JD is a former nuclear submarine officer and the crisis response leader who helped supervise the Valdez oil spill cleanup. Nominated as CNBC Asian CEO of the year, he was the Channel News Asia "IT Person of the Week" and advisor to the Singapore Prime Minister, Fortune 100 companies, members of parliament and dignitaries around the world on industrial evolution, innovation, outsourcing and energy policy. After retiring from the corporate world, JD shifted his focus to promoting human potential and became the founder and CEO of Essence Enterprises where he developed a dynamic public presence as the creator, producer, and host of television and radio programs, and leadership seminars.

JD is the recipient of numerous corporate, presidential, and innovation awards and he is a #1 Amazon best selling author on personal development. His writing has been featured in major publications including: The Chief Executive Magazine, Leadership Excellence, Texas CEO, Business Times, New Straits Times, and Far East Economic Journal.

Full bio

A global thought leader on change, human potential, and adaptation, JD began his professional career with an appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy by the U.S. Secretary of the Navy, became a qualified submarine officer and served on three submarines during the Cold War.

In 1986 he joined Exxon and served in various executive management positions including supply, distribution, transportation, bulk terminal, and truck fleet operation and fuel products pricing, analyzing macro and micro supply and demand factors. As a crisis leader, he successfully supervised an 850-person team and a fleet of 125 ships and aircraft, cleaning over 1,000 miles of Alaskan shoreline after the Valdez oil spill.

In 1995, JD joined Ernst & Young LLP (U.S) and became managing partner for global supply chain, outsourcing and systems implementations projects. His clients included Royal Dutch Shell, Phillips Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, the Singapore Ministry of Defence, Maybank, and Wal-Mart. In 1998 he moved to Singapore and as the director of the energy, chemical, and utilities industry sector, grew the business six fold in two years. He then became the CEO for Ernst & Young Consulting Singapore and in 2000, after the Cap Gemini acquisition, JD was appointed CEO of Cap Gemini Ernst & Young (South-East Asia) where he was responsible for all IT and management consulting services. In this capacity, he served as a key advisor for innovation and economic development for the Singapore Prime Minister's Office as well as numerous national statutory boards and government ministries in Singapore, Malaysia, and China. During his tenure with E&Y, JD lead eight corporate turnarounds, four global systems implementations, and numerous service lines teams, including: Merger & Acquisition, Shared Services, Outsourcing, and Innovation.

In early 2000, JD broke his neck and nearly died, causing him to reevaluate his life. After recuperating, he retired from the corporate world in 2003 and shifted his focus to promoting human potential and personal development. He became the founder and CEO of Essence Enterprises where he developed a dynamic public presence as the creator, producer, and host of television and radio programs, as well as leadership seminars, audio programs and books, promoting human potential and spirit.

JD is the recipient of numerous corporate, presidential and innovation awards and he is a #1 Amazon best selling author on personal development. His writing has been featured in major publications including; the Chief Executive Magazine, Leadership Excellence, Texas CEO, Business Times, New Straits Times, and Far East Economic Journal.

He has been married to Marianne Messinger for over thirty years; they have three children and currently reside in Houston, Texas.

More

Ken Kenjale has 38 years of experience in all aspects IT and BPO services over a dozen countries.

Since 2005, Ken has been an independent consultant serving on the boards of two listed technology companies, acting as part-time Chief Strategy Officer for a few IT services companies; doing corporate planning, CEO and CXO mentoring; addressing major opportunities and challenges of small and mid-sized companies; improving P&Ls, cash flows and balance sheets; formulating strategy, structure and systems; improving sales, delivery, onsite-offshore management, HR, infrastructure and R&D; providing contractual and other legal support; and Training.

Prior to that, Ken spent 17 years at Syntel, Inc., a NASDAQ listed IT and BPO services company, in roles ranging from Senior Consultant to Manager Government Services, Manager Strategic Marketing Group, Head Solutions Group, Chief Technology Office, acting Chief Delivery Officer, Member Capital Assets Acquisition Committee, Member Corporate Executive Committee, member of IPO team, CEO of startup SkillBay.com, Inc., and director of companies incubated in the US and the UK. Started several lines of business, created several internal groups, managed over 3,500 IT professionals generating $180 million annually from clients in banking, financial services, manufacturing, health care, retailing and other verticals, conceptualized and implemented several innovations, including the "Shadow and replacement" technique, automation of the temporary and permanent staffing eco-system through SkillBay.com, etc. Set up the Bay Area branch and initiated continental European business. He was key in growing the company from 70 people to several thousand. Deeply involved in technology, solutions, project and engagement management, sales, contracts, service delivery, recruitment, writing papers, speaking at conferences, training, etc.

Prior to that, Ken spent 14 years at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). Working in over a dozen countries, Ken designed and implemented networks, DBMSs, language processors; specified, developed and implemented major applications; managed projects; developed corporate architectures; managed the European region; set up and managed a joint venture in Singapore, and later expanded business to Malaysia; managed company technology acquisitions; conducted campus recruitment and training; and conducted R&D and published innovations in technical journals.

Ken holds a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from a National Institute of Technology (NIT), India (1972), and a master's degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of technology (IIT), Kanpur, India (1974).

More

More

Bala has been building decision support and data warehousing systems since 1994. Bala has played a significant role in the development of NCR Teradata Optimizer while working with NCR resources. Bala then joined Wachovia Bank and he was actively involved in building 100 Terabyte corporate data warehouse (CDW) and various other Data-mart systems mainly used for campaign management, cross selling, direct mail and risk analysis. For last 4 years, Bala is been working with a large financial institution as senior technologist with strong business acumen and technical experience in Big Data space. He was responsible for the overall big data strategy within an organization. He has hands on experience with a range of big data architectures, including OpenStack, Hadoop, Pig, Hive or other big data frameworks.

Specialties

Big Data Architect, Technical solution architect, Lead Data warehousing solution architect, Senior Teradata DBA, Ab Initio ETL expert, Informix XPS and Certified Teradata Master. Extensive knowledge in Unix/Linux systems. Bala graduated with a B.S. in Computer science Engineering from Karnataka University, India. Bala has DBA certifications in DB2 UDB, IBM Informix and NCR Teradata. 

More