Speakers

Rafael Avetisyan has more than ten years of sales experience in the retail, commercial, industrial, and tech sectors. He specializes in connecting businesses and end-users with the products or skills they need to succeed and grow.

Ronald J. Baker started his CPA career in 1984 with KPMG’s Private Business Advisory Services in San Francisco. Today, he is the founder of VeraSage Institute—the leading think tank dedicated to educating professionals internationally—a radio talk-show host on the www.VoiceAmerica.com show: The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Knowledge Economy. Ron has authored seven best-selling books, including: The Firm of the Future; Pricing on Purpose; Measure What Matters to Customers; and Implementing Value Pricing. Ron has toured the world, spreading his value-pricing message to over 250,000 professionals. He has been named on Accounting Today’s 2001-2007, and 2011-2021 Top 100 and Top 10 Most Influential People in the profession; and inducted into the CPA Practice Advisor Hall of Fame in 2018. He is a faculty member of the Professional Pricing Society. He presently resides in Petaluma, California.

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Dan Cousins serves as the Vice President, Talent and Organizational Performance of Kaiser Permanente. Dan started at Kaiser Permanente in June of 2015. Dan currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Is the ERP Product Director at Fortis, working in his 17th year in the payments industry, beginning in the early roots of ERP payments integrations. Geoff has managed many aspects of payments, from operations to sales, and brings that experience to Fortis to help maintain one cohesive ERP group. He resides along the Utah Wasatch Front with his wife and 3 children.

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Ed has over 25 years of experience in the Software Industry including owning a VAR company. He has spent most of his career building and managing Channel Partnerships in North America.

Known as the MINDSET Doc, Dr. Debra Dupree strives to make a difference in the lives of people by providing insight and vision for leveraging the conflict mindset to gain new perspectives and opportunities when it comes to resolving conflict and improving communication. As the former Director of Training for Mediation Training Institute (MTI), she worked directly with Dr. Dan Dana, a forerunner in the field of dispute resolution, training attorneys and human resource professionals in Workplace Mediation throughout N.A.  She has served as a Senior Mentor Mediator and Trainer for the DON since 2000.  Dr. D is on the SCMA Board of Directors, an ABA Dispute Resolution Section member, the AAA Mediator Employment Law Panel Member, and faculty at AAA Mediation. Her niche market is workplace mediation and facilitating the interactive process for employees with medical conditions. She is the host of ‘Decoding the Conflict Mindset’ and also co-hosts a weekly podcast series for Aurora Training Advantage called ‘The AGILE Workplace.’  She is a keynote speaker, most recently featured at the Paris Global Summit on Positive Psychology & Mental Health – Celebrating International Women’s Day, speaking on the “Neuroscience Behind People in Conflict:  Shifting the Mindset.”  She is the author of Your Emotional Potential: How You Show Up Matters (available on KINDLE), eBooks Building a Courageous Culture and The Psychology of Conflict, and regularly publishes articles for Aurora Training Advantage and Brainz Magazine.

Jack Evans is a Sales Manager at CIMcloud by Website Pipeline, having been with the organization for over 5 years in various Sales and Marketing related roles. He received his undergraduate degree in Marketing and a Master’s degree in Business Administration, both from Clemson University in upstate South Carolina. In his current role, Jack oversees all new website sales and existing customer upgrade sales. Whether your clients are looking to increase their revenue, realize operational efficiencies or a hybrid of both – Jack is the one-stop shop for all your client needs at CIMcloud. 

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Green heads the ERP sales team, organizes sales strategies, and fosters new customer and partner relationships. He has been in the payments industry for almost 18 years with a focus on integrated payments and ERP. Green has 5 children, and lives in Clarkston, Washington.

Results driven leader with over 10 years of sales and business development experience working within highly competitive and technical environments. Strong record of breaking down ambitious objectives into actionable steps and leading teams to exceed goals. Currently accountable for establishing winning sales strategies with key influencers in the FinTech and SaaS space. My main objective is to provide clear direction, champion change and influence those around me creating an environment that fosters success.

Trey Johnson is the Chief Evangelist and Americas Business Leader for ZAP. Having spent half of his 26- year career at ZAP, Trey is proud of the growth their flagship product, ZAP Data Hub, has had with Sage as Sage Data & Analytics. Now, as ZAP is delivering an edition of this product as Sage Data & Analytics (SD&A) for the Sage 300, Sage 100, and Sage X3 customer base, data and analytics on Sage ERP has never been a bigger passion for Trey. When not talking about Data & Analytics, you can often find Trey turning a wrench on a classic Porsche automobile restoration.

Ed Kless joined Sage in July of 2003 and is currently the senior director of partner development and strategy. He develops and delivers curriculum for Sage business partners on the art and practice of small business consulting including the Sage Consulting Academy, Business Strategy and Customer Experience Workshops. Ed hosts the Sage Advice Podcast and co-hosts the VoiceAmerica TalkShow Network’s The Soul of Enterprise with Ron Baker, founder of the VeraSage Institute where Ed is also a senior fellow. They coauthored The Soul of Enterprise: Dialogues on Business in the Knowledge Economy, a compendium of a few of the episodes. Prior to joining Sage, Ed worked with Tipping Point Advisors, an organization dedicated to the growth and development of software implementation partners. In 1996, he co-founded Third Wave Business Systems, a Microsoft Dynamics GP partner that grew to 20 team members and $5 million in revenue. At Third Wave, Ed developed the implementation methodology and led the CRM and ERP consulting teams. Ed is a contributor to industry publications and has spoken at many conferences worldwide on project management, pricing, and knowledge workers. He is also active in the Information Technology Alliance (ITA) and has been named to Accounting Today’s list of the 100 Most Influential People in Accounting numerous times including 2019. Additionally, Ed is a faculty member of the Professional Pricing Society. He lives north of Dallas with his wife and two children and ran for Texas State Senate in 2010 and 2012 as a Libertarian. Follow him on his blog at www.edkless.com or on Twitter @edkless.

Steve has 35+ years of experience in the ERP space, initially as a VAR implementing custom development solutions for mid-market customers, then transitioning to Sage, where for the past 30 years he has worked in several capacities in R&D, most significantly as Sr. Director of Engineering and Chief Architect for the Sage 100 product. In this role, Steve drove several advancements in Sage 100, including the re-architecture of the product that produced the Business Object Interface, Customizer and Scripting, SQL Server integration, and the recent release of a modern REST WebAPI. In the past 5+ years, Steve’s role has expanded to lead architecture for the entire BMS family of Sage products around the globe, working on both Cloud Connected and Cloud Native solutions leveraging the Azure public cloud. Steve is constantly learning, keeping up with industry trends and advancements in cloud computing, and is passionate about sharing his knowledge with colleagues, partners, and customers by demonstrating practical innovative uses of emerging technology.

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Is the SVP of ERP Product & Experience has been in the ERP channel for over 12+ years managing multiple facets of the business during that time. At Fortis, he lead the entire customer journey from pre-sales, post sales, and future ongoing customer expectations and product enhancements. Tom has 2 children and lives in America’s Finest City™, San Diego California.

Gil Ponte started working in manufacturing as a painter and processor of Lear Jet parts in the very late 70’s. He moved into Manufacturing Management spent the 80’s and 90’s as a Production Control Manager managing and creating Planning, Purchasing, Material Movement, Warehousing, Shipping and Receiving departments. In the mid 80’s he traveled to various manufacturing companies with a variety of ERP solutions, Implementing MRP and conducting and auditing Physical Inventories on behalf of his parent corporation. He started his own consulting company in 1999, where he was introduced to MAS90 by a client. He joined Professional Software Inc, in Wichita KS in 2007. Professional Software became a DSD partner and was acquired by DSD in 2019.

Co-founder of ROI, Inc., certified Sage 100 Developer Bob is the chief integration solution architect and has extensive programming and Sage 100 integration experience that dates back more than 25 years.

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Fresh out of college completing a bachelor’s in Communication Steve jumped into the barcoding world…that was 20 years ago. Over these past 20 years, Steve has stayed in the barcoding world focusing on automation and best practices related to inventory control. Specifically, he has been in the Sage world that entire time. With decades of experience, Steve has been fortunate enough to be a part of numerous implementations of inventory control systems within the Sage community. His knowledge of inventory processes, ERP systems as well as the technology available today have allowed Steve to lend his expertise to hundreds of companies.

Scott Tillema is a FBI trained hostage negotiator and active law enforcement officer. Scott teaches organizations how to use the power of life saving negotiation principles to enhance their work. Scott is a nationally recognized leader in the field of crisis and hostage negotiations, passionately training thousands of police negotiators across the country in verbal influence. He has developed a powerful model for safely resolving crisis situations, which is now being recognized and adapted by the private sector for use in sales, communication, influence, and leadership.

Kim and ROI founders have worked together on and off for over 30 years. Kim has a successful history of account management, sales and service in and outside the Sage ecosystem. Kim joined ROI as the Customer Development Director in 2020 to manage partner relationships and increase and nurture the customer base.