve the customer experience with a focus on increasing revenue, decreasing costs, and elevating shareholder value.

Currently, Raelin is Assistant Teaching Professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University. Her goals are to help students build a strong methods-based foundation, develop critical thinking and empathic skills, and understand the drivers of business value so that as professionals they can not only execute research in a manner that drives deeper behavioral and motivational understanding but also clearly articulate the business value of that understanding.

Previous to Carnegie Mellon, Raelin managed UX research efforts at BNY Mellon, American Eagle Outfitters, and her own digital firm, Sharp Creative, through which she consulted with companies in the healthcare, financial, industrial, and consumer product sectors.

Mike Capsambelis is the Director of Product Management at Google Commerce.  Mike joined Google in 2012 and leads the organization responsible for collecting, understanding, and enriching data for billions of products sold around the world.  Prior to Google, he spent 15 years leading product development at a variety of technology companies building software that unlocks the power of data, making it more understandable and useful to businesses and consumers in a variety of industries.

 A passionate advocate for inclusive entrepreneurship and social enterprise, Mike also helps direct Google’s community outreach efforts in Pittsburgh, advising startups and organizing programs and events to connect Black and women-owned businesses with resources and knowledge to succeed in Pittsburgh’s thriving economy.

Outside of Google, Mike is the founder of Awesome Pittsburgh, micro-grant organization that awards $1000 grants with no strings attached to people and organizations that bring more awesomeness to the region.  He also serves on the boards of PACE (Program to Aid Citizen Enterprise) and the newly formed Mon Metro Chamber of Commerce.

Moderator: Melissa Murphy is an adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business. 

Melissa teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in Integrated Marketing Communications, New Product Development, Launching New Products, Product and Brand Management and Brand Strategy. She is part of Corporate Start-Up Lab, which showcases how entrepreneurial innovation methodologies can be successful in larger corporations.

Melissa’s vast experience boasts an impressive list of companies and campaigns with worldwide recognition, including: StarKist, Del Monte Foods, and Heinz. Throughout the years, she has impressively fashioned numerous award-winning branding and social media campaigns; championed employee management and communications to build brands internally and improve morale and employee satisfaction; spearheaded communications efforts for a myriad of corporate initiatives; facilitated planning sessions for business, marketing and communications strategies, as well as conducted off-site meetings for clients; partnered with local, state, and national elected officials to promote various legislative positions; fostered corporate giving policies; implemented community outreach programs; and has served on several non-profit boards.

Ross Neumann is Head of Partnerships for Lowe’s Innovation Labs, where he helps Lowe’s imagine, explore, and accelerate the future of home improvement retail by developing new capabilities with startups and the wider global technology ecosystem. Previously Ross worked in media, most recently at VICE where he ran the emerging social platforms team, developing their presence on Social Media and creating an editorial growth strategy. Ross graduated with a B.A. in Communication Studies from Northwestern University. He is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Richard Williamson has been director for Prakhar Mehrotra’s End2End Applied AI Org leading horizontal platform for OR and Machine Learning Engineering driving AI innovation at Walmart scale for the past year.

He came back home to WalmartLabs after a fabulous journey with Silicon Valley Data Science where he continued his journey enabling business transformation to several large clients across the globe.  Richard has led development of multi-petabyte hadoop platforms at WalmartLabs including deployment of two separate Impala data warehouses hosting production and adhoc workloads serving hundreds of billions of rows of log and transactional data. Each of these warehouses also included hbase instances setup with active-active replication in two separate data centers serving millions of reads per second on near real-time data feeds from flume.

Neil Soni has built, grown, and created new ventures – both within the world’s largest brands and as an independent entrepreneur. Neil runs a growth and innovation consulting practice, which helps startups and Fortune 500 companies partner and invest in technology and commercial opportunities. Neil is also the author of The Startup Gold Mine: How to Tap the Hidden Innovation Agendas of Large Companies to Fund and Grow Your Business. He is the Managing Director of Extovate, a rapid research firm that gives corporate innovators decision-relevant external innovation information quickly so they can execute and drive results. Neil helped build the External Innovation department at The Estee Lauder Companies.

Previously, Neil led the growth team at MomTrusted.com, a social marketplace for early education with over 3 million users. Prior to MomTrusted, Neil founded CollegeZen, a social platform for high school students, peer mentors, and colleges. This effort caught the attention of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which named CollegeZen one of the worldwide winners of the College Knowledge Challenge. Neil was named a Finalist for Entrepreneur Magazine’s College Entrepreneur of the Year award for his work at CollegeZen.

Chris Harrison is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he leads the Future Interfaces Group. Zensors started as a research project lead by Anuraag Jain, and was spun out of the university in 2018. Harrison is a leader in human-computer interaction, especially systems combing sensing and machine learning. For his innovations, Harrison has been named as a Top 35 Innovator by MIT Technology Review, a Top 30 Scientist by Forbes, and a World Economic Forum Young Scientist. Harrison has also been named a fellow by the Packard Foundation, Sloan Foundation, Google, Qualcomm and Microsoft Research.

Adam Paulisick is a serial entrepreneur and an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship (sales, marketing, and digital product design) at the graduate level of Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, a lead Executive Education Instructor at CMU's School of Computer Science (#1 in the world), Adjunct in the Masters of Artificial Intelligence program, and Adjunct at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute (the first HCI graduate program of record). Prior to Adam’s focus on teaching at CMU, Adam was the Chief Product Officer at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) resulting from the acquisition of MAYA Design and was a Senior Vice President at the Nielsen Company post the acquisition of BuzzMetrics with global leadership roles based in the US and Europe. When not on campus Adam spends his time as the founder and hands-on builder of maad labs (www.maadlabs.io), a do tank, not a think tank, that performs digital experiments, provides executive training, builds AI/ML/Data products, and consults with both venture-backed and large, multi-national companies bringing bold, audacious, and complex ideas, experiences, and technologies to market.

Megan Guidi Megan is the Principal and founder of Open. For nearly twenty years, she has worked with clients to answer their most difficult “why do people do that”-questions. In 2016, she founded Open a consultancy that helps companies and organizations do things they’ve never done before.

Megan has worked across a range of industries including: CPG, financial services, government, health and wellness, industrials, manufacturing, spaces and environments and technology. She believes interesting problems exist everywhere and has had the pleasure of working with companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes , from Fortune 10 to local non-profits.

Megan holds a Masters Degree in Applied Behavior Analysis from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts and Bachelor of Science in Psychology from Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania.

Peter Loerincs has 30+ years of experience in software development and consulting. Peter lead the development and creation of Sopheon’s first software products related to innovation. Then, as a consultant, he helped customers design and implement Innovation Systems in CPG, Food and Beverage, and High Tech companies like The Hershey Company, J.M. Smucker’s, 3M, Applied Materials, and many others. Peter has a bachelor’s degree in Systems Engineering and an MBA in Finance.

Early in his career, with Coopers & Lybrand, he developed expert systems for Financial and Oil companies. He also delivered business consulting services for business process efficiency using Just in Time in the administrative, white-collar environment.

Currently, Peter works as VP of Product Development at Sopheon. He can be reached at peter.loerincs@sopheon.com.

Rebecca Nugent is the Stephen E. and Joyce Fienberg Professor of Statistics & Data Science and Head of the Carnegie Mellon Department of Statistics & Data Science. Dr. Nugent has expertise in designing and implementing data science/AI professional development programs for business leaders in industries including health care, finance, automotive/manufacturing, and life sciences. She is the faculty co-Director of the Moderna AI Academy and the Founding Director of the Statistics & Data Science Corporate Capstone program, an experiential learning initiative that matches groups of faculty and students with data science problems in industry, non-profits, and government organizations. She has won several national and university teaching awards including the American Statistical Association Waller Award for Innovation in Statistics Education and serves as one of the co-editors of the Springer Texts in Statistics. She recently served as the co-chair for the National Academy of Sciences study on Improving Defense Acquisition Workforce Capability in Data Use and served on the NAS study on Envisioning the Data Science Discipline: The Undergraduate Perspective. Dr. Nugent has worked extensively in clustering and classification methodology with an emphasis on high-dimensional, big data problems and record linkage applications. Her current research focus is the development and deployment of low-barrier data analysis platforms that allow for adaptive instruction and the study of data science as a science.

Nadya Kohl brings over 25 years of experience in driving business growth by harnessing data and insights, marketing and technology.  Most recently, Nadya was Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Data Services/Decision Sciences at Volta Charging where she built and led a successful commercial marketing function from scratch.  She also designed and delivered the company's first ever data strategy, successfully executing on Volta’s Data and Decision Sciences capabilities.

Previously, she was responsible for leading Business Development, Data Sales, Channel Partnerships and Marketing at PlaceIQ, the leader in location intelligence, where she created awareness, adoption and revenue growth. Prior to joining the PlaceIQ team, Nadya held positions overseeing marketing, corporate strategy, business development and M&A for Experian’s Marketing Services $1B global business, where she was a founder of Experian’s global Audience Services platform. Nadya has worked extensively in the Media, Consumer Products, Retail, and High Tech fields, with global brands such as Mars, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, AMEX.

Daniela Osio is a Pittsburgh native who co-founded Kloopify in 2021. Kloopify's mission is to integrate sustainability data into every procurement process. Kloopify is an enterprise SaaS sustainability platform that provides data, analytics, and transparency into any organization’s supply chain’s environmental footprint. Kloopify is a the simplest and most effective way to help global organizations with more than 2,000 suppliers buy cost effective goods and services while over delivering on ESG and sustainability goals, fast. Formerly at DuPont, Daniela was the Global Risk Management Leader who created, developed, and implemented a Risk Management organization for the $4.0b Electronics and Imaging (E&I) Business Unit leading to increased revenue during the height of the pandemic. She led the warehousing, barge, tank, and trans-loading categories through the DOW and DuPont merger delivering millions in cost savings. She has received numerous awards and honors including being named 30 under 30 Supply Chain Star by the Institute of Supply Chain Management, the 2021 Young Transform Award Winner by the Future Insights Network, and was recognized by the Zero100 team as a Hero Innovator of Tomorrow.

Tim Murphy is currently leading a global quality initiative. In this role, the use of data, interoperability of systems and analysis for the purpose of enabling key operational and regulatory reporting an essential enabler.

Tim has led a series of diverse businesses, including our SaaS and services, sleep diagnostic solutions business, global customer services and a series of leadership finance and accounting roles, over a career spanning 30 years with Philips and—prior to its acquisition by Philips—Respironics, Inc. In addition to serving in these leadership roles, Tim is on the Board of the March of Dimes supporting the Western Pennsylvania region.

Matt DeLorenzo In his time with MSA and its software subsidiary, Safety io, Matt has spent over 10 years collaborating with customers, first as a new product development leader and currently as the business director of software applications. To support MSA's mission, Matt focuses on how its software applications and data can help customers realize safer outcomes while operating in some of the most formidable environments in the world."

Laurie Barkman is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business. Laurie leverages her corporate startup experience including American Eagle Outiftters omni-channel retail innovation, and Ingersoll-Rand manufacturing process re-engineering.

Laurie is the former CEO of GENCO Marketplace and became an Officer & Senior Vice President of FedEx after the company was acquired. Laurie also ounded SmallDotBig LLC, a strategic growth consultancy, and she is a Partner with Stony Hill Advisors, a mergers and acquisitions intermediary. She is the Advisory Board Chair for Massaro, a second generation construction services company, and is a former Board Advisor for Safety io, a subsidiary of MSA Safety Inc.

Laurie earned her MBA from The Tepper School of Business, and a BS in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. Laurie served as President of The Tepper School Alumni Board, and was the first recipient of The Tepper Women in Business “Alumna of the Year Award” in 2013.

Andrew Dobos is the head of HR for Moderna International, based in the company’s Basel, Switzerland, International Headquarters. In this capacity, he is responsible for all aspects of People & Culture for Moderna’s rapidly growing international teams. Previously, Andrew was head of learning and development for the company, during which time he led the team that developed the Moderna Mindsets, the code to Moderna’s unique culture, and co-lead the development of Moderna’s AI Academy. In partnership with Moderna’s Data Science and AI team and Carnegie Mellon, the AI Academy “Awareness” course has now been delivered to more than 500 Moderna employees around the world and further waves are under development. 

Prior to joining Moderna in March of 2020, Andrew held roles at Boston Consulting Group, Willis Towers Watson, and Mercer. Andrew is a native of the Rust Belt, holding a degree from Michigan Tech University in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He and his husband Brian are newly minted residents of Zürich, but New England will always be home for them. They are slowly learning Swiss German.

Jeff Jeffries is the Director of Employer Relations with the Career & Professional Development Center at Carnegie Mellon University. The Career & Professional Development Center has consistently been ranked as one of the top 10 career placement programs by the Princeton Review (#8 in 2022). Prior to Carnegie Mellon University, he spent over 15 years in the technology industry as a recruiter and leading recruiting teams.

Dr. Paul Pangaro has participated in tech innovation at varying scales, from Sun Microsystems and Idealab, to the MIT Architecture Machine Group (predecessor to MIT Media Lab), to startups on East and West Coasts. Paul joined CMU in 2019 as Professor of the Practice in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, School of Computer Science. In summer of 2022 he became Visiting Scholar at the School of Architecture and School of Design here at CMU. Before entering academia in 2015 as founding Chair of the Interaction Design Masters program at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, he had worked with and within software startups in product and technology roles. As a consultant Paul has worked with a range of clients including Du Pont, Nokia, Citibank, Samsung, Instituto Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), Ogilvy & Mather, 8 Inc, and PoetryFoundation.org. With TJ McLeish he replicated Gordon Pask’s legendary interactive work, Colloquy of Mobiles, which was exhibited at Centre Pompidou and which he donated to the permanent collection of the ZKM Museum in Germany.

Kathryn Heffernan is a Director of Product Management, Digital Solutions at UPMC Enterprises. In her role, she focuses primarily on pharmacy and women’s health opportunities. Prior to joining UPMC, Kathryn served in a change management role with the Pittsburgh Public Schools, where she supported the design and implementation of new system\wide performance management technologies, as well as in communications and development roles at local nonprofits. Kathryn serves on the boards of Casita Copan and Doors Open Pittsburgh and on the planning committee of Art All Night Lawrenceville.

Kathryn holds an M.B.A. from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, an MSPPM from the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, and a B.A. from Wellesley College.

Joseph Cabral

Joseph J. Cabral is currently an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship in the E. J. Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University. He received a B.A. from the University of Connecticut, an MBA from Bryant University and a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic University. His expertise includes the financing of innovation and entrepreneurship, startup - incumbent collaboration, and internal resource markets. He is an active participant in his local startup community, serving as a pitch coach, mentor and guest lecturer for multiple entrepreneurship initiatives.

Matthew Johnson-Roberson is director of the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and a Professor in the School of Computer Science. He received a PhD from the University of Sydney in 2010. He has held prior postdoctoral appointments with the Centre for Autonomous Systems - CAS at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney. He co-founded Refraction AI a last-mile autonomous vehicle delivery company. He has worked in robotic perception since the first DARPA grand challenge and his group focuses on enabling robots to better see and understand their environment.

Matt Fleckenstein currently leads product management at The Walt Disney Company and is responsible for building the company’s Next Generation Storytelling Platform, which is designed to create new canvases for storytelling that can span the physical, digital, and virtual worlds.  Prior to joining Disney, Matt led product for Microsoft Mesh, the company’s metaverse platform that enables brands to engage their employees and customers more deeply in immersive experiences. 

In addition to his time at Disney and Microsoft, Matt has spent his career ideating, building, and launching disruptive products into the marketplace at various companies including: Innovation Works (seed-stage VC fund), Feedhub (recommendation engine acquired by LinkedIn), Salesforce (where he was the VP of product for the Marketing and IoT Clouds), and Nintex (low/no code intelligent automation platform acquired by Thoma Bravo)

Matt specializes in new category creation and finding product market fit for disruptive technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, metaverse, and marketing technologies.

Estella Woo leads Bosch’s North American hub for grow platform, the global internal incubator of Robert Bosch. Her charter through grow platform drives new business growth outside the existing core business of Bosch through radical innovation. Estella bridges the gap between operational excellence and business innovation. She successfully operationalized a new product business from the ground up with successful customer delivery within 12 months, growing this to a multi-million-dollar business within 4 years. During her career, she has built and managed multi-disciplinary teams throughout her broad range of experiences within the product lifecycle, from product R&D and development, through to manufacturing and fulfillment. She has coached and advised 500+ intrapreneurs around the globe and sees the speed in transformation in organizations that foster some entrepreneurial risk.

Dr. Ed Rakiewicz is a Research Fellow and Corporate Entrepreneur at PPG, a leading global manufacturer of paints, coatings and specialty materials headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  During the past 15 years, Ed has been responsible for the identification, development and intellectual property strategy of early stage adjacent and transformational “front end” projects that have the potential to create new revenue streams for the company.  He also plays a key role in developing and leveraging external partnerships with universities, government agencies and other companies.  

 Ed’s accomplishments include numerous contributions in the characterization, advancement and commercialization of new sustainable materials and processes including multiple corrosion protection coatings/pretreatments and lithium ion battery technologies.  He is a named inventor on 24 issued US patents, a co-author of 8 technical publications and was a 2018 recipient of PPG’s biennial President’s Award for Technical Achievement. Ed is also a charter member of the PPG Collegium, an association of PPG leaders who have made key technological contributions that support PPG’s growth and financial success. 

Terrence Kim Currently, Terrence Kim is working at Vanguard with a dual role as Senior Manager, Investment Management Fintech Strategy, and as Senior Manager, Vanguard Fintech Ventures, LLC. Terrence leads a team of data scientists and full stack engineers to explore emerging technologies that can dramatically improve investment performance or make capital markets work better for all investors; embed a culture of innovation across Vanguard.

Terrence Kim was formerly the Global Business Manager who started the global business development and product management of multi-asset Trading API product (EMSX API, IOI API, RANK API, and BTCA API) at Bloomberg L.P. . Before joining Bloomberg, Terrence was the Director of Product Management for Complex Event Processor start-up StreamBase Systems before the TIBCO acquisition.

Terrence started as Trader trading grain and energy commodities in 1995. In 2000, he was responsible for the development and implementation of FIX protocol and electronic trading at Wellington Management.