Directors and Officers
Sharon Dhall leads the development and execution of the Institutional Financial Services (IFS) modernization roadmap across the Operations and Technology organizations at TIAA to outline how the company will develop, automate and transform the infrastructure and key processes for IFS to scale and deliver best-in-class services for plan sponsors and participants. Partnering with TIAA business and technical leadership, Sharon is responsible for rationalizing the platforms and applications that support our overall service processes, and for the development and implementation of our workflow strategy to drive participant and plan sponsor self-service and deliver an improved customer and employee experience. She is also instrumental in the continued progress achieved by the Robotics Center of Excellence and in developing a community of practice to share learnings with her counterparts across the enterprise.
Sharon has more than 20 years of experience and a proven track record of success in technology, operations, business / process transformation, and finance leadership roles. She joined TIAA in 2017 from JPMorgan Chase, where she was Technology CFO/COO for the Corporate Investment Bank division, responsible for $3.6 billion in annual technology spend and the delivery of a $200 million, multi-year efficiency program. Sharon held other technology and process leadership roles of increasing responsibility at JPMorgan, including managing transformational initiatives across the $1 billion banking technology portfolio and driving process re-engineering efforts in the wholesale business. She also spent more than 12 years with General Electric in the GE capital and finance divisions in roles that ranged from project management to chief information officer, where she managed a $25 million IT budget and more than 400 resources.
Sharon has a Bachelors in Information Sciences & Technology from Syracuse University, an Executive MBA from the University of Connecticut, and a Masters in Organization Psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University. She is active in her community, Operation Walk Maryland, several Asian and Women’s Diversity Networks, and Syracuse and JPMorgan alumni groups. She has served as a member of the board of Emma Willard All Girls High School since 2015, and authored a book about information technology in higher education.
Steven A. Elkes serves as the Chief Executive Officer and President at Makeover Solutions, Inc. Steven served as Chief Revenue Officer and an Executive Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) at TheStreet, Inc. (also known as TheStreet.com Inc.) from March 26, 2007 to March 2009. He served as Executive Vice President of Operations and Business Affairs at iVillage Inc., since July 2000 and also served as its Secretary since October 1999. He served as Chief Financial Officer of Ivillage Inc., since June 2004. From April 1999 to July 2000, he served as Senior Vice President of Business Affairs of iVillage Inc. From August 1996 to April 1999, he held various management positions at iVillage, including a Vice President of Business Affairs.
While managing all phases of The Street's capital raising efforts including private placements, IPO, and secondary offerings used for acquisition purposes, Steven oversaw the strategic implementation and integration of those acquisitions into iVillage. In addition, he managed the public sales process of iVillage to NBC Universal. He is a seasoned executive with more than 20 years of solid experience, he has a stellar record of improving results in varied businesses. He served as Chief Financial Officer of Azoogle (azoogleads.com), where he oversaw the financial, legal and human resources functions in addition to their M&A activities. From August 1993 to August 1996, he served as Vice President Credit and Structured Finance at CNA Insurance Company. From August 1991 to August 1993, he served as Assistant Vice President of CNA Insurance Company. Steven received his M.B.A. from Baruch College and his B.A. from Grinnell College.
As co-founder and member of the board of directors for Ripcord, Alex Fielding is responsible for the leadership, vision and execution of the company. Fielding started his career as an engineer at Cisco Systems and Apple, where he worked on multiple generations of MacOS, PowerBook, Network Server and was part of the first iMac team. Shortly after departing Apple, he worked at Exodus Communications with Ellen Hancock, Exodus’S CEO who was Apple’s former CTO.
He co-founded Wheels of Zeus with Apple’s co-founder Steve Wozniak in 2001, which was sold to Zontrak in 2006. Alex was Chief Technology Officer, Federal Government at Power Assure and then Vice President at Vigilent before starting Ripcord. Alex sits on the Board of Directors of The Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), is a Board Member of the Code Warriors Foundation and is a founding member of Singularity University.
Jason Goecke is vice president and GM at Cisco responsible for Webex Teams. Goecke joined Cisco with the acquisition of Tropo in 2015 where he was co-founder and CEO.
Goecke brings more than 20 years of experience in cloud telecommunication services and open source application development. He has extensive experience working with carriers and enterprises around the world. Prior to Tropo, he was the Vice President of Innovation with Voxeo Labs. He spearheaded the company’s vision in investing in core platform research and innovating new communications solutions that led to spinning Tropo off into a standalone company.
Additional experience includes Presence Technology where Goecke designed and launched OpenGate, Multi-Channel Contact Center Solutions, Proofpoint, SaaS security, and Exigen, BPO/ITO. Goecke was also a co-founder of the Adhearsion open source telephony development framework and previous board member of the Adhearsion Foundation.
Goecke serves on the board of Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education, an independent, education nonprofit whose mission is to improve the practice of continuous learning, collaboration, and change in the education sector.
Previously Goecke has been on industry advisory boards for Ericsson and Telstra.
Currently, Goecke holds several patents in computer security and real-time communications.
Dr. Martha Kanter leads the College Promise Campaign, a national initiative to increase college access, affordability, quality, and completion in American higher education, starting in America’s community colleges. She is also a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy, focused on policies and practices to raise America’s high school and college graduation rates. Formerly, she was President Obama’s U.S. Under Secretary of Education, overseeing all federal postsecondary policies and programs for the U.S. Department of Education. From 1993-2009, she was president and chancellor of the Foothill-De Anza Community College District.
Dr. Nicole Melander is Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Campus Labs, an education technology company committed to empowering higher education through strategic use of data. Nicole brings to this role experience in professional services, training, operations, innovation, and technology within multi-national software companies, small non-profits, and consulting partnerships. Nicole consultants with universities and community colleges across the country to leverage their data and application ecosystems to develop insight, identify opportunities, and enable institutional improvement.
In previous roles, Nicole served as Vice President, Consulting at Civitas Learning where she was also a faculty member of the Next Generation Leadership Academy (NGLA), a program dedicated to grounding rising educational leaders in the issues and innovations of the day. Prior to joining Civitas Learning, Nicole served as Executive Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. In this position, she was dedicated to the transformation of the learning experience through strategic digital innovation and a superb customer experience. She worked closely with every functional area of the company to consider the implications of technology on people, process, and product.
Previous to HMH, she served as the Chief Technology Officer of Achieving the Dream (ATD), a national reform network dedicated to community college student success and completion, as well as education and technology leadership positions at Deloitte Consulting, Microsoft and Oracle Corporation. Her four years of full-time teaching experience – in the classroom, online, and in a blended environment – keeps her focused on the learning transformation that her work enables.
In 2008, students and faculty at American University selected Nicole to receive the campus wide “Teaching with Technology” award for faculty who have demonstrated creativity in using technology in their teaching. In 2010, West Chester University of Pennsylvania presented Nicole with the Distinguished Alumni Award for providing a great service to society, receiving outstanding acknowledgement in their profession, and positively affecting a large number of people. In 2015, Nicole was further honored by being asked to deliver the commencement speech at West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Nicole received a Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from West Chester University, a Master of Science degree in technical management from Johns Hopkins University, and a Doctorate of Philosophy degree in information technology from George Mason University. Nicole holds a patent in the area of Information Retrieval.
Lisa Petrides, Ph.D. is founder and CEO of ISKME, an independent, education nonprofit established in 2002, and a pioneer in knowledge sharing and innovation in the education sector.
Petrides is a scholar and international open educational resources (OER) expert who has helped lead the development of tools and strategies to create and support the field open education practice. Her work includes the creation of the award winning OER Commons, a digital public library of open educational resources and collaboration platform that facilitates the discovery and improvement of high-quality digital resources that are free, openly licensed, and available for a diverse range of learners. She has advised foreign governments and U.S. government agencies, states, schools, and colleges on implementing OER at all levels.
ISKME also produces an international event dedicated to catalyzing education innovation, Big Ideas Fest.
A former professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership at Columbia University, Teachers College, her research has been at the forefront of understanding how education can be made relevant to learning through open access, social learning, information sharing, and knowledge collaboration.
Petrides has led development efforts that have enabled schools, colleges, universities, ministries of education, and the organizations that support them to expand their capacity to collect and share information, and create knowledge-driven environments focused on learning and success.
Petrides received an MBA from Sonoma State University, and a Ph.D. in Education Policy from Stanford University.
