Author Bios

Mark Bennett

Mark Bennett (@mpbennett) is the Product Strategy Director for Oracle Fusion Network at Work and Profile Management, setting  the strategic vision and direction of talent collaboration and capability products and their impact on formulation and execution of business strategy. He talks with customers, developers, and other product strategists, tracks the innovations and trends in the Enterprise and Web 2.0 worlds, reads a lot about how people form relationships and collaborate, find motivation in work, and make decisions.

He founded TalentedApps with Meg and Amy, and is its curator, growing the number of contributors (we have over 20 now!), keeping our participation going in the Carnival of HR and the Leadership Development Carnival, as well as keeping it up to date with the rapidly evolving social media industry and its impact on the enterprise.

Mark has previously led the development of cutting edge Talent Management software for over 9 years. He has a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems from San Diego State University and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business in Finance.

His previous career experiences include Apple, IBM, and Saba Software.

Meg Bear

Meg Bear (@megbear) lives and works at the intersection of people, business and technology.  With well over 10,000 hours and nearly 20 years experience in Enterprise Applications she is seasoned yet optimistic.   Skilled across a broad spectrum of functional domains including:  Manufacturing, Financials and Human Resources in addition to technical tools, implementations and methodologies.  Meg has a proven track record of on time product delivery and an industry leading return on investment.  She is currently in charge of the development of the Next Generation Talent Management products for ORCL.

Meg is passionate about applying technology to solve business problems, building and growing teams to be their best and defining products to invest in, that will make money for her company, while solving real customer need.  She is a working mom, technology executive, blogger, patent holder, idea generator, change agent, disruptive technologist and enthusiastic TED conference attendee.

Meg is currently focusing her energy and passion in pursuit of helping others achieve their best.

Louise Barnfield

Louise Barnfield is a senior member of the product management team responsible for Oracle’s next generation Talent Management products.  She has extensive experience across the spectrum of Talent Management, and is passionate about improving the software experience for all roles.

A Brit who’s clocked up over 20 years with Oracle, initially as a technical trainer for Oracle Education in UK, Louise transferred across the pond to HQ in 1997 as a curriculum manager, before shifting into product management in 2000…and yes, she still has a weird accent!

As a past Certified Technical Trainer (CTT) and presentation skills instructor, she’s often appreciated for the wit and humor she brings to her own presentations.

Outside the office, her other passions include tennis and golf, oh and her husband too, though not necessarily in that order! As a keen advocate of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program, she has cycled 6 century rides and supported the cycle team in various roles since 1998. Go Team!

Ravi Banda

Ravi Banda is a Senior Manager in the Fusion HCM Development organization responsible for Profile Management, Network at Work and Recruiting products. He is passionate about building products that help customers increase efficiency in their business processes, as well as solve their business problems. He is also very passionate about his team of outstanding people that are customer focused and are always eager to take on any project to deliver it with outstanding results.

Ravi has been with Oracle since 2000 and spent most of his career in the HCM product world. He has a Bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering from Nagarjuna University (India), Masters in Computer Science from West Virginia University (Let’s go Mountaineers !!) and is currently pursuing an MBA from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley (Go Bears !!)

Kathi Chenoweth

Kathi Chenoweth is trying to figure out what she’s passionate about.  For one thing, inefficient processes can drive her crazy.  A simple trip to the grocery store can require intense therapy afterwards.  It makes you wonder why it took her three hours to write this bio.  But maybe she was just thrown off by having to write about herself in the third person.  You were, weren’t you? Yes, I was. Uh oh, now she’s having a conversation with herself, see what you/she/I started?

Having started her career in IT, supporting “personnel” systems, Kathi has many years of experience in HCM applications.  She was one of the first consultants in the Midwest region at PeopleSoft where she helped customers implement and upgrade their payroll and HR systems. She even had a stint as a developer and was pretty handy with PeopleCode and Application Engine back in the day.

Kathi is currently a product manager in the Fusion Talent Management organization.  She works remotely from her home in Indiana where she has frequent problems with her cats stepping on the keyboard and sending cryptic IMs to her colleagues. She is also stepmother to two teenage boys, a role that has more than a few similarities to the product management role.

Ken Klaus

Ken Klaus has been a product manager with PeopleSoft / Oracle since 1997.  He started in the Higher Education division working on the Student Records module, where he focused on student enrollment, transfer credit, grading and attendance.  In 2002 he joined the newly formed Enterprise Learning Management team and helped to design the first release of the PeopleSoft ELM application.  Following the release of ELM 9.0 he joined the Fusion Applications division where he currently works within the Talent Management organization focusing on learning management, talent review and succession planning.

Justin Field

Justin Field is a program manager with Oracle’s Organisation and Talent Development department.  He looks after performance management and talent management in Asia Pacific.

He has over 11 years of experience in the software industry, covering implementation and design of talent management modules, including talent profiles and performance management.

 

 

Sal Taharim

Sal Taharim is a developer for the HCM Talent Management team.  He earned his academic degrees in BS of Computing Science and MS of Computer Information System from the University of Evansville.  He moved to the bay area from the mid-west to join Peoplesoft/Oracle in 1999.

Sal has worked on several applications products ranging from the North American Payroll, Payroll Interface, Global Payroll Core, Enterprise Learning Management and Fusion Talent Management.  His passion is in software application development, database management, and software integration.

Sal also is an avid golfer (good enough to golf on weekends but still need to keep his day-job).  The game of golf can teach a person a lot of things.  One of them is to be patience; the golfer controls his/her own destiny.  It’s you against the golf course.   Course management and strategy; concentrate and plan to make the next shot.  And most importantly, have fun, socialize, and make new friends.

Jayavel Bharathi

bio coming

Hitesh Shah

bio coming

Marcie Van Houten

bio coming

Namita Panigrahi

bio coming

Keshav Subramanya

Keshav Subramanya has taken the scenic route to writing Talent Management applications.  He had a degree in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA in Marketing before he discovered the totally creative world of computer software and that there were people actually willing to pay him to play in it.  He worked for others and then for himself for many years in India, visited the US a few times along the way, and finally decided to migrate here in a game called ‘chase the money’.

He has yet to catch it.

He is deeply distressed by the large numbers of poor people in this rich land, and volunteers his time to help others as often as he can.  His spends his spare time listening to the blues, reading humor, and working on home improvement projects with some detours into carpentry, car repair and electrical work.

Arvin Kan

Arvin Kan is a product architect in Oracle’s Fusion Talent Management team.  He started his career in enterprise applications in 1998 in various consulting roles at PeopleSoft, where he traveled around the world implementing PeopleSoft products.  He first entered the Talent Management arena in 2003 as a technical consultant for the PeopleSoft Enterprise Learning Management (ELM) product.   Arvin clipped his wings and joined Fusion product development at Oracle in 2007, where he has worked primarily on the Performance Management and Talent Review products.

Arvin considers himself a native of California, even though he spent the first few years of his life in Texas.  He still likes to travel when he can, enjoys hanging out with friends and family, enjoys watching and playing tennis, and plays an occasional video game now and then to keep himself feeling young.

Pramesh Vashist

bio coming

Paul Gupta

Paul Gupta is the Director of Functional Architecture in Oracle Fusion Applications.  He works across Fusion teams addressing cross-product challenges such as Fusion / Apps Unlimited Coexistence strategy, multi-pillar replication, enterprise semantics, and logical data modeling.

Paul beamed over to Fusion from the Hyperion ship, where he led development for analytical applications on top of Essbase.  His interest in analytics often finds him reading about strange concepts such as Hadoop, Pig, R, Flare, and Processing.

Prior to Hyperion, Paul was VP Engineering at DeltaClick, Inc. a venture funded company which raised $2 million in venture funding.  In saner times (prior to Deltaclick), Paul worked on E-Business Suite at Oracle Corporation in varying capacities.

Paul obtained his Master’s degree in Engineering from Stanford University and his Bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi (IIT).

In his spare time, Paul dabbles in some unusual activities which he calls gardening.

Angela Doyle

bio coming

Anders Northeved

Anders Northeved is Product Manager for Oracle Learning Management.  He has a Master of Science (IT) from the Danish Technical University and a – newly acquired – Master of Education (e-learning and international leadership) from Jones University in the US.

From this you can deduct that: He is Danish; he is passionate about what happens in the intersection of IT and humans and he likes everything that is new or changing.

His professional motto is:  3 buttons on a screen is always better than 10

Now life is not all work….
He loves everything with an engine and wheels: sports cars; 4WD trucks; motorbikes and all forms of motor sport.

He’s interested in old windmills (lives in one); cares a lot for all kinds of cute animals (has 16 turtles and tortoises) and couldn’t live without running, trekking and traveling to remote places.

Heavy Metal rules his musical universe – and he is proud to say that he shares all of his private interests with his wife.

His private motto is:  Hate middle of the road

Sri Subramanian

Sri Subramanian (@whoissri) is an accomplished leader with consistent record of delivering market leading products, and enabling 10,000+ customers.

Sri has a proven track record in building, realigning, and turning around teams to become self motivated and successful.

Currently, Sri is responsible for Oracle’s next generation Talent Management Products with a focus on C-Suite.

 

Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson (@LWChris) is a people-person slash software-geek who makes people software.  She is a die-hard UX enthusiast – simple and intuitive, thank you very much.  Chris still believes in “making it easy enough for Mom to use” although she is now Mom, and is adjusting her poor-design-tolerance level accordingly.

With 17 years’ experience in HR / Talent enterprise software, Chris is now working with the Fusion Product Management team on creating Oracle’s next generation Talent Management solutions.