Nominate your fellow Vivit Members/Leaders/Colleagues for any of the Vivit Americas 2013 Awards
- Leader of the Year
- Champion of the Year
- Speaker of the Year
Vivit is recognizing the outstanding contributions of Vivit members as leaders, advocates, and innovators. Please take a moment to nominate someone for any or all of the awards by April 26, 2013. Your input matters.
Leader of the Year
Have your worldwide Special Interest Group or Local Chapter Leaders organized valuable community-building, educational, and advocacy services to your Vivit group(s)? Have they positively impacted you?
Champion of the Year
Who in the Americas HP Software ecosystem has displayed outstanding efforts to advance or grow the Vivit community? HP Software Partners, employees, clients, consultants, and end users are eligible.
Speaker of the Year
Do you have a speaker that presented at a Vivit chapter or webinar event that stood out? Vivit members who are end users are eligible.
Vivit will present the awards and recognize the winners and nominees at HP Discover in Las Vegas, June 11-13, 2013. Past winners are not eligible for the same award. Vivit Board and staff members are not eligible for the awards. Nominations for the EMEA region will take place in September 2013.
2012 - Speaker of the Year EMEA
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Mihai Grigorescu
South Africa Chapter Leader
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Mihai Grigorescu, 2012 Speaker of the Year, is co-leader for the South Africa Chapter, and was recognized for a series of outstanding webinar presentations for members on best practices and real life practical usage of HP ALM. Mihai is also lead several roundtables at the HP Discover conference in Frankfurt, Germany, December 4-6. He has been in the software testing industry for over 5 years and is now the TCoE Tools Lead at Accenture in South Africa. He has a passion for testing in general and for business as well as technical processes. He is an avid fan of making optimal use of available tools and processes which assist the overall testing efforts and projects. He is also currently a board member of the SIGiST committee (Special Interest Group in Software Testing for South Africa) and is an active speaker in national and international events |
2012 - Champion of the Year EMEA
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Stefan Mohr
Germany Chapter Leader
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Stefan Mohr, 2012 Champion of the Year, was recognized for his outstanding effort to advance and grow the community. Stefan has been a Vivit member and Chapter leader for five years and has helped to organize the two-day German User Group Meetings for more than seven years. He was the 2009 Leader of the Year Award winner, and because of the expansive community he has built throughout Germany and the outpouring of member nominations, Vivit is awarding him with Champion of the Year. Stefan is the Consulting Manager and a Principal Consultant for the ITC GmbH in Germany. Stefan has more than 15 years experience in implementing, customizing, training and selling of HP Software products and ITSM Consulting. As a certified ITIL Service Manager, he focuses on integrated ITSM solutions for enterprise and SMB customers based on HP Software and 3rd party products. |
2012 - Leader of the Year EMEA
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Olli Laiho
TQA Chapter Leader
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Olli Laiho, 2012 Leader of the Year, was recognized for his outstanding leadership for the online Testing, Quality and Application Lifecycle Management (TQA) Special Interest Group. He is a qualified expert on HP's Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Quality Center products and a Quality Assurance specialist. He is also driving the value of utilizing Business Intelligence tools in Quality Assurance and Testing to improve the output and performance of Quality Assurance organizations worldwide. He has helped lead the TQA Special Interest Group for four years, adding blogs, tips and tricks, and webinars for members around the world. Olli is a frequent speaker and roundtable leader at the international HP Discover conferences and an instructor for Vivit Advanced Training, focusing on HP ALM and Quality Center. Olli works as a Senior QA Consultant for Assure "The QC Guys" in Finland. |
2012 - Champion of the Year Americas
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Paul Peissner
DevOps SIG Leader
San Jose/Silicon Valley Chapter Leader
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Paul Peissner has championed both the advancement of IT professionals (helping them take advantage of the quickly changing IT industry) and gathered a variety of industry experts and leaders to work with the Vivit global community. He has established and grown member-participation and recruited leaders for local Chapters and global Special Interest Groups. He has helped Vivit establish strategic partnerships and recruit community sponsors. Paul has regular conversations with Vivit team members on how to improve member services, become more visible to IT professionals, and bring more members to the Vivit community
His strategy to combine the efforts of HP Software Applications and Operations teams to help optimize IT organizations and advance the careers of Vivit’s IT professionals has resulted in the launch of the Vivit DevOps Special Interest Group, which he leads. Paul is also a Northern California Leader for the Silicon Valley and San Jose Chapter, connecting users and thought leaders in the region. Additionally, he has served as an advisor to the Vivit Board of Directors and offers his insights and expertise to the wider community, speaking at local Chapter meetings in the US and Europe and co-presenting on live web events.
As a Business Development specialist for many technology companies, Paul has become a strong advocate for partner-based "eco-system innovation”, encouraging IT’s adoption of Cloud and the creation of self-service education and training programs to assist in industry adoption and global standardization efforts. He understands the limits of an R&D platform team, the growing needs of their customers, and the wealth of resources the right partnerships can provide to both.
Paul has been a part of numerous partner-based Enterprise solution launches, many partnerships which resulted in acquisitions-the co-authoring of an IT Ops Automation patent (submitted in 2010) and the recent Enterprise Cloud Development launch with CollabNet. |
2012 - Leader of the Year Americas
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Mark Herbert
Arizona Chapter Leader
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Mark Herbert was nominated by members of the Vivit Arizona Chapter who value his vital leadership role in their local community. Mark has led the Arizona Chapter for three years; before this, he led the Pittsburgh Chapter which he founded in 2006 as a Mercury user group. Mark organizes quarterly events with special emphasis on customer presentations focusing on both applications and operations technologies. In addition, Mark engages members in the event process by operating a forum on the Vivit Arizona web site so they can request topics of interest for upcoming events.
Nationally, Mark is bringing his expertise to the HP Discover conference as a roundtable leader.
Mark is an HP Accredited Systems Engineer (ASE) with HP Quality Center and HP QuickTest Professional. He has been working in software Quality Assurance and using HP testing tools since 1999. Mark is also an HP Certified Instructor in these tool sets. |
2012 -Volunteer of the Year Americas
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Mary Kay Petersen
HP Service Management SIG Leader
Oregon Chapter Leader
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Mary Kay Petersen is the Director of IT Service Management at Mentor Graphics, a manufacturer of Electronic Design Automation solutions headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Mary Kay has worked in the field of Information Technology for 25 years, the past 17 years at Mentor in roles of increasing responsibility. Most recently, Mary Kay has been the driving force behind adopting ITIL best practices at Mentor, selecting HP as a strategic vendor and recently implementing HP ServiceCenter for Global Help Desk & Operations and HP Asset Manager for managing IT Assets and Contracts. |
2011 - Champion of the Year EMEA
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Paolo Cattolico
Trim SIG Leader
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Paolo, who lives in France, founded and initiated the Vivit Information Management TRIM Chapters in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. Through Paolo's outreach, Vivit adopted the TRIM user groups inherited from the HP Software acquisition. Vivit's by-laws do not allow HP employees to hold a leadership position in the user community, which was historically required for an award. However, Vivit created the Champion of the Year award for any individual who is an HP Software customer, partner or employee and who strives and succeeds to expand the Vivit community. Vivit expresses thanks to Paolo as an HP employee for his efforts to assist the TRIM user groups in joining Vivit, to extend the share of knowledge, and to welcome new members. Face-to-face kickoff meetings have been organized in the United Kingdom, and recruitment for further member countries such as Italy and South Africa are now planned. |
2011 - Leader of the Year EMEA
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Martijn Stuiver
HP Service Management
SIG Leader
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Martijn lends his expertise and leadership in the field of service management tool implementation to the Vivit community. As co-Leader for the Vivit HP Service Management Special Interest Group, Martijn organized and led global virtual events and roundtable discussions at all HP DISCOVER conferences and at the Customer Forum of the EMEAs in Paris and Berlin. He has been instrumental in forming cohesive communication and collaborations among Vivit Leaders and HP Software in EMEA. Martijn contributed his knowledge and assistance to the Vivit Germany annual conference in Frankfurt, and he has recently established a local HP Service Management Chapter of Vivit in the Netherlands where he resides. |
2011 - Leader of the Year Americas
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Laura Walker
Chicago, Kansas City
and Richmond, Virginia
Chapter Leader
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Laura Walker shares her talents and strong leadership as a Local Chapter Leader in Chicago, Kansas City, Texas, and Richmond, Virginia. She has formed strong local communities centered on IT Service Management, and she also helps to organize and lead IT Service Management events for other Local Chapters around the United States as well as the worldwide HP Service Management Special Interest Group.
Laura Walker is the Director of Business for StrataCom, an HP Gold Partner specializing in IT Service Management, and has been employed in the IT Service Management industry for 10 years. Laura holds a B.S. in International Business and an MBA degree. She is an active industry volunteer within the IT industry.
Laura is also the itSMF Dakota President. She has served on Dakota and Minnesota itSMF extended boards and on a variety of committees including programs and membership. She loves working in information technology because of the continuous change. |
2010 - Leader of the Year EMEA
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Andreas Birk
TQA SIG Leader
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Dr. Birk, who resides in Germany, founded the Testing, Quality, and Application Lifecycle Management Special Interest Group (TQA SIG) in 2008 for Vivit members around the globe. Together with his co-leaders, he has built it into an active, thriving forum for hundreds of HP Software users. He has organized webinars and created a vibrant online community hub, featuring discussion forums and valuable information repositories. In Germany, he has organized the TQA tracks at the annual Vivit conferences. Andreas serves on the membership committee, collaborates with the Vivit Board of Directors, and has attracted numerous new members to the Vivit community. Dr. Birk was nominated by members of the TQA SIG who value his energy and ability to get others engaged.
As founder and principal consultant of Software.Process.Management (SWPM), Andreas supports process improvement initiatives on testing and application lifecycle management with integrated HP Quality Center solutions. He values collaboration, learning, and experience sharing as important keys to success in software organizations. |
2010 - MVP Americas
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Rocky Pisto
Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Chicago and Michigan Chapter Leader |
As Vice President of Sales for Professional Computers Inc. (PCI), Rocky has been working with HP hardware and software solutions for over 23 years in a channel partner capacity. His success has come from his customer-first strategy, focusing on customer service.
This approach to HP customer service led to Rocky's involvement with Vivit and his commitment to adding value to the HP Software and Solutions community.
Rocky has been an active member of Vivit for over 15 years and a Leader for the Michigan and Ohio Local Users Groups for the past 11 years, adding Local Users Groups in Indiana and Kentucky in 2009. He also supports the Chicago Local Users Group and recently coordinated the 2010 Midwest Road Show in six cities. Rocky has facilitated at least eight to ten local Vivit events a year since 1999 so that HP Software and Solutions customers can network and share best practices, learn about HP updates, and hear about third party solutions.
In 2004, Rocky took on the role as Vivit Membership Chairman with the responsibility for growing Vivit's local users group community around the world. Under his leadership and Vivit staff support, the number of chapters has grown from about a dozen to over 45 chapters worldwide with chapter start-ups in Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. |
2010 - Leaders of the Year Americas
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Todd DeCapua
Delaware Chapter Leader
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Todd built a solid users group focused on Quality Assurance, Software Testing, Functional Automation, Performance Engineering, and Agile Scrum. His vision and leadership provides a highly engaging and collaborative learning environment for all participants. Todd's leadership has resulted in sustained growth of a very active local user community.
Todd, VP of Worldwide Consulting for Shunra, is one of the tech industry's most respected thought leaders on Application Performance Engineering and a renowned speaker, author and visionary. His IT & QA background encompasses nearly all industries and over 70 organizations with extensive consulting experience -- before joining Shunra in 2010, he held senior leadership roles both within IT Development and IT Infrastructure at ING DIRECT, the largest internet bank in the United States -- providing him a uniquely authoritative view of the global business impact of the new best-practice models for performance engineering.
His expertise includes application development, global project management, partnership strategy, collaborative methods like Agile Scrum, infrastructure architecture, business continuity and disaster recovery. At Shunra is to drive professional services, training/education and partnership programs for nearly 2000 worldwide customers deploying applications in WAN, Web, Mobile and Cloud environments.
In 2009 he was invited to sit on the Customer Advisory Board for LoadRunner & Performance Center, Mr. DeCapua was named 2010 HP Software Universe "Best & Brightest". He is also a certified ScrumMaster, Scrum Practitioner, and Six Sigma Green Belt; and is also accredited with an MBA, Concentration in Finance.
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Colin Fries
St. Louis Chapter leader
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Colin eagerly took on the Leader role for the St. Louis Local Users Group in 2009. He focused on HP Quality Center and HP Performance Center product offerings while growing the group to over 100 members strong in one year. Colin has been instrumental in increasing the frequency of local events as well as organizing Vivit Regional events. His tireless effort to bring presentations of interest to the St. Louis Local Users Group has also been key to its rapid growth. His Co-Leader is Charles Fleisher.
Colin was elected to the Vivit Board of Directors in June of 2010 and was recently elected to serve as its Treasurer. Colin has 10 years of experience in the IT industry and has worked in the hardware, network, and software support arenas, as well as software quality assurance.
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2009 - Leaders of the Year EMEA
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Stefan Mohr
Germany Chapter Leader
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Stefan is a co- leader for the Vivit chapter in Germany. His energy, willingness to go the extra mile, and ability to get others engaged has built one of the strongest local user groups worldwide. It was from the voices of his local chapter that he was nominated. His efforts have resulted in local user conferences packed with over 18 presentations and multiple tracks lasting 1 ½ days with over 130 participants. Stefan's commitment to the HP Software user community in Germany speaks volumes about his leadership abilities and traits.
Stefan is the Consulting Manager and a Principal Consultant for the ITC GmbH in Germany. Stefan has more than 12 years experience in implementing, customizing, training and selling of HP Software products and ITSM Consulting. As a certified ITIL Service Manager, he focuses on integrated ITSM solutions for enterprise and SMB customers based on HP Software and 3rd party products. |
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Frank Rosenfelder
Germany Chapter Leader
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Frank is a co-leader for the Vivit chapter in Germany. His energy, willingness to go the extra mile, and ability to get others engaged has built one of the strongest localuser groups worldwide. It was from the voices of his local chapter that he was nominated. His efforts have resulted in local user conferences packed with over 18 presentations and multiple tracks lasting 1 ½ days with over 130 participants. Frank's commitment to the HP Software user community in Germany speaks volumes about his leadership abilities and traits.
Frank has 15 years of experience with HP software and knows the products both from a user and vendor perspective. He currently works for IT unlimited AG, a Platinum HP business partner focused on implementing, supporting and operating IT management solutions. Prior to this assignment, he held several leadership positions in product management, business development and marketing at HP's OpenView business unit. |
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