Cognizant
Community 2020

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of five New York Times bestsellers — The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, What the Dog Saw, and David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants. He has been named one of the 100 most influential people by TIME magazine and one of the Foreign Policy’s Top Global Thinkers.

Gladwell’s new book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong.

Malcolm is the host of the popular 10-part podcast, Revisionist History, now in its fourth season. He has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996. He has won a national magazine award and been honored by the American Psychological Society and the American Sociological Society.

Widely considered the one of the best NFL quarterbacks of all time, Joe Montana personifies excellence and personal integrity both on and off the field. Yet the word most closely associated with him is not “winner”–it’s “leader.”

Throughout his career, Joe Montana led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowls Championships. Montana won more than 70% of the games he started during his 16-year career and he continues to be an all-time NFL Leader in quarterback ratings. Montana was named the NFL’s Most Valuable Player twice and earned three Super Bowl Most Valuable Player awards. He was selected to eight Pro Bowls and named All-Pro five times. Joe retired from professional football in 1995 and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2000.

Montana has released two books, including The Winning Spirit: 16 Timeless Principles That Drive Performance Excellence.

Joe attended University of Notre Dame, where he received a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing. He lives with his family in California.

David Awschalom is one of the world’s leading scientists in quantum technologies. His research, which focuses on spintronics and quantum information engineering, involves understanding and controlling the spins of individual electrons, nuclei, and photons for fundamental studies of quantum systems, as well as potential applications in computing, imaging and encryption.

He is the founder of the Chicago Quantum Exchange, the nation’s leading hub for the science and engineering of quantum information and for training the quantum workforce of tomorrow. The Exchange develops collaborations between companies, national laboratories, and universities to address emerging challenges and opportunities in this rapidly growing field.

David was a research staff member and manager at the IBM Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. In 1991 he joined the University of California-Santa Barbara as a professor of physics, and in 2001 was additionally appointed as a professor of electrical and computer engineering. Prior to his current position, he served as the Peter J. Clarke Professor and Director of the California NanoSystems Institute, and director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation.

During his career, David has helped to develop and shape the emerging field of quantum information science and technology as a researcher, a mentor and an advisor to US policymakers, funding agencies, industry executives and academic leaders.

Bill Bloom joined The Hartford as Executive Vice President of Operations, Technology, Data & Analytics in 2014. Bill is responsible for the company’s service operations and technology organizations as well as oversight of data and analytics initiatives. His responsibilities include providing strategic direction and management of these areas, while leading a team of approximately 10,000.

Prior to joining The Hartford, Bill served as President, Global Client Services at EXL. Before that, he spent seven years in executive roles at Travelers, including serving as Executive Vice President, Operations and Information Technology. He also served as a Partner at Accenture, where he spent fourteen years of his career.

Bill holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from State University of New York at Albany. Bill and his wife Maria live in West Hartford and have two daughters.

Liv Boeree is a science communicator and games specialist. A former professional poker player, she has won multiple championship titles on the international poker circuit and was the #1 ranked female player in 2016. Previously, she studied astrophysics and became fascinated with applying scientific thinking to everyday life. This introduced her to effective altruism: a philosophical movement that uses evidence and reason to identify and mitigate the world's most pressing problems. In 2014, she co-founded Raising for Effective Giving, a non-profit that fundraises for the most globally impactful charities and research organizations.

Joy Buolamwini is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, an award-winning researcher, and a poet of code. She advises world leaders, policy makers, and executives on reducing AI harms. Her work is featured in exhibitions around the world. Publications including TIME Magazine and New York Times carry her writing.

Brian Humphries is the Chief Executive Officer of Cognizant. In his role as CEO, Brian sets the strategic direction, promotes Cognizant’s values and client-first culture and focuses on ensuring the company’s sustainable growth and driving long-term shareholder value.

Brian is a broadly experienced technology executive with a proven track record of driving enterprise-wide transformation through focused execution, often in challenging and highly competitive market segments. Brian brings a global perspective and a keen knowledge of our business and the technologies with which we innovate. Prior to Cognizant, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Business from 2017 until 2019, a division of Vodafone Group that accounted for nearly a third of its parent company’s service revenue with approximately €12 billion in sales globally during 2017–2018. Humphries joined Vodafone from Dell Technologies where his positions from 2013 to 2017 included President and Chief Operating Officer of its Infrastructure Solutions Group, President of Dell’s Global Enterprise Solutions (a group with approximately $15 billion in revenue), and Vice President and General Manager, EMEA Enterprise Solutions. Before joining Dell, Humphries was with Hewlett-Packard where his roles included Senior Vice President, Emerging Markets, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development, and Chief Financial Officer of HP Services. The early part of his career was spent with Compaq and Digital Equipment Corporation.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland.

Meera Krishnamurthy is Cognizant’s Senior Vice President and Strategic Business Unit leader for Insurance, North America. She participates in setting the Insurance unit’s business goals, investment priorities and strategy and client relationships. She joined Cognizant in 2005 and has held several key roles in Cognizant’s Insurance practice around the world. Meera has over 25 years of experience in the financial services and insurance industries.

Meera is a member of the Board of Directors of the Cognizant U.S. Foundation and is actively involved in a variety of Cognizant outreach and diversity programs. She is the Regional Leader of Cognizant’s Women Empowered business resource group in Connecticut and Board Member at MAKERS, media brand built to accelerate the women’s movement through stories of real-life experiences that ignite passion and action. She regularly champions the cause of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineers and Math) initiatives in the greater Hartford area where she speaks/participates in several outreach events. She is also the executive sponsor of Cognizant’s relationship with The Boys and Girls Club of Hartford.

Chances are good you’ve run across a Square device at some point, especially if you’ve recently visited a food truck or mobile small business. The tiny piece of plastic that allows you to accept credit cards on your smartphone is all over the US and recently landed in Australia, along with a suite of business-management tools. The company, co-founded by Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey — also the co-founder of Twitter — has more than 2500 employees and is now valued at $20 billion.

While best known for co-founding Square, McKelvey is, in some circles, better known as a master glass artist and author, having written the world’s most widely read text on the subject, The Art Of Fire. His industrial design work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and The Smithsonian in Washington DC. His glass studio, Third Degree Glass Factory in St. Louis, one of the United States’ main centers of glassblowing arts.

After founding Square, Jim created the nonprofit LaunchCode, making it possible for anyone to learn programming and land a full-time job in under six months–for free. LaunchCode is an open model that may be freely copied by anyone and aims to solve the worldwide shortage of programmers.

Jim’s most recent venture, Invisibly, gives people control of their online identities.

A 1987 Washington University Economics and Computer Science graduate, McKelvey will discuss founding successful companies in payments, education, scientific publishing, construction, printing, glassblowing and software. Though an eclectic mix, each business is founded upon a simple idea and run by people committed to that idea. Jim has never sold any of his companies and as a result now oversees a diverse portfolio of businesses. Referencing personal experiences and local challenges, McKelvey offers a fresh approach to problem solving.

Jim is the author of three textbooks, two on computer programming and one on glassblowing. He lectures internationally on art and entrepreneurship.

McKelvey was appointed as an Independent Director of the St. Louis Federal Reserve in January 2017.

McKelvey, and his wife, Anna (a programmer and attorney), have two noisy children.

Jeanne conducts research that targets the challenges of senior level executives at CISR's nearly 100 global sponsor companies. She is best known for her work around enterprise architecture, which is highlighted in her four books. The most recent book, Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Company for Sustained Success (MIT Press), was named by Forbes as one of the top technology books of 2019. Jeanne writes a quarterly column for Sloan Management Review. She has published in Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, and a variety of other academic and practitioner publications. She is co-founder and former editor in chief of MIS Quarterly Executive.