Randy Best, Chairman
Mr. Best has extensive experience as a private investor and senior executive in a broad range of business entities. He has started or acquired more than 100 companies with more than a dozen held in the public markets. Mr. Best founded Voyager Expanded Learning, which provides literacy solutions to over one million students a year in America's public schools. Mr. Best is a graduate of Lamar University.
Doug Frederick,Chief Executive Officer
Prior to joining Whitney, Mr. Frederick served as Executive Vice President and President of the Operations Solutions line of business for EDS. A member of the EDS Executive Operations Team, Mr. Frederick was responsible for strategy, leadership and growth of global IT outsourcing and business process outsourcing. In addition, Mr. Frederick spent almost two decades at The Boeing Company, where he held a variety of positions, including Director of Information Systems Business Support. An Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, Mr. Frederick earned his Master of Science degree in Management Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. He also holds advanced degrees from Seattle University in Software Engineering and University of Washington in Education Administration as well as a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, physics and mathematics from Washington State University.
Patrick Albert,Chief Financial Officer
Patrick Albert joins Whitney International University System with a broad multi-cultural and multi-industry background. Patrick brings with him almost 20 years corporate finance experience with General Electric, where he has launched start-ups, completed mergers or ran day-to-day operations in almost 15 different countries. His most recent role with General Electric was the Asia CFO for GE Advanced Materials located in Tokyo, Japan. Patrick has a cross-border MBA from Kellogg and Wharton.
Mark Flanagan,SVP Distance Learning Systems
Prior to joining Whitney, Mr. Flanagan was with Trinity Workplace Learning for twenty years, where he most recently managed the Customer and Technology Services group and served on Trinity's Executive Committee. Mr. Flanagan holds a BBA degree in Management from Northwood University.
Ron Perkinson,SVP Education Development
Mr. Perkinson was the Principal Education Specialist for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group where he had global oversight of IFC investments in education projects throughout developing countries. For over 20 years, Mr. Perkinson has held positions at Chief Executive and Director levels in large multinational service industries in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Mr. Perkinson has been an expert speaker at many international conferences, presenting on developing knowledge societies, the global education marketplace, cost, quality, accessibility, innovative financing and the changing landscape ahead for international higher education.
Joe SindelarSVP Technology Management
Joe Sindelar’s career spans 30 years of experience as an engineer and manger of highly diverse computer system architectures and multifaceted programming environments. He has a broad scope of senior experience in developing strategies and services for complex technology solutions. He is recognized within the industry for his rich strategic perspective and balanced treatment of theory, technology, architecture, and software in establishing and continuously improving business operations.
Since earning his Master of Science Degree in Computer Sciences in 1991, Mr. Sindelar held a broad range of executive positions in Corporate Strategy, Global Operations, and Professional Services with IBM Global Services, EDS, and Bell Atlantic. From 1994 to 2000, Mr. Sindelar applied a highly effective hands-on leadership style coupled with Dr. Deming’s quality philosophy to transform IBM’s product support services group into a highly productive organization, which yielded a three-year growth of 137% with a profit improvement of 65%. He has also led the development of several technology based productivity improvement programs based on Dr. Deming’s theories that yielded over two billion dollars in operational savings.
Tim Sheppard, Controller
Mr. Sheppard is a chartered certified accountant with 20 years of international experience in public accounting, real estate, oil & gas, and software. Prior to joining Whitney, Mr. Sheppard was with Dallas based i2 Technologies, Inc. During his 10-year tenure, he served as Chief Financial Officer for i2’s Asia Pacific business unit, and most recently was Vice President, Finance. Mr. Sheppard earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Imperial College, London, and an MBA from Edinburgh Business School.
Jeff Gilliam, EVP Operations
Mr. Gilliam brings to Whitney International over 20 years of experience in the technology services industry. Mr. Gilliam managed professional services for the Americas for EMC. There he led an organization transformation that increased revenues over 100%. Prior to EMC he ran Global Services for Vignette Professional Services, where he was responsible for nearly 50% of the company’s revenue. He has served as President of EDS for the Western Region, managing a $1 billion portfolio and generating 1.7 billion sales worth of total contract revenue in one year. In that role he was responsible for all delivery, financial management, and sales of a billion dollar portfolio. Additionally, Mr. Gilliam has served as President of Global Alliances, in which he had direct influence
over $5 billion new offerings in service. Mr Gilliam had responsibilities to manage relationships in Silicon Valley during the high tech revolution in the 1990s. He has specific industry knowledge in banking and high tech with a general background in all industries. Mr. Gilliam earned his BA in Computer Science from Western Kentucky University.
Carlos Longo, VP Distance Learning
Dr. Longo joined Whitney as SVP of Distance Learning late 2007. He took a major part on defining the Whitney Model and coordinating the Distance Learning WIUS members in Latin America. He has also been developing the Academic Content Management Strategy. Dr. Longo serves as a board member of Whitney International of Brazil.
In the past 10 years, before joining the Whitney executive team, Dr. Longo was Executive Director of FGV Online, the Distance Learning program of the Getulio Vargas Foundation, the most renowned business, law and economics school in Brazil. Under his leadership, FGV Online became a prestigious program for distance learning executive education with over 7,000 MBA students and more than 14,000 annual corporate training. FGV Online was awarded the "Best Corporate Distance Learning Program" in Brazil for the last two years. He also developed and managed the FGV Quality Centre for Executive Education, taking part on building a site partner network structure for MBA face to face programs with annual revenue of over US $100 million.
Dr. Longo has been a guest speaker at conferences and has published a number of papers and book chapters about distance learning in Brazil and abroad. In November 2007, the Brazilian
Institute of Advanced Research in Education granted Dr. Longo the Prize Prominence in Education in the modality of Distance Education. He holds a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering and a MBA and Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne - UK.
Juan Carlos Rabbat Rector, Universidad Empresarial Siglo 21
Juan Carlos Rabbat has over 30 years experience in the Argentinean education market. Juan Carlos served as a professor of Math, Physics and Chemistry from 1973 to 1988 in various tertiary and university institutions.
Juan Carlos founded the private educational institution AES in 1974. He also founded IES in 1982 More recently, Juan Carlos founded the prestigious university Siglo 21, where he currently serves as rector of the university and president of the nonprofit foundation that manages Siglo 21.
In 2003, he ran for mayor of Cordoba. He was elected to the city council of Cordoba, where he serves the interests of the community.
Juan Carlos has a bachelor's degree in Chemistry from the Cordoba National University.
Rafael Roa, President, Latin America
Before joining Whitney, Rafael spent 18 years with EDS, 16 years of which were in Latin America and Europe. For the past 6 years, he was based in Europe and most recently was Vice President, Strategic Sales EMEA, where he was successful in leading large, multi-national, complex transactions. Prior to that, he served as President for Spain and Portugal, with responsibility for the strategic business planning process, P&L, and overall operations. During his tenure, he was able to increase the region's annual revenue through double digit growth, while improving profitability overall.
He also spent ten years in Latin America, heading up sales for the region. During that time, he and his team achieved many successes in both Information Technology Outsourcing (ITO) and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), with companies such as Telefonica (Brazil), BBV(Mexico), FEMSA (Mexico), and Visanet (Brazil).
He also spent two years in Dallas managing one of EDS' large corporate clients. Prior to joining EDS, Rafael worked in sales with Clark Checks and Duracell batteries. He holds a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington and has completed a senior management program from Babson College in Massachusetts. He is both an American and Colombian citizen, and has an in-depth understanding of different cultures, which has allowed him to be successful leading initiatives in many different countries.
Pablo Michelsen Nino, Rector, Politécnico Grancolombiano
Mr. Michelsen earned his bachelor's degree in Law at Universidad Javeriana, and his certificate diploma in Business Administration at Oxford University. He has served in the manufacturing and education sectors. He is the current Chancellor of Politécnico Grancolombiano in Colombia and Universidad del Istmo in Panama.
In the education sector, he has been a board member of different non-profit institutions and has written several papers about globalization, technology and education.
As a rector he has led academic processes such as accreditation, design of new programs, research programs and social projection, training programs addressed towards companies, academic quality programs, and encouraging enterprising students through two institutions which have been founded to promote their projects.
Mauricio Rubio Garcia, Chief Operations Officer, Colombia and Panama
Mr. Rubio, as a student of the economic science faculty at Universidad Javeriana, was an active member of AIESEC. He became the Vice President of Education Projects in Colombia. Afterwards, he worked as part of the economic research department at ANIF (Banking Association).
Since 1982 he has worked at Politécnico Grancolombiano. During his 25 years at PG he occupied a number of posts before being appointed as the General Vice-chancellor.
Since August 2006, he has been the Whitney International Chief Operations Officer for Colombia and Panama and is responsible for the strategy, operation and growth of Politécnico Grancolombiano, Universidad del Istmo in Panama, Bogota Community College and Compuclub. He is a member of various Colombian entities and boards of directors. He is a member of PG, UDI and Compuclub’s Boards and was recently appointed as WIUS’s representative for the Universidad Siglo 21’s Board (Cordoba, Argentina).
