Maureen F. Norton

Dr. Brenda L. Dietrich is an IBM Fellow and Vice President. She joined IBM in 1984 and has worked in the area now called analytics for her entire career. Her early work involved applying mathematical models to improve the performance of IBM manufacturing lines. During her career, she has worked with almost every IBM business unit and applied analytics to numerous IBM decision processes. For more than a decade, she led the Mathematical Sciences function in the IBM Research division, where she was responsible for both basic research on computational mathematics and for the development of novel applications of mathematics for both IBM and its clients. In addition to her work within IBM, she has been the president of INFORMS, the world’s largest professional society for operations research and management sciences, she is an INFORMS Fellow, and she has received multiple service awards from INFORMS. She has served on the board of trustees of SIAM and on several university advisory boards. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She holds more than a dozen patents, has co-authored numerous publications, and frequently speaks on analytics at conferences. She holds a BS in mathematics from UNC and an MS and PhD in operations research/information engineering from Cornell. Her personal research includes manufacturing scheduling, services resource management, transportation logistics, integer programming, and combinatorial duality. She currently leads the emerging technologies team in the IBM Watson group.

Dr. Emily C. Plachy is a Distinguished Engineer in Business Analytics Transformation, responsible for leading an increased use of analytics across IBM. She has integrated data analysis into her work throughout her career. Since joining IBM in 1982, she has held a number of technical leadership roles including CTO, Process, Methods, and Tools in IBM Global Business Services (GBS), providing architecture and technology leadership and driving the adoption of consistent methods and tools in GBS, and CTO, Enterprise Integration, GBS, providing architecture and technology leadership. She has also held a variety of roles in IBM, including development, ad tech, research, emerging business opportunities, technical sales, and services. Her technology skills include data integration, enterprise integration, solution architecture, software development, and asset reuse. She has experience in multiple industries, including banking, consumer products, retail, telecommunications, healthcare, and petroleum. She has a BS degree in applied mathematics from Washington University, an MSc degree in computer science from the University of Waterloo, and a DSc degree in computer science from Washington University. In 1992, Emily was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology, a body of approximately 1,000 of IBM’s top technical leaders, and she served as its President from 2009 to 2011. She has been a long-term champion of women in technology. She is a member of Women in Technology International, the Society of Women Engineers, and INFORMS. Emily lives in New York with her husband, Tony. She is on Twitter @eplachy and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/pub/emily-plachy/3/1bb/777.

Maureen Fitzgerald Norton, MBA, JD, is a Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional and Executive Program Manager in Business Analytics Transformation, responsible for driving the widespread use of analytics across IBM. She pioneered the development of an outcome-focused communications strategy to drive the culture change needed for analytics adoption. Maureen created analytics case studies and innovative learning exercises for teaching analytics. She co-created an innovative analytics workshop and taught MBA students in Europe and the Middle East. In her previous role, Maureen led project teams applying analytics to IBM Smarter Planet initiatives in public safety, global social services, commerce, and merchandising, specializing in cost/benefit analysis and return on investment of analytic projects. Maureen became the first woman in IBM to earn the designation of Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional for developing innovative approaches to solving business issues and knowledge gaps through analysis. She has held a number of analytic and management roles in IBM. She earned BA and MBA degrees from the University of New Haven and a JD degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law. She is a licensed attorney and did her thesis on the legal implications of artificial intelligence. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, Dr. William Norton, and three children, Erin, Colleen, and William. She is a dual citizen of the United States and Ireland. In addition to Analytics Across the Enterprise, Maureen has published “The Benefits of Social Media Analytics 2013” with the IBM Academy of Technology and “Social Media Analytics: Measuring Value Across Enterprises and Industries” in the Journal of Management Systems. Maureen is on Twitter @mfnorton and on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/maureennorton/.