Speaker Bios

Murray Forseter

Murray Forseter is Publisher and Editor of Chain Store Age magazine, a Lebhar-Friedman, Inc., publication. Mr. Forseter has worked for Lebhar-Friedman for 29 years.

Mr. Forseter has been honored by the American Business Media with the highest award presented to business to business journalists, the Jesse H. Neal Award for editorial achievement. He also has been a finalist for the award for editorial writing.

Mr. Forseter is a frequent speaker at industry events and corporate meetings, domestically and internationally. He has made presentations to such diverse audiences as the Retail Industry Roundtable of the Young Presidents’ Organization, the faculty of the Fashion Institute of Technology, American Express, Ernst & Young, Washington Inventory Service, GE Capital, Boston Retail Products, Fujitsu, and Nikon. Internationally he has spoken at EuroShop 1996, at a conference on retailing hosted by the University of Economics in Prague, and at the RetailWeek conference on retailing in London. Mr. Forseter is frequently quoted in the consumer press on trends and events in retailing.

A graduate of Brooklyn College, City University of New York, B.A. Economics, Mr. Forseter has a master's degree in newspaper journalism from the Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University.

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Ann Grackin

For more than two decades, Ann Grackin has been on the frontlines of the Supply Chain Management technology and eCommerce frontier, leading global strategy and technology implementations in the high technology, semiconductor, automotive, textile, and apparel industries. Ms. Grackin has served in many capacities in this dynamic environment and worked on global supply chains strategies for some of the leading Fortune 500 firms, with assignments in Asia and Europe and the North America.

As a partner and cofounder of ChainLink Research, Ms. Grackin is responsible for leading the firms Supply Chain strategy. She comes to this position with a parallax view from seeing all angles of the supply chain problem-as an end-user implementer in a global fortune 100 firm, a technologist, a global consultant, an executive in a Supply Chain software firm, a columnist in the leading Supply Chain magazines, and one of the leading analysts in Supply Chain!

Her biography sets the stage for leading the charge at ChainLink's Research:

Ms. Grackin, a popular speaker and respected writer on supply chain management best practices and technology, is a graduate of the Harvard School of Executive Management and the Sloan School of Strategic Planning.

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Dan Currie

Dan Currie is senior vice president of global supply chain for Best Buy, a Fortune 100 company and North America’s No. 1 specialty retailer of consumer electronics, personal computers, entertainment software and major appliances.  Mr. Currie is responsible for Best Buy’s end-to-end supply chain including inventory management and logistics.

Before joining Best Buy in January of 2005, Mr. Currie had over 35 years of experience in the Retail Supermarket Industry, 19 years Retail Operations including as EVP Operations for Giant Foods LLC and 16 years in Supply Chain including as EVP Supply Chain for Ahold USA. 

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Jonathan Golovin

Dr. Jonathan Golovin (Jon) is the CEO and co-founder of T3Ci. He was the founder and Chairman of Consilium Inc., the largest independent Manufacturing Execution System (MES) Company. Dr. Golovin is considered the father of MES and was the recipient of the 2000 SEMI Award for his contributions.

Consilium products were implemented in over 25 countries and 25 industries, including 60% of all semiconductor fabrication plants, and in 10 of the top pharmaceutical and healthcare companies in the world. Consilium went public in 1989 and was acquired by Applied Materials in 1998. Among its awards was being selected as one of the 100 Best Small Companies in America by Business Week and one of the 200 Best Small Companies in America by Forbes. Fortune Magazine named Workstream, Consilium's flagship product, one of the 100 Best Products in America.

Dr. Golovin is also the founder of Vigilance, the leading event management company. Its customers included global Fortune 500 companies such as Pfizer, HP, Sara Lee, Shell Oil and BP-Castrol. In 2001 he was awarded the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award for emerging companies.

In addition to founding Consilium, Vigilance and T3Ci, Dr. Golovin is the author of: Achieving Stretch Goals, published by Prentice Hall. He has a BS from Cornell University and a PhD from M.I.T.

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Robert Bliss

Robert (Bob) manages one of the supply chain development teams in HP's Imaging & Printing (IPG) Business Americas region. His team supports the regional product category operations teams in efforts to both identify supply chain structural improvement opportunities and implement those ideas via business process or system changes. Bob is the development sponsor for IPG America's RFID efforts. Prior to joining IPG Bob worked for 5 years as an internal supply chain consultant in HP's central supply chain strategy group where he led multiple structural analysis efforts that identified tens of millions of dollars of savings opportunities across HP's portfolio of businesses. Bob has been at HP for 14 years. He holds BS & MS degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford and is a graduate of MIT's dual degree Leaders for Manufacturing program (MS ME and MBA).

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Laura Faught

Laura Faught brings to ChainLink a distinguished track record of over 20 years of transformational leadership supported by leading edge information technology management. Her credentials include serving as the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense/Logistics Systems Management from 2001 to 2003.  In this role she was responsible for policy and oversight of all Department of Defense Logistics IT systems, which taken together make up the department’s $80+ billion supply chain.

Ms. Faught has experience in all facets of global supply chain optimization including business reengineering, workforce alignment, COTS implementation, and enterprise change management.  She has also managed supply chain solutions workforces in Global 200 organizations.

Prior to ChainLink, Ms. Faught served as Vice President – Solution Delivery/Customer Community at LRN Inc. Ms. Faught played a key role in developing and executing LRN’s approach to its customer lifecycle management process. In addition, Ms. Faught has held executive positions at Qwest Cyber Solutions, SAP, and American Software.

Ms. Faught holds a BS in Business/Operations Management and an MS in Management Information Systems from Auburn University.

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Bill McBeath

Bill McBeath leads ChainLink's research efforts, as well as the procurement, strategic sourcing, design collaboration, and online marketplaces practices. With more than 20 years of experience in a variety of roles as a business and technology researcher and consultant, high tech executive, and software architect, Mr. McBeath is recognized as a leading expert in extended-enterprise business models.

Before co-founding ChainLink Research, Mr. McBeath was Managing Director of Emerging Technologies at Benchmarking Partners/Surgency, where he formulated and executed successful go-to-market strategies for dozens of startups and established firms. His accomplishments provide a strong foundation for ChainLink's services:

Prior to joining Surgency, Mr. McBeath served as Director of Server Engineering at NEC Computer Systems, responsible for all server hardware and software development. Previously as Director of Networking, Performance and Systems Integration, Mr. McBeath grew NEC's communications and options business from nothing to over $75M within four years.

Earlier in his career, Mr. McBeath was the lead architect of Data General's CommServer multi-protocol messaging switch, as well as Wang's network architecture (WSN). He was a principal designer and developer of a wide variety of advanced software including a distributed OS communications system, SNA Mainframe emulator, virtual machine monitor, and numerous others.

Mr. McBeath is a popular speaker, having delivered keynote addresses and led panel discussions at various industry conferences. In addition to undergraduate work at Hampshire College, Mr. McBeath has completed graduate level studies in Digital Network Technologies at MIT and Microprogramming and Emulation at Northeastern University.

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Randy Lewis

Randy Lewis serves as Senior Vice President - Distribution & Logistics, for Walgreens’ in Deerfield, Illinois.  He oversees Walgreens’ distribution network which serves its 5,400 stores across the U.S. and Puerto Rico.  

Mr. Lewis also serves on the Board of Directors for Wendy’s. He joined Walgreens in 1992 as Vice President of Logistics & Planning and was promoted to his current position in 1996.  

Formerly, he was a partner in the consulting division of Ernst & Young, a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru and a dance instructor for Arthur Murray.

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John Ling

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Greg Johnsen

Greg Johnsen is executive vice president of marketing, and co-founder of GT Nexus. Mr. Johnsen has more than fifteen years of sales, marketing and product marketing experience with Silicon Valley technology companies.

Prior to joining GT Nexus, he served as regional sales manager, San Francisco Bay Area, for Scopus Technology. In that role he was responsible for new and ongoing business with strategic accounts, and he actively participated in the requirements and product definition initiatives that ultimately produced the company's suite of sales force automation (SFA) products. Before Scopus, he was with Neuron Data, a provider of expert system technology and cross-platform development tools. Mr. Johnsen began his career at Ingres Corporation, a pioneer in relational database technology.

Mr. Johnsen has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of California at Davis.

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Gary Lynch

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Ellen Martin

Ellen Martin has been in the apparel business for over 30 years. She worked 7 years in various business units within Wrangler before transferring to IS. She continued on with VF when Wrangler was purchased in 1986. Today she is VP of Business Systems for VF Corporation, which is the largest apparel company in the world. Ms. Martin is in charge of new projects and development for all supply chains systems for VF. She is specifically in charge of SAP SD,MM,PP, i2 SCP, i2 DF, NGC E-SPS, Logility, TXT and warehouse management systems. These systems cover from order to cash, including forecasting, planning, procurement of both raw and finished material ,shipping both from a VF DC or direct to customer.

Ms. Martin has received numerous awards for her work in the supply chain area including:

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Mike Graham

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Dee Biggs

Dee is currently responsible for customer logistics at Welch’s, and has been responsible for corporate purchasing, customer satisfaction, inventory management, public warehousing and transportation. 

He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professions and is a past President of the Western New York and Baltimore/ Washington Roundtables of CSCMP and was Vice President of the New York State Food Processors.   He was the Chairman of the Logistics Committee for the Grocery Manufacturer’s of America for eight years, and was a member of the joint industry Best Practice Committee on Continuous Replenishment. 

Mr. Biggs is a frequent presenter to a variety of groups, including CSCPM, Grocery Manufacturers of America and the Food Marketing Institute. He is also on the Board of Directors of Acton-Boxborough, MA Youth Basketball.  Mr. Biggs was an infantry officer in Vietnam and holds a B.S. in civil engineering from the Virginia Military Institute and an MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Jose Li

Leading the marketing efforts for the Retail Industry within FedEx Corporation, Jose Li is responsible for developing and implementing the corporate-wide marketing strategy and solutions for the Retail industry – enabling retailers to increase customer service levels, maximize investments and improve margins. Jose is part of a strategic Industry Marketing team leading the evolution of FedEx to more of an industry focused, solutions orientation, and transportation services organization.

Prior to joining FedEx, Jose managed the supply chain and logistics operations for Jamba Juice, a retail chain of fruit juice stores, overseeing a distribution network that supplied product to 450+ stores. Jose also held various sales, international trade, brand marketing and business development positions with leading companies in the Retail/Consumer Products industry, including Alibaba.com, Nabisco/Kraft Foods, Exxon Mobil, and Goldman Sachs.

Jose is an active participant in the retail industry, including speaking engagements, trade journal publications, and webinars. In 2005, Jose was selected by Chain Store Age magazine as one of 40 Executives that are helping re-shape the retail industry. Jose is also the recipient of the world renowned FedEx 2005 Five Star Award, for exceptional achievement.

Jose is an Industrial Engineer and holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. He is bilingual in Spanish, English and working on Chinese.

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Stephen Timme

Dr. Stephen Timme is President of FinListics® Solutions and is an Adjunct Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. There he teaches in the Executive Masters in International Logistics and at The Logistics Institute. FinListics Solutions services have been provided throughout the world for clients like Citigroup, Coca-Cola Co., Colgate Palmolive, Disney, FedEx, Georgia-Pacific, Hershey Foods, IBM, Lowe's, Microsoft, and Wal-Mart. He is often a featured speaker at executive seminars sponsored by CFO Magazine and is also often quoted and has authored articles in many professional publications.

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Bruce Burnham

As a Corporate Executive, Bruce Burnham has restructured and centralized purchasing and supply chain organizations for companies in the restaurant & foodservice, food processing, consumer goods manufacturing, plastic & paper product manufacturing, and grain merchandising & exporting sectors. He participated in the consolidation of purchasing into a corporate function at General Foods Corporation, Inc. and led the centralization of purchasing at The Quaker Oats Company.  Burnham’s functional accomplishments include lowering purchasing and supply chain costs.

He has developed strategies and negotiated contracts for new distribution networks and implemented transition of distribution networks which reduced costs and improved efficiency.  Burnham has had significant experience in commodity trading, merchandising and hedging on futures & options markets.

In April 2003, Mr. Burnham was honored by being selected as one of the “25 Most Influential People in supply chain … industry’s best people…..” by Penton Media.  Each year the industry magazine, Supply Chain Technology News, published by Penton Media, selects 25 individuals from logistics, IT, procurement and supply chain management, working in very diverse manufacturing and retail organizations, to receive this honor.

In September 2003, Mr. Burnham founded and became President of Burnham & Tillinghast, LLC.  The Company focuses its consulting services in four areas: Purchasing & Strategic Supply Chain Consulting; Commodity Hedging & Economic Analysis;   Commodity Trading & Merchandising; and  Investment & Financial Due Diligence for Mergers and Acquisitions.

Mr. Burnham has been an executive in Purchasing, International Commodity Trading, and Supply Chain Management for the following companies:

He is a past member of the New York Futures Exchange Board of Directors and the Board of Trustees of the Farm Foundation. He is a Life Alumni Association member of Colorado State University and a member of  The Ohio State University Alumni Association.

His education accomplishments include a Ph.D. in Economics from Colorado State University, an M.S. in Agricultural Marketing from The Ohio State University, and a B.S. in Agricultural Business from The Ohio State University.

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Philip Calderbank

Phil Calderbank is Director of Global Marketing for Avery Dennison Retail Information Services division. The RIS division converts RFID tickets and labels, which are sold to garment suppliers and retailers through the operations direct sales teams.

Mr. Calderbank’s first experience of RFID was the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games where he was responsible for a team which provided fully integrated CCTV and RFID based Access Control to the sport stadiums. A part of this system was used as a security measure to track the movement of the 3,000 athletes so as to allow access to the Olympic Village and the 30 various sporting venues which were used along the Eastern Seaboard of the USA.

The system was a big success and to date still represents one of the world’s largest RFID systems integration programs. Mr. Calderbank has since become a passionate believer in the role for RFID as a means of automatic identification, for people, assets, and products.
Phil has held senior positions in both Europe and America working in both Loss Prevention EAS systems as well as RFID.

Prior to joining Avery Dennison, Mr. Calderbank was at Sensormatic, Florida for 13 years, where he was involved in all aspects of Electronic Article Surveillance systems. He also spent time with Sokymat in Switzerland, Deloitte & Touch in London and SEEBURGER B2B Software Integration  Atlanta.

He can now claim to be one of the worlds leading experts in Radio Frequency Identification technology and has served as Chair of the UK Chartered Institute of Logistics RFID Forum.

He holds a  Bachelor Arts (BA) in International Marketing and Business Administration from Ashbourne University, London, England.

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