Our Blogger Team
Grzegorz Balnis
Manager, Portal Technology Deployment,
Wolters Kluwer Global Platform Organization
Grzegorz (known as Greg by his English-speaking friends) is an IT professional with 15 years of experience in what used to be called electronic publishing, and now is known as online media. He’s always been interested in getting valuable content into the right shape and making it available to customers. With a strong technical background and an Executive MBA degree, Grzegorz helps Wolters Kluwer to monetize content and create better value through leveraging technology.
An evangelist by nature, he started preaching SGML and later XML in Poland. Now that XML is pretty much commonplace, he’s moving forward to understand the phenomena of user-generated content and social media.
John Barker
Vice President of Strategy & Competitive Intelligence
Wolters Kluwer Global Platform Organization
John Barker is Vice President of Strategy & Competitive Intelligence in Wolters Kluwer’s Global Platform Organization. In this role, John provides strategic direction for Wolters Kluwer’s global tax, legal, and regulatory content delivery platform, Global Atlas, and shares strategic product design best practices globally across Wolters Kluwer.
John has an extensive background in professional publishing, including as a Product Manager and Executive Legal Consultant at LexisNexis, a consultant, and award-winning Account Manager for Thomson Reuters. John has appeared as a keynote speaker at multiple Law Librarian Associations, and authored more than 50 articles discussing the application of technology to the practice of law. He has served as a Special Counsel for Technology at the Indianapolis law firm of Ice Miller LLP, and had a clerkship to a U.S. Magistrate with the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana
John holds a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Tulane University Law School, New Orleans, and a BA in Philosophy, magna cum laude, from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
David Bergstein
Director, Strategic Relationships, CCH,
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
David Bergstein, CPA, CITP is Director of Strategic Relationships for CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business. David has been in the tax and accounting industry for many years and has been a practicing accountant for over 20 years. While at the IRS he held various positions: Agent, Trainer, Speaker, and Chief Technical Section. He received his CPA and an MA in Taxation from Long Island University’s CW Post College.
David was an accounting professor at Suffolk County Community College in New York for over 15 years. In addition, he has served on the AICPA Top Tech Technology Team and presently is a member of the FICPA Business Technology Section and the Financial Literacy Committee. He is also an AICPA CPA Ambassador. David is well-known as a speaker and trainer in the field of utilizing new technology to improve the efficiency of operations in tax, accounting, practice management, and general operations of the accounting process.
David is a happy grandfather who tweets on twitter while rollerblading. His hobbies include bicycle riding, tennis, and staying up to date on technology. If you are looking to keep up with him you can find him on Facebook or his twitter account.
Cathy Betz
Vice President, Government Affairs,
Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solutions
Cathy is responsible for developing and executing Wolters Kluwer Pharma Solution’s government affairs strategy which is designed to educate and inform federal and state legislators and other interest groups on health policy issues of interest to the company’s various business enterprises. A well respected advocate and spokesperson on health policy and health law issues, Cathy brings over 25 years of legislative and government affairs experience to this role, including policy development, legislative and regulatory analysis, stakeholder relations and consensus building.
Joining the company in 2007, Betz is based in Washington D.C. She holds a BS from James Madison University, a Juris Doctor from George Mason University’s School of Law, and a Master’s in Health Administration from the Medical College of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Piotr Bledzki
Strategic Project Manager, Project Management Office
Wolters Kluwer Poland
Piotr has worked for Wolters Kluwer Poland since 2003 as a software tester and editor, specializing in European and Intellectual Property legislation. Piotr is currently responsible for designing and implementing new solutions in electronic legal information systems and other software applications.
Piotr holds a Master of Laws, and is also a lecturer of Legal Information Technologies at the University of Gdańsk. He’s married and has two children. Besides new technologies, he likes fantasy books and movies, all sorts of computer games and, as time allows, swimming.
You can find him on LinkedIn at http://pl.linkedin.com/in/piotrbledzki
Raymond Blijd
Project Manager, Online Innovation, Kluwer Law International
Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory
Raymond Blijd is responsible for development of new online and mobile products and services in close collaboration with publishing, marketing, sales, and end users. Raymond is currently engaged in concepts and business development for mobile, desktop, and social media for local and global markets. In previous roles he has been involved in the development of legal knowledge systems and portals for Wolters Kluwer Netherlands.
Raymond has a law degree from the University of Amsterdam and specialized in legal knowledge system engineering and intellectual property law with the Institute for Information Law (IvIR).
Born and raised in Suriname, his humble beginnings have always inspired him to pursue the “better way” of doing things. Starting with the fundamentals and creating the ultimate user experience is what drives him. Trend spotting and playing with the latest gadgets and services are his hobbies; having a sense of humor is what keeps him grounded. Follow him @legalcomplex
Edward Bryant
Writer Analyst
Wolters Kluwer, Tax & Accounting
Edward has worked with Wolters Kluwer for 10 years, joining CCH Health Care Compliance and Reimbursement product group in 2001. He currently works as a writer-analyst for Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting on state tax issues and has been involved in the development of editorial software tools and the development of content markup standards. Edward received his BS from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, where he majored in Political Science, minored in art, and spent three years combining the two as an editorial cartoonist. He received his JD from the Illinois Institute of Technology's Chicago-Kent College of Law with a focus on intellectual property law. Edward also has a personal blog at http://www.edwardbryant.com/blog/
Danielle H. Capilla
Writer Analyst
Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, Business Compliance
Danielle Capilla has been a writer for Wolters Kluwer Law and Business since 2009, specializing in health law. Danielle is the lead editor of the Wolters Kluwer health law blog and a writer and analyst of the various Wolters Kluwer publications. She also leads the health law Advisory Board. Prior to joining Wolters Kluwer, Danielle worked as an associate attorney at a medical malpractice law firm. Danielle graduated from DePaul University College of Law with a health law certificate and has an undergraduate degree in sociology and business from Tulane University. She enjoys cooking, sailing and distance cycling in the Chicago area, time permitting.
Christian Dirschl
Content Architect, Head of Content Strategy
Wolters Kluwer Germany
Christian is responsible for the content structures, metadata, taxonomies, and thesauri within Wolters Kluwer Germany. He manages text mining and automatic topical classification projects.
He also represents Wolters Kluwer Germany in international projects like LOD2 or in the cooperation with KISTI (South Korea). Christian has worked with Wolters Kluwer Germany since 2001. Before that, he worked as an international IT consultant in several software companies.
Christian has a Master of Arts degree in Information Science from the University of Regensburg. He is based in Munich, Germany.
Rosalie Donlon
Acquisition Editor, Business Compliance Group,
Wolters Kluwer Law & Business
Rosalie Donlon is an acquisition editor and also works on new product development for the Business Compliance Group of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. Rosalie concentrates on the corporate counsel market segment as well as the labor and employment law and payroll practice areas. She has been with WKL&B since September 2004. Previously, Rosalie was with Thompson Publishing Group (Washington, DC); Leader Publications (the newsletter division of the National Law Journal), and Mercer Benefits Consultants in the communications practice.
Rosalie is a graduate of the University of Toledo College of Law and has been a practicing attorney doing business law and litigation. Based on her experience with legal research and as the editor of several newsletters, Rosalie is interested in the effective use of new technology and channels to deliver content quickly to users wherever and whenever they need or want it.
Veena Fox Parekh
Communications Manager
Wolters Kluwer Corporate Communications
Veena has worked with Wolters Kluwer for 3 years, starting as an online content writer for Corporate Communications. She is currently responsible for managing all corporate online platform development and the corporate social media strategy, as well as developing mobile apps.
She is passionate about music (so many different kinds!), online and mobile technologies, travel, pretty much anything creative and out of the ordinary, and is a hopeless foodie.
Veena received her MA in Development Studies from the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands, part of Erasmus University. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Political Economy of Industrial Societies, where she also wrote for the Berkeley Political Review as a senior staff writer. She is based in Amsterdam.
Wendy Gardiner
Marketing Associate, CCH Small Firm Services
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
Wendy Gardiner joined the CCH Small Firm Services Marketing Department in March 2008. She is responsible for designing most of the marketing collateral (sales catalogs, brochures, flyers) and she is editor of the SFS Insider employee newsletter that is distributed monthly to over 600 CCH Small Firm Services employees.
Wendy has nine years of marketing experience including event planning and marketing communications. She holds an MBA from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Bachelor’s degrees in Journalism and Spanish also from UAB.
Beyond graphic design and newsletter editing, Wendy is an endurance road cyclist and has ridden distances as much as 750 miles in a little over three days. Wendy lives in Acworth, GA, a suburb of Atlanta.
Martina Gernet
Communications Manager
Wolters Kluwer Corporate Communications
Martina has worked with Wolters Kluwer for 4 years, initially focusing on the global internal communications program. She is currently responsible for the overall strategic content development for the global communications program at Wolters Kluwer.
In her free time she likes to take long walks with her dog and being outside in nature as well as trying out new kinds of food (preparing as well as eating!).
Martina holds a MA degree from the University of Amsterdam in International Relations and a BA from Leeds University in European Studies. Prior to joining Wolters Kluwer she was an editor for an online information service at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex. She is currently based in Amsterdam.
Joe Gornick
Senior Manager, CCH Seminars and New Business Opportunities
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
A 25-year CCH veteran, Joe is currently Senior Manager, Seminars and New Business Opportunities, where he collaborates with leading tax and accounting industry experts to conduct more than 100 virtual seminars per year. Joe is also engaged in identifying new business opportunities for CCH, primarily in the areas of education, training and professional development. In previous roles, Joe was Executive Editor for CCH’s books, journals and newsletters portfolio and managed the company’s continuing education products and services.
Joe has a BA in Journalism and Marketing from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Born and raised in Chicago, Joe lives in the western suburbs of the Windy City with his wife and three children. He also plays in a Croatian tamburitza orchestra, sings in his Church choir, loves Pinot Noir, and reads a lot of historical novels. In a previous life, he thinks he was an American Indian princess.
Ali Hashemi
Taxonomy Specialist
Wolters Kluwer, CCH Canada
Ali Hashemi joined Wolters Kluwer in the spring of 2011, bringing a background in artificial intelligence, semantic technologies and cognitive engineering. He has been active both in academia and industry, working on developing intelligent, conversational software agents as well as designing large ontology repositories.
He is currently both a co-organizer and co-lead editor of this year's Ontology Summit 2012 - Ontology for Big Systems. Ali also serves as a Visibility and Pubilcity co-chair for the International Association for Ontology and its Applications.
Ali holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Engineering Science, and a Masters of Applied Science from the Univeristy of Toronto in Knowledge Engineering.
Mark Hevrdejs
Director of Learning Products - Cross-Market Solutions, CCH
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
Mark Hevrdejs plays an active role in identifying and implementing new product and business opportunities, as well as identifying new approaches to information packaging. Mark also works to develop new products and enhancements for CCH Tax and Accounting, with a particular emphasis on e-learning.
With over 20 years experience in the publishing industry, Mark, an attorney and CPA, has spent the better part of his career focusing on new product and feature development. He currently heads up a cross-functional team of publishing and technology professionals charged with reshaping content to take advantage of developments in information technology.
A former member of the Software Information Industry Association Content Advisory Board, Mark has a BA in economics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, as well as a JD cum laude and an LL.M in taxation from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. When not thinking about our how to better serve tax and accounting professional needs, Mark enjoys being beaten at chess by his son, Peter (age 12), and at tennis by his daughter, Sarah (age 15).
Ruud Kluivers
Innovations Manager/Strategic Vendor Liaison,
Wolters Kluwer Global Platform Organization
Ruud Kluivers has over 20 years of experience in the publishing industry and witnessed the profound impact of Desktop Publishing and the Internet on the industry. He started his career as editor-in-chief of several IT trade journals, which ignited his curiosity and drive to understand how change, enabled through technology, brings value to an organization.
He has been at the forefront of innovation ever since he built and managed an extensive internet service unit during the nineties of the last century. Ruud brings in-depth knowledge, hands-on expertise, and strategic insight to the point where business and technology meet. He spots technology trends and translates them into business possibilities and opportunities. One of his mottos – “eat your own dogfood” explains his hands-on mentality in many aspects of social media and blogs.
Ruud Kluivers holds a Masters Degree in Social Psychology from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Craig Koller
Manager of Creative Services,
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
As Sr. Marketing Manager for Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting's Creative Services Group, Craig Koller works with the teams that generate print, video, online, and product branding content. He joined CCH in 1995 as a multimedia developer and has since been involved in marketing and development initiatives across the software, research, and corporate event spectrum.
Craig received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and his MBA from Pepperdine University. Beyond his interests in technology and marketing, Craig is a musician and actor who takes part in projects around the Los Angeles area.
Cliff McCartney
Chief Architect at CCH Small Firm Services,
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
Cliff McCartney is the Chief Architect at CCH Small Firm Services, a Wolters Kluwer business. Before joining WK in 2008 he was the VP of Technology and CTO at iLumen, a financial services software company based in Atlanta, Georgia. He has served as a technology principal in two startup companies, and he also has experience in consulting, project management, and product development.
Cliff has almost 30 years of software development experience, serving in executive, design, and development roles. He has programmed everything from mainframes to minicomputers to PCs to tablets to smartphones, in environments as diverse as airline reservations and financial benchmarking.
Cliff holds an MBA in Management of Technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a member of the Technology Association of Georgia and the International Association of Software Architects. His passion lies in the technology, sociology, and psychology of producing insanely great software products.
Linda R. Peitzman, MD
Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Clinical Solutions
Chief Medical Officer, Wolters Kluwer Health
Dr. Peitzman directs clinical strategy and oversees the clinical development and informatics for Clinical Solutions products at Wolters Kluwer. Her experience spans many facets of healthcare, from direct patient care, to physician management, to electronic medical record integration, including a wide range of clinical informatics and content development.
Prior to its acquisition by Wolters Kluwer, she served as chief medical officer for ProVation Medical, where she led a team of clinicians and coders who defined and developed medical content for the company’s documentation software applications.
Earlier in her career, she was a practicing physician and a medical director with HealthSystem Minnesota/Park Nicollet Clinic, a large, multispecialty integrated care delivery system with hospital facilities and 31 clinic locations.
Howard Strasberg
Vice President, Medical Informatics
Wolters Kluwer Health – Clinical Solutions
As the VP of Medical Informatics for Wolters Kluwer Health – Clinical Solutions, Howard focuses on building products that answer clinical questions and integrate knowledge with electronic medical record (EMR) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems. He is also actively involved in standards development as a co-chair of the Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Decision Support (CDS) Technical Committee, which develops CDS standards in areas such as Infobuttons, order sets, and decision support services.
Prior to joining Wolters Kluwer Health in 2003, he was CEO of Skolar, Inc., an online provider of clinical information and "in context" continuing medical education (CME) for medical professionals.
Howard received his MD degree from the University of Western Ontario and his MS degree in Medical Information Sciences from Stanford University. He is board certified in Family Medicine. As a hobby, he enjoys following the airline industry, especially with regards to the latest schedules, routes, fares and frequent flyer programs.
Arvind Subramanian
President & CEO
Wolters Kluwer Health, Clinical Solutions
Arvind brings 20 years of general management, process and functional expertise (marketing, technology, sales, business development, customer service, operations) to Wolters Kluwer Health.
Prior to Wolters Kluwer Health, Arvind spent more than 10 years at General Electric Company (GE), where he held vice president/general manager positions for several business lines at GE Information Services, and senior product/service management positions at GE Medical Systems, including positions in the global nuclear/molecular medicine modality, service marketing and operations, and strategic planning/market research.
After leaving GE in 1999, Arvind served on the executive management teams of two venture-capital backed technology start-up companies, both of which completed successful exit strategies, and including ProVation Medical, where he served as Chief Operating Officer prior to the Wolters Kluwer Health acquisition. Arvind has significant expertise in the areas of healthcare medical devices, supply chain software and services and clinical software and services.
Education: BA, Case Western Reserve; MBA, Case Western Reserve
Leanne Summers
Medical Writer, Pharma Solutions
Wolters Kluwer Health & Pharma Solutions
Leanne Summers is just starting out. She finished her Bachelors of Biomedical Science in 2009 and hasn't looked back since joining the pharmaceutical/medical publishing world embracing many challenges, not least of which is how to sum up an entire clinical trial in a sentence or two. She also writes about pharmacoeconomics and adverse drug reactions all under the guise of Pharma Solutions.
Having had firm roots in New Zealand for the last 5 years she has picked up the kiwi spirit of ingenuity, which has helped her embrace the culture within Wolters Kluwer, working in teams to promote and execute innovative ideas. She is also an avid social media aficionado using the platforms to keep a finger on the pulse, to network and share information; this comes with the territory though, she's Gen Y.
Feel free to connect with her on Linkedin, or twitter @leasummers – she'll be happy to assist, brainstorm, innovate or just chat about NZ wine.
Guy Van Peel
Director, European Business Development,
Wolters Kluwer Global Platform Organization
Since April 2009, Guy Van Peel is Director, European Business Development, for Wolters Kluwer’s Global Platforms Organization, and is a member of the management team of this technology group. From 2004 until 2009, Guy worked in Wolters Kluwer’s European Legal, Tax & Regulatory division, responsible for monitoring content management and development programs across European geographies. He also lead a small team of skilled professionals located in the Netherlands doing research and development on Semantic Web technologies and their potential use in the company.
Guy started his career with Wolters Kluwer in 1987 as a product marketing manager for legal and tax publishing products. In that role, he was part of the core team that achieved the successful commercial launch of the first legal CD-ROM publication in Belgium. Since then Guy has held various managerial positions related to electronic and online publishing in Wolters Kluwer Belgium, Spain, and Italy.
Guy holds a Master’s degree in Law from the University of Antwerp, and a post-graduate degree in Information Management from Vlerick Management School, Ghent. He lives near Antwerp with his wife and 3 children. Apart from spending time with them, when away from the office he likes cycling, jogging, tennis, and reading; also he’s an “aficionado” of Mediterranean cuisine.
Shilpa Venkateshwaran
Senior Software Quality Control Engineer, SQC
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services
Shilpa Venkateshwaran is an IT professional who has spent 10 or so years testing and leading test efforts of software applications. She works as a Senior Software Test Engineer with Wolters Kluwer Financial Services (WKFS) and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been with WKFS for over 5 years and has worked on various legacy products. She has a passion for leading and managing test projects.
Lately her focus has been on creating and using metrics that can be used to incorporate continuous processes improvement to increase test efficiencies. She has worked on creating test processes that can adapt to the changing market needs of software development. She is a learner, teacher, and likes to share her experience with others. Shilpa enjoys reading and blogging. To know more about her you can follow her on twitter (shillu13), facebook, or her own blog: http://todaysbigpicture.blogspot.com.
Burkhardt Vitt
Head of Content Integration,
Wolters Kluwer Germany
Burkhardt started as an online editor in 1998 with the launch of online information services for tax and accounting at Wolters Kluwer Germany. After various roles as program manager and head of online, since 2009 he has been responsible for content integration within ADDISON and Wolters Kluwer Germany. Burkhardt’s current focus is the ongoing integration of information into customers’ workflow.
Before starting his career at Wolters Kluwer, Burkhardt studied Political Science in Siegen and Nantes. He later acquired a background in tax and accounting while working at the German fiscal authorities.
Burkhardt’s interest in intelligent solutions is inspired by the changing business models in the publishing industry, and the increasing importance of connecting publishing content and software solutions to “point of use” solutions.
Betsy Weissman
Director, Strategic Initiatives Organization, CCH
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
As a Director in CCH’s Strategic Initiatives Organization, Betsy provides strategic direction for the tax and accounting content that resides on CCH’s leading tax platform, IntelliConnect.
Betsy is currently leading the Blackberry and iPhone design and development initiatives as an extension of the IntelliConnect platform. Further, she is heading up the portal integration program for the corporate markets and Big 4 accounting firms. Betsy has an extensive background in state and local tax, knowledge management, and portal development after 13 years as a Senior Manager at KPMG, LLP.
Betsy holds a Juris Doctor from Duquesne University and a BA in Political Science, summa cum laude, from Pennsylvania State University.
Ornella Zampieri
Project Manager & Content Architect, Electronic Publishing
Wolters Kluwer Italia
Ornella leads a team of project managers and content architects within the Electronic Publishing department at Wolters Kluwer Italia.
She started her career in a software house as a developer, contributing to the creation of the first professional legal databases on CD-ROM in Italy. Ornella joined Wolters Kluwer as a project manager in 1996, and built an SGML repository for legislation and jurisprudence documents. After then she contributed to many projects at editorial process optimization.
Recently she introduced a Project Management methodology based on Prince2, tailored to the editorial product creation workflow. By means of it, WK Italia multi-disciplinary teams, involving people from editorial, marketing and technical staff, organize documentation and activities for the design and development of new online products. She also leads the R&D group in WK Italia, focusing on user-centric product development, usability, and advanced search features.
Ornella holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Università degli Studi of Milano and a Prince2 certification. In 2009 she also obtained a degree in Cognitive Psychology at Università degli Studi of Trento.
- pgee381x on
Topical Classification of Content: Making Sense of Folksonomies, Taxonomies, Ontologies, and More
Lengthy ago i found your post and still have recently been reading along. My partner and i discovered a few strange [...] - Alex Clay on
Things That Will Be Gone In Six Years Thanks to Technology
Interesting. Although I think one should not underestimate the physical value of some objects – the greeting [...] - Carolyn Green on
Things That Will Be Gone In Six Years Thanks to Technology
Love the post, and I agree with Traci Wheeler this does open up some new an exciting possiblities . It is time to [...] - Ornella Zampieri on
Things That Will Be Gone In Six Years Thanks to Technology
Great post, David! In Italy we forecast that tax and accounting professionals will adopt the new techonology more [...] - Traci Wheeler on
Things That Will Be Gone In Six Years Thanks to Technology
Enjoyed your post, David. It will definitely be interesting to see how the accounting and tax professions evolve over [...]
