Speaker:  Ricardo Chavira

Ricardo Chavira is a Senior Solutions Consultant at Aptris where he works with organizations of all sizes and industries to understand their business needs and develop solutions to meet them. Largely focused on process development and improvement, he works with teams implementing ITSM solutions. He recently spoke on ITSM programs and strategy at the 2015 Educause Annual Conference and was co-chair of the 2015 EDUCAUSE ECAR IT Service Catalog Working Group that produced a white paper on the Higher Ed Service Catalog (https://library.educause.edu/resources/2015/4/the-higher-education-it-service-catalog-a-working-model-for-comparison-and-collaboration).

Prior to his work at Aptris, Ricardo was the Associate Director for Service Management at Yale University Information Technology Services where he directed Service Management Process Governance. His team deployed a comprehensive Service Management program, the first phase of which included rolling out ServiceNow as their ITSM platform, providing ITIL training and certification for the staff (over 400, and counting!), and setting up a governance structure to build on the success of their deployment. Ricardo worked in higher ed IT for 20 years and is ITIL certified. He has spoken on governance, Service Catalog, CMDB, and other service management topics at Educause, NERCOMP, and ServiceNow conferences and served on the ServiceNow User Group Advisory Board. Prior to his work in IT, he pursued graduate work in philosophy at Yale University. 

Speaker: Eric Dannenberg

Eric Dannenberg is the Change & Configuration Manager for Boston University’s Information Services & Technology Department. He has been in this position since BU’s ‘official’ adoption of the ITIL principles and guidelines in summer of 2010 and has been working in IT at BU since 1986. He is ITIL V3 certified with several intermediate certifications, serves as a board member on the itSMF USA Higher Education Community of Interest, and is active in the Educause ITSM Constituent Group. 

Speaker: Karen Warren

Karen is Director of User and Technical Services at Wesleyan University. Karen has oversight for both the front end user support operations including Desktop Support and Student Helpdesk and the back end technical support team comprised of network administration, data center, and system administrators. Bridging the divide between these mutually dependent, but often at odds groups is challenging and always interesting. Karen and her team provide support for all other IT operations in the University and provide strategic input regarding systems and infrastructure. Wesleyan's adoption of ITSM began when Karen introduced ServiceNow in 2013. Wesleyan has undergone major infrastructure upgrades including the core network and campus wireless environment in the last 5 years.

Since joining Wesleyan, Karen has been an active member in NERCOMP. She has participated or coordinated several Professional Development workshops, served as track chair, vice chair and, most recently, chair of the NERCOMP annual conference (2016). Karen has been serving on the NERCOMP Board since 2013 and worked on the team that developed its online workshop program.

Prior to coming to Wesleyan, Karen spent 15 years at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, CT where she was IT Director for 10 of those years.

In 2014, Karen initiated Wesleyan's membership in National Center for Women in Information Technology Academic Alliance program to help Wesleyan encourage young women in the field of technology, an issue about which she is quite passionate.