Allen Capps is vice president and controller of Spectra Energy Corp, responsible for the company’s financial accounting and reporting functions.
Prior to assuming his current role in January 2012, Capps served as vice president of business development for Union Gas Limited, Spectra Energy’s major Canadian natural gas utility company. In that capacity, he oversaw the business development activities for storage and transmission as well as gas supply acquisition and planning, product and service development, customer support, gas management and gas control, contract billing and capacity planning and management. 

Capps has broad experience in the areas of finance, accounting and the energy sector. He previously served as vice president and treasurer of Spectra Energy, responsible for all financing and capital market activities, credit and risk management, interest rate management, liquidity and cash management, and Spectra Energy’s relationships with major banks and credit rating agencies. 

Prior to joining Spectra Energy, Capps served as corporate finance director with EPCO, Inc. and held a number of other senior level accounting roles, including director of technical accounting and compliance and interim corporate controller with TEPPCO Partners, LP. He was also an auditor with both Ernst & Young, LLP and Arthur Andersen, LLP. Prior to starting his business career, Capps served more than four years on active duty in the U.S. Army.   

Capps graduated from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in accounting and a Master of Science degree in finance. He graduated with a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He is also a certified public accountant, a certified internal auditor, and a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

 

Thomas is a human resources executive with more than 15 years of experience and a demonstrated track record of effectively leading HR functions and driving business results.  His areas of expertise include workforce planning, compensation, selection and assessment, change management, organizational development, and talent management.  He is certified in HCI’s Strategic Workforce Planning, Prosci’s Change Management, DDI’s Leadership Development, Inside Out Coaching, and Stakeholder Centered Coaching.
 
Thomas has served as Vice President of Human Resources at DFW Airport since September of 2009.  He is responsible for all aspects of HR including Total Rewards (Compensation, Benefits, Recognition, HRIS), Talent Management (Staffing, Organizational Effectiveness, Training & Development), and HR Business Partner Support.  Since joining DFW, he has led key program implementations including a new Defined Contribution Plan, Engagement Survey, Strategic Workforce Planning, Competency Model, Applicant Tracking System, Mentoring Program, Succession Planning, and the Hay Job Evaluation System to name a few.

Prior to joining DFW, Thomas served as Vice President of Human Resources for Network Hardware Resale, Triad Financial, and Capital One. 

Thomas has earned several degrees including a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Virginia Tech University, M.A. in Experimental Psychology from New Mexico State University, and a B.A. in Psychology from University of Missouri.  

 

Paula has a BBA in accounting from St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas and a Finance & Accounting MBA from Regis University in Denver, Colorado.  She earned a CPA while working for her first professional employer, the then Big 8 accounting firm of Ernst & Whinney.  

She also held other positions here in San Antonio, including being a regional controller for Time Warner for approximately eight years and the V.P. of Finance for Luby’s, Inc. before coming to CPS Energy in late 2004.  

Paula served as CPS Energy’s controller from 2004 through 2006 before being appointedto the position of Vice President & Chief Administrative Officer, Organizational Excellence & Shared Services in November 2006.  On  February 1, 2008, Paula returned to the Financial Services area to become CPS Energy’s Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer.

She considers herself fortunate to have received rewarding and challenging assignments throughout her career such as overseeing multiple aspects of SEC reporting; managing human resource, payroll, and customer service billing system conversions; strategically guiding an enterprise-wide organization redesign; and setting regulated customer billing and recovery rates for the local cable company.  She also considers other assignments such as developing corporate policy programs and conducting contract evaluations for corporate risk and compliance as constructively helpful towards her professional growth.

Paula is married with two daughters.

 

Barrett Green is the financial business leader for Entergy Wholesale Commodities, the merchant power operation of Entergy Corporation. He heads the mid- and back-office functions and financial planning and analysis for the business unit.

Since joining Entergy in 1997, Barrett has participated in numerous commercial transactions including leading the sale of the Entergy-Koch, LP assets (Gulf South Natural Gas Pipeline and the trading operation that is now Merrill Lynch Commodities Inc.). Barrett has lead Entergy’s commercial analytics group responsible for developing the company's point of view on commodity, economic, technology, environmental and regulatory trends, directed the company's investment approval process, and lead the rebuilding of the corporate planning and performance department.  

Barrett holds a master of business administration from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, a master in engineering from Virginia Tech, and an undergraduate degree in engineering from the University of Mississippi. He served in the US Navy as an officer in the Nuclear Propulsion Directorate for five years and is a registered Professional Engineer. 

Entergy Wholesale Commodities (EWC) owns and operates six nuclear power units located in the northern United States and owns all or partial interest in several non-nuclear power plants. It sells electricity produced by those plants to wholesale customers. The business also provides management services in operations and licensing to other nuclear power plant owners. EWC reported $2.4 billion of revenues in 2011.

 

Seth Halpern is the Regional Director of Workday’s Financials product set. He has been with Workday since 2010 and was previously responsible for Workday’s Sales Operations organization. Prior to Workday, Seth worked at both SAP and Siebel Systems. He  started his career working in commercial banking, primarily doing corporate finance and reporting to the CFO of a publicly traded regional bank. He holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA from the University of Michigan.

 

Randy Hyzak is the Vice President and Chief Accounting Officer of Freescale Semiconductor Holdings, Ltd. and has held this position since February 2009. From September 2007 to January 2009, he served as Corporate Controller and from March 2006 to September 2007 as Assistant Corporate Controller. Randy has been with Freescale as they became a public company in a spin-out from Motorola, were taken private by a consortium of private equity firms and then become a public company again recently. Prior to joining Freescale in 2005, Mr. Hyzak was a senior manager with Ernst & Young LLP working in their assurance practice for 11 years on large global companies headquartered in the Dallas area. Randy is a native Texan and resides outside of Austin with his wife and 3 children. 

 

Jeff Lasher has served as Chief Financial Officer for Crocs, Inc. since April 2011. Mr. Lasher was named CFO after serving as Crocs’ Principal Accounting Officer and Interim Principal Financial Officer since January 2011. Mr. Lasher additionally served as the company’s Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer from June 2009 to April 2011.

Prior to joining Crocs, Mr. Lasher was a Senior Consultant for Connelly Consulting, a privately-held financial services company, from October 2008 to June 2009. From 2005 to 2008, Mr. Lasher served as Vice President – Corporate Controller for Corporate Express Inc., a publicly-held business supplies and equipment company, which was acquired by Staples, Inc. in July 2008.

 

Sekhar Ray is the CIO of Essilor of America and CEO of its Lab Management Software business unit. He reports to the CEO of Essilor of America and serves as a member of the Executive Management Committee. In addition to being CIO, he runs a portfolio of technology companies serving large enterprises and small business customers globally.

Before Essilor, as a member of the Sr. Leadership team, Sekhar led the transformation of IT in Cadbury Schweppes. He was the Global Vice President responsible for IT Solution Delivery for all business units and in all the countries. 

Prior to Cadbury, Sekhar held a number of executive management positions in Citigroup and Dell. During his tenure over 16 years in these companies he developed and institutionalized a strong governance, architecture, program management and outsourcing delivery model to align technology services with business mission. He enjoyed and learned tremendously working and living in multiple countries in Asia, Europe, Australia and in North and Latin America during this time.

In between Citigroup and Dell, Sekhar worked for a year in a technology start-up company where he helped develop business plan and technology to manage sales force for enterprise customers.

Sekhar graduated with a degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, India. He is a member of several industry and technology groups. He lives in Dallas, with his wife and three daughters. Outside of business subjects, he has interest in history and likes to travel and see far and diverse places.

 

Joining the National Australia Bank in 1997, Kevin has held senior roles within risk management, internal audit and finance throughout the NAB's operations in Australia, the United Kingdom and United States. Kevin was responsible for the NAB Groups' global SOX-404 program delivery in the first year of required compliance. 

Joining Great Western Bank as Chief Financial Officer in September of 2008, Kevin has overseen the integration of financial systems and reporting with the parent company together with the significant growth in business and the required acquisition accounting requirements. Kevin is responsible for all aspects of financial and regulatory reporting together with planning, strategy and treasury management of the Bank’s balance sheet. Understanding the importance of talent and a clear and focused strategic purpose Kevin has also effectively initiated GWB’s journey in Kaizen (or Lean) as a cultural and performance transformation for the organization. 

From 2008 through 2012, GWB’s balance sheet has grown in size from US$3.5bn to US$9.1bn. As a member of the executive committee Kevin has been integral in the growth agenda of the organization and development of infrastructure and talent to support the growth.

Prior to joining the NAB Group, Kevin held various finance and management accounting roles with other financial institutions in the UK and Australia together with 3 years in public accounting. 

Kevin has a Bachelor of Business and is a CPA.

 

Laura Santillan – SVP & Chief Accounting Officer, joined us in February 2004 and assumed her current position in February 2010. Ms. Santillan has served in various capacities of increasing responsibility, most recently as vice president, finance since October 2007 and senior vice president, finance since December 2009. Before joining the company, she served as senior manager of reporting for Dresser, Inc. from February 2002 to February 2004 and director of financial reporting for Wyndham International, Inc. from 1997 to 2002. Prior to that, she was with Ernst & Young LLP from 1993 to 1997. Ms. Santillan holds a bachelor’s degree from Southern Methodist University and is a Certified Public Accountant in the state of Texas.

 

Ken Shachmut is Executive Vice President & CFO of Safeway Health Inc. in Pleasanton CA, a healthcare services company founded upon Safeway Inc.’s unique experience in controlling healthcare costs.  Safeway Health advises and works with companies, union Trusts, government agencies and other organizations to help them transform their healthcare programs, reducing costs while simultaneously improving employee benefits and health.  Safeway Health works with our clients in multi-year partnerships.

Ken also is Senior Vice President at Safeway Inc. in Pleasanton, CA.  Safeway, a Fortune 100 Company, operates over 1,675 food and drug stores with more than 1,300 pharmacies and 800 Wellness Centers in the United States and Canada, and has annual sales of $43+ billion.  Currently Ken has responsibility for several major strategic projects.  Earlier Ken was responsible for Health Initiatives, where he led the design and implementation of a cost-effective behavior-based health benefits program for employees.  Through these initiatives Safeway has maintained its all-inclusive per-capita healthcare cost trend from 2005-2011 nearly flat, and has a roadmap that will extend this national-best performance.  Both Safeway and employee costs have been held nearly flat, and employees who have consistently demonstrated healthy behavior have seen their costs go down.  Ken also has a leadership role in Safeway’s national and California healthcare reform initiatives.

In addition, Ken had responsibility for Strategic Initiatives which focused on new and transforming growth opportunities, both traditional and non-traditional.  He also was responsible for corporate Re-Engineering which identified and implemented improvements in store operations, service delivery and cost reduction worth well over $1.5 billion.

Prior to joining Safeway in 1994, Ken was a general management consultant, principally with McKinsey & Company in San Francisco, London and Amsterdam, and Booz Allen Hamilton (now Booz & Co.) in San Francisco.  He worked with major companies in retailing, wholesaling, consumer packaged goods, natural resources, pharmaceuticals, financial services and other industries.  For over fifteen years he helped his clients develop and implement successful strategies, strengthen operations and improve financial performance.

Ken is a member of the Center for Corporate Innovation’s West Coast Healthcare Executive Summit, McKinsey’s Bay Area Chief Strategy Officer Roundtable, and the Innovation Advisory Group of UnitedHealth Group.  He also serves on the Boards of Directors of DestinationRx, a healthcare services company, the Pacific Business Group on Health, and Clinic by the Bay, San Francisco’s Volunteers in Medicine free healthcare clinic.

Ken received a BSE degree with honors in electrical engineering from Princeton University, did graduate work in operations research at Columbia University, and earned an MBA from Stanford University.  He served as a Lieutenant (jg) in the US Navy Civil Engineer Corps.

When not at the office Ken lives in Carmel, California.  He is married to Daria and has two adult sons, Brian and Chris.

 

Barbara Smith  joined Commercial Metals Company (CMC) as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in June 2011, located at the company headquarters in Irving, Texas.

As Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Smith is responsible for all aspects of the Company’s financial functions encompassing treasury, tax, risk management, accounting, financial reporting, business planning, strategy, mergers and acquisitions as well as information technology.

Prior to joining CMC, Barbara served for five years as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Gerdau Ameristeel in Tampa, Florida. She also served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for FARO Technologies, Inc. in Orlando, Florida. Her career included over 20 years service with Alcoa Inc. where she held a variety of leadership positions including Vice President of Finance for Alcoa’s Aerospace, Automotive & Commercial Transportation Group (Cleveland, OH); Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Alcoa Fujikura Ltd. (Nashville, TN); and Director of Internal Audit (Pittsburgh, PA). Barbara has also served on the Board of Directors at Minerals Technologies Inc. since May 2011.

Barbara is a graduate of Purdue University with a degree in Accounting, and is also a Certified Public Accountant. 

She resides in Flower Mound, Texas, with her husband and daughter.

 

Mr. Symes, age 46, joined FelCor in April 2002 as its Vice President and Assistant Controller and was promoted to Vice President and Controller in February 2007. Prior to joining FelCor, Mr. Symes was a senior manager in the Dallas operating office and KPMG’s national Department of Professional Practice. Mr. Symes graduated from Baylor University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting. Mr. Symes is a certified public accountant and a board member and past-president of the Real Estate Financial Executives Association.

 

Mark Verbeck brings over 20 years experience in finance and operations from both emerging growth companies and major corporations to his role which is responsible for the company’s corporate finance, investor relations and human resources.

Prior to joining Coupa, Mark was CFO at BLADE Network Technologies, the leader in high performance cloud networking where his leadership was instrumental to the company’s execution through its growth and subsequent sale to IBM. Prior to BLADE, Mark was an executive and prominent Wall Street research analyst covering technology companies for firms such as Cantor Fitzgerald, Citigroup and Epoch Partners (acquired by Goldman Sachs). As a former equity analyst, Mark brings broad exposure to successful corporate strategy, capital processes, and acquisition approaches as well as experience with complex accounting and reporting issues. Prior to Wall Street, Mark worked at Deloitte & Touche (now Deloitte), the global accounting and consulting company.

Mark has a BA in Accounting from the University of St. Thomas.