About the Presenters
Zena Applebaum
Zena Applebaum is the Director, Customer Insights & Engagement at Thomson Reuters in Canada. In her role, Zena is responsible for client feedback and intelligence, market insights, and sales enablement. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Zena was the Director of Competitive Intelligence at Bennett Jones LLP, having pioneered the discipline of law firm CI, and authoring Business Intelligence for Law Firms, published in November 2012. Zena shares her passion for the industry as a speaker, writer and a contributor to blogs including 3 Geeks and a Law Blog with topics ranging from competitive intelligence, legal industry change management, qualitative data analysis and personal branding. A data junkie who revels in the possibilities of data to connect people, places and things, Zena can often be found connecting the dots between seemingly unrelated data. In 2015 Zena was inducted as a Fellow of the Council of CI Fellows, and she has been a sessional instructor the University of Toronto iSchool, Rutgers University and a guest lecturer at law schools across North America. She currently serves on the SLA Board of Directors.
Mary Ellen Bates
Mary Ellen Bates is the principal of Bates Information Services Inc., providing strategic business analysis to decision-makers and consulting services to the information industry. She is a frequent speaker and writer on information-related topics as well as a beekeeper, based in Colorado. More information is at batesinfo.com.
Joseph Connolly
Joseph Connolly is an Aerospace Engineer in the Intelligent Control and Autonomy Branch at the NASA Glenn Research Center. In this position, Joseph serves as a discipline lead for propulsion controls under the Advanced Air Transport Technology (AATT) project. Joseph earned his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Ohio State University, his M.S. in Control Systems from Case Western Reserve University, and his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Ohio State University.
Matt Donahue
Matt Donahue is the Market Specialist Director for the Knowledge and Insight team at Dow Jones. Matt directs overall market strategy for Knowledge and Insight products like Factiva. This work includes customer research, content strategy and long term market research on how to anticipate the evolving use-cases of our diverse customer base.
Laura Fu
Laura Fu is the DAM Practice Lead at EMMsphere, a marketing technology managed services provider. She is the first in this role and oversees all DAM Operations projects, assisting clients with system-agnostic DAM work including metadata design, asset cataloging, data cleanup, testing and documentation. She began her career as a TV news technical director but quickly found purpose in creating and managing a station video archive. She segued to DAM in 2011 as the first DAM librarian at Sears Holdings Corporation, later moving to the vendor side, managing DAM implementations and customer success plans. Laura earned her BA in TV Production from Hofstra University and MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Deb Hunt
Deb has zigged and zagged in and out of libraries, pursuing parallel careers in DAM, DM, KM and beyond, utilizing transferrable skills she wrote about in The Librarian’s Skillbook: 51 Essential Skills for Information Professionals. She is currently Library Director at the Mechanics’ Institute (www.milibrary.org). Deb keeps her hand in consulting as Principal of Information Edge and co-teaches SLA’s KM/KS Certificate courses. She is a certified Enterprise Content Management Practitioner. She has authored numerous articles, presented at many conferences, and has received several professional awards. In 2013, Deb served as SLA (international) President. Deb is also an active member of AIIP.org.
Brandy King
Brandy King, MLIS is a skilled and respected independent information professional with a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science, over 15 years of experience in nonprofit health and social science research and 12 years of experience in social media management. Ms. King is a Fellow of the Special Libraries Association, a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals, and has held several board level positions in professional associations.
Amy Knoll
Amy is a seven-year member of both the Legal and Competitive Intelligence Divisions, serving on the Legal Division Board as Webmaster and Chair of the Awards/Grants and Social Media committees. Amy’s current position is at a mid-sized law firm in Harrisburg, Pa., focusing on client intake and conflicts, client intelligence initiatives and legal research. She earned her M.L.S. from the University of Maryland, and her B.A. in History and Management from Gettysburg College. She has previously been employed at the Pennsylvania State Archives, Ancestry.com, and the National Archives.
Cynthia Mathews
Cynthia Mathews is a Digital Asset Manager at Sherwin-Williams where she combines experience in technical solutions with smart workflows to achieve the end goal of connecting people to the assets they need. She works with marketing, brand, product, channel and catalog teams on the flow of marketing assets from creation to syndication, and she is also part of the global DAM team working to create organization-wide solutions. Cynthia has an MLIS degree from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has also worked in DAM in a museum archive collection, higher ed, publishing and advertising.
Robin Neidorf
Robin Neidorf is the Director of Research for Jinfo Limited, an analyst group supporting leaders responsible for content purchasing, information strategy, and information team optimization. She and her team work with information centers of all sizes, in all industries, to support their efforts to raise the visibility and value of their expertise in their organizations. A core principle of Jinfo is to produce results that are practical and actionable. The Information Centre of Excellence concept, and its related assessments, models and resources, can be used by any information team to design and realize its vision for the future.
Laurie Neuerburg
Laurie Neuerburg is the Sciences Reference & Outreach Librarian at the University of Iowa Sciences Library and the subject librarian for physics, astronomy, and biology. She is interested in information literacy, science communication, and educational outreach. She holds a master’s degree in biomedical sciences from the University of Houston-Victoria and a master’s degree from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jennifer Pflaumer
Jennifer Pflaumer launched her information management consultancy, Paroo, in 2009 after realizing the need for concentrated information management solutions for businesses across all industries. Her expertise includes finding ways to better manage digital assets, creating information strategies, improving workflow processes, and performing systems analysis and design. Through her practice, she has helped companies to purchase and refine their digital asset management systems, organize their files with dedicated taxonomies, and make content more findable on their websites. She earned her Master of Library and Information Science from UCLA, with a focus on human-computer interaction, digital media, and information architecture.
Karen Reczek
Karen Reczek is a Program Manager, Standards Coordination Office at the National Institute of Standards & Technology. Previously Karen worked at Bureau Veritas as Senior Manager for 14 years and prior to that, eight years at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Karen has over 23 years’ experience in standards and conformity assessment activities and research. Karen holds an MLS Degree from the University of Buffalo, and a BS from Clarkson University. Karen is an SLA Fellow and won the John Cotton Dana Award in 2019. She is currently the Vice President of the SES: The Society for Standards Professionals Board of Directors.
Alison Ricker
Alison Ricker earned her bachelor’s in biology from Alma College and her master’s in library science from the University of Rhode Island. She was hired as science librarian at Oberlin College in 1983 and is now head of the science library. She began her career as librarian at Skidaway Institute of Oceanography and was active in SLA and IAMSLIC. She has held many leadership roles in both the Academic Library Association of Ohio and ALA ACRL Science and Technology Section. She served two terms as ALA Liaison to AAAS and is now a member of the AAAS Library Advisory Board.
Brian D. Schwartz
Brian D. Schwartz, PhD, MLIS, is the Director of Library Services and Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine and is a graduate of the University of Kansas, University of Denver, and Emporia State University.
Dr. Schwartz has published in Medical Reference Services Quarterly, Colorado Libraries and Distance Learning, presented at conferences for AACOM, The Gold Foundation for the Medical Humanities, Association of Library and Information Science Educators, the Medical Librarian Association, Colorado Council of Medical Libraries and Colorado Association of Libraries, OPTI-West research day, and RVU Diversity Week, and received grant funding from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation. His academic interests include the confluence of evidence-based medicine and information literacy, as well as problem-solving and information-seeking processes, medical humanities, and the application of educational theory.
Andrew Shimp
Andrew Shimp is the Librarian for Engineering & Applied Science, Chemistry and Mathematics at Yale University. He has worked at Yale for more than twenty years with responsibility for the administration of the Engineering & Applied Science and Mathematics Libraries, and previously served as the coordinator of collection development for the science libraries. Prior to his employment at Yale, he held the position of head of Public Services and Science & Engineering Librarian at the University of Bridgeport. He is active in the Special Libraries Association (SLA) and has held several leadership positions in the SLA Engineering Division including chair, chair of the Nominating Committee, conference planner, and treasurer. He is also a member of the Engineering Libraries Division (ELD) of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) and has been elected to positions including chair, secretary/treasurer, and chair of the Nominating Committee. He coordinated the ELD program for the 2004 ASEE Annual Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has served on professional advisory groups for Compendex Scope and Coverage, ACM, CRC, Inspec, IEEE, and SPIE.
Susan Stagno
Susan Stagno, MD is Professor of Psychiatry and Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and holds the Sihler Family Professorship in Psychiatry. She is currently the Director for Education for the Psychiatry Department and faculty lead for the Humanities Pathway for CWRU SOM. She graduated from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and completed her residency training in psychiatry at The Ohio State University. She was part of the team that received a “Mapping the Landscape” grant for a systematic review from the Arnold Gold Foundation.
Lauren Trees
Lauren is the principal research lead for knowledge management at APQC. In this role, she identifies trends in enterprise knowledge sharing and collaboration, researches ways to improve knowledge flow, and shares the findings with APQC members and the business community at large. In addition to spearheading APQC’s KM research practice, she writes for a range of media outlets, and her research has been published in Smartbrief, Inc., Forbes, and TIME. She is also an experienced speaker, having keynoted global conferences as well as corporate meetings and webinars.
Jennifer Tyner
Jennifer Tyner is a Digital Asset Manager at Progressive Insurance. She has been working in the DAM industry since 2006 and has experience designing controlled vocabulary, training end users, rights management, gathering statistics on usage of the DAM and collaborating across multiple departments to define workflow processes. She also has experience in the industries of higher education, photography, museums and archives. Jennifer is an MLIS graduate of Valdosta State University in Georgia, and she received a Master of Arts with a focus in managing photographic collections from Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.
