Jana was recently promoted to the position of Chief Information Officer at ACH Food Companies.  ACH markets, sells, and produces a variety of cooking oils and other food ingredients, such as cornstarch, syrup, spices, and sauces. Some well-known brands include Mazola, Argo corn starch, Fleischmann's yeast, Karo syrup, and Spice Islands seasonings.  ACH caters to the retail, industrial food and foodservice industries in the US, Canada, Puerto Rico and Mexico.  www.achfood.com

Jana began her IT career at IBM in Knoxville, TN, where she was trained as a Customer Engineer repairing equipment...she still has her blue lab coat and tool case.  She then went on to become an AS/400 Systems Engineer performing installation and support services.  A customer eventually hired her away from IBM and she began her management journey in IT.  Prior to joining ACH, Jana held positions at Hilton Worldwide developing an in-house High Speed Internet program for over 3000 hotels, and International Paper where she spent 11 years managing infrastructure, data warehousing and SAP supply chain implementations.  Jana graduated from Austin Peay State University, located in Clarksville, TN, with a Bachelors of Business Administration. Since joining the Society for Information Management in 2002, Jana has been an active member serving in various leadership positions. She is currently serving on the Memphis Chapter Board of Directors as co-chair of Membership. Prior to that, Jana served as Community Outreach Chair between 2007 and 2009, Memphis Strategy Series Sponsorship Committee Chair for five years, and Sponsorship Chair for SIMposium 2007. 

Members in the News!

Lloyd Brooks and Jasbir Dhaliwal named to Professorships for Exemplary Leadership

Dr. Lloyd Brooks, MIS Department Chair, and Dr. Jasbir Dhaliwal, MIS Professor and Associate Dean, have both been awarded Professorships for Exemplary Leadership.  

This honor is in recognition for the leadership both have demonstrated over the years in setting the MIS Department and College on their positive trajectory. These Professorship carry a monetary amount of $10,000/year for 5 years. 

Michael Jones Recognized in Information Week 

The Memphis Department of Public Works (DPW) is planning to go live with a new mobile technology at the beginning of April, which will help the city keep better track of its code inspectors and how they work out in the field.  DPW workers would spend up to three hours daily transcribing handwritten reports into the IT system so that the database could run daily reports. The city also had no way of tracking its workers or making sure that they were safe.

Michael Jones Deputy CIO, City of Memphis

SIM member, Michael Jones, Deputy CIO of Memphis' city government, and his team launched a major overhaul of the old system. Through its service provider AT&T, Memphis found Xora StreetSmart, which consists of a suite of configurable mobile apps and a Web-based management application. Xora gave the city some much-needed capabilities, including location awareness, mobile forms and a job-workflow engine. DPW worked closely with Xora to add other capabilities that were missing, such as a search feature.

Michael has been recognized for his accomplishments in the March 25 edition of Information Week.  Read the entire article at: Information Week

Way to go, Michael!

Bill Kettinger Awarded Fulbright Visiting Professorship

Dr. William Kettinger, FedEx Chair of Excellence in Management Information Systems, has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Visiting Professorship for the period from March to July, 2013. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to "increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries." With this goal as a starting point, the Fulbright Program has provided participants-chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential - with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

Jana Markowitz named Director of Outreach/STEM Initiatives for SIM

In January Jana became the Director of Outreach/STEM Initiatives for SIM nationally.  More recently she was selected to speak about Memphis SIM's outreach to girls' schools at the STEM Think Tank and Conference for Girls' Schools, a national conference to be held in Nashville in July.  The Memphis outreach to girls' schools would not be possible without the help of MANY Memphis SIM members including: Susan Caldwell, Teresa Cheek, Debbie Smith, John Lewis, Bruce Livesay, Della Adams, Danita Macon, Mario Simmons and Judy Simon, all of whom have volunteered as "relationship managers", spoken on IT Career Panels, hosted "shadowing" girls and/or worked diligently in other ways to get more young women interested in IT degrees and careers. 

Membership Retirement!  

Photo by Dennis Norton Membership Co-chairs, Jana Branham and Susan Caldwell, present long-term member, Sue Conklin, a remembrance of her years of service to SIM Memphis.

Long time SIM member Sue Conklin has recently retired from Thomas & Betts where she was Senior Director, Applications Development, and will be moving to New Hampshire with her husband, John.  Sue has been a very active member of SIM Memphis since joining in 2002.  Sue served as Program Chair for two years, worked to support the Memphis SIM Strategy Series for many years, served on the National SIMposium committees when Memphis hosted the national event in 2007 (perhaps the best ever), served on the Community Outreach Committee supporting many Teen Tech Camps, STEM initiatives, and was our chapter's STAX/Soulsville liaison for several years, and she provided other support to SIM as needed.   

Our sincere thanks and appreciation to Sue for her many contributions to the SIM Memphis chapter which have most definitely made a difference.   Sue, we wish you all the best!  Know that you will be missed by your fellow SIM members.