Speaker Bios

Jim Daniels
Vice President Retail Shelf Merchandising
Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
Jim has been with Anheuser-Busch since 1980 and has held numerous field sales and marketing positions within the company.
Jim Daniels assumed his current responsibilities in October 2002. His role has been to establish Anheuser-Busch as a seamless leader in the efforts of Retail Shelf Merchandising utilizing state of the art technology and competently trained wholesalers and field personnel. Our realignment of resources has better prepared Anheuser-Busch to meet the retailer needs of Retail Shelf Merchandising.
Prior to arriving in St. Louis Jim spent eight years and the Regional Vice President for Region 5 in Chicago IL. He was responsible for a sales department that called on 140 wholesalers and retailers in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin and Illinois. His other responsibilities included sales and marketing responsibilities in Michigan, Minnesota, St. Louis and the North East.
Jim is currently on the Board of Directors for the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame located in Chicago, Illinois. He has been instrumental in the organization building their first hall of fame located in Little Italy in Chicago.
Jim is married to Mary and has two sons, Jay 24 and Jimmy 19. He is an avid golfer, runner and swimmer.
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Gary Hallett
Vice President of Sales & Marketing
Southeast Atlantic Beverage
Gary is Vice-President of Sales and Marketing at Southeast-Atlantic Beverage Corp, an independently owned 7UP bottler and distributor operating in Florida and North Georgia.
He began his beverage career in the Coca-Cola system in Eastern Canada working in Finance, Manufacturing and Sales capacities during a 7-year span. Following a brief stint with Cadbury Beverages Canada he was transferred to US Operations and worked in various Field Sales capacities in Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, North Carolina and Florida before joining Southeast Atlantic in 1998.
Gary resides in Orange Park, Florida.
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Dave Hampton
Director of Customer Delivery Systems
Frito-Lay, Inc.
20 Year career with Frito Lay covering the entire Supply Chain from Manufacturing Plant to Store Shelf. As VP of Customer Delivery, responsible for designing and managing Frito Lays Go To Market system. Key accountabilities include Route Engineering, Go To Market Strategy, and Project Management of DSD design changes.
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Brian Hodgson
Vice President of Marketing
Eleven Technology
Brian is responsible for marketing strategy, product management, and marketing communications for Eleven Technology. Brian brings over 15 years of marketing and product management experience to Eleven. Prior to Eleven, he was Vice President of Marketing at Kewill. He earlier served as Vice President of product management for SupplyWorks, and Director of Marketing for CNT's enterprise application integration division.
He received his Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.
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Craig Hodnett
Vice President of Category Management
Total Company
Craig Hodnett has been with Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages for 20 years. He has held a variety of Sales Positions with his last being Eastern Zone Vice President. For the past 7 years, he has been Vice President of Category Management for Total Company. He has also worked with Kraft General Foods and The Coca-Cola Company.
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Fred Katz
Practitioner Faculty, Graduate School of Business, Department of Marketing
Johns Hopkins University
I am your true entrepreneur, with most of my experience in the world of consumer products working with major consumer products corporations such as Borden, Procter & Gamble, ConAgra, Keebler and Nabisco as a specialty distributor selling to all major customers in food distribution and food retailing. After 25 years of owning and building my own business, I decided to teach on a full time basis. I have been teaching college students at both the Undergraduate and the Graduate level since 1978 at the Community College of Baltimore, University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, and currently at Johns Hopkins University in the areas of strategic marketing and new product development in their MBA / Masters of Marketing programs.
In addition, I am currently a management consultant specializing in the area of family business profitability, loss control, Direct Store Delivery (DSD) operations and technology, warehousing, distribution, sales force management, new product development, strategic marketing and profitability.
Some of my current projects include development of a business education program with Montgomery County Public schools and charity work for the D.C. Special Olympics with the NFL Players Association / JB Awards.
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Richard Kochersperger
Associate Professor, Food Marketing Department - Haub School of Business
St. Joseph's University
Richard Kochersperger is currently an Educator at St Joseph's University, where he has worked since 2003. At St Joseph's University, Mr. Kochersperger has designed and implemented executive education programs for several leading companies including Albertsons/ACME, Tengelmann, A&P, Ferrero, Fleming, McCormick and the USDA Cochran Fellowship. Mr. Kochersperger has more than 11 years of experience in the food and beverage industry. Previously, he has served as Director for Food Marketing Group, Director for Supervalu and Distribution Staff for Fleming Foods. Mr. Kochersperger has been an invited presenter at numerous food industry seminars including GMA, FMI, CLM and FDI. He has served as an expert witness in food related cases, and conducts benchmarking studies for industry groups.
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Hal N. Kravitz
Vice President, Business Development and Chief Revenue Officer
Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.
Mr. Kravitz was elected an officer and named vice president, business development and chief revenue officer in April of 2005. With 22 years of experience in the Coca-Cola system, he is responsible for revenue growth management, including business planning and insights, pricing strategy, channel and sales operations, and category planning.
He joined Coca-Cola Enterprises in June of 2001 and was named vice president and general manager, Southeast Region with responsibility for managing five operating divisions in the Southeast United States.
In February 2000, named group vice president, Eastern North America Region Sales and Marketing with responsibility for Coca-Cola North Americas seven Eastern U.S. regions: Mid-Atlantic, Chicago, Consolidated, Northeast, North Central, Southeast, and Puerto Rico.
In August 1999, named vice president, CCE East Field Sales and Marketing with responsibility for managing the Companys business with Coca-Cola Enterprises Eastern North America group.
In May of 1997, named assistant vice president, Channel Business Development. This organization supported the efforts of Coca-Cola USA and bottlers in the development and commercialization of channel business strategies and plans, programs, and development tools, as well as Cold Drink strategy development.
In August of 1995, named managing director, Coca-Cola USA Field Sales and Marketing, Central Group headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
Mr. Kravitz began his career with Coca-Cola in 1983 where he has since held various positions in both Headquarters and Field Sales and Marketing capacities. During this time, he also spent five years working for two major U.S. Coca-Cola Bottling Companies, including Coca-Cola Enterprises.
Mr. Kravitz is a graduate of the University of Georgia and holds a B.B.A. in Accounting. He currently resides in Atlanta with his wife, Valerie, and their son, Sam. Mr. Kravitz also has two daughters, Rachel and Lauren. Rachel has just begun her first year at Texas Christian University and Lauren is a junior at Pace Academy.
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Kevin Krigline
Vice President of Supply Chain Optimization
Sara Lee Corporation Food and Beverage Division
Kevin has been with Sara Lee’s Bakery DSD Division for the past 2 ½ years. He is responsible for leading the sales and delivery route planning, handheld computers, and distribution network planning functions. Prior to joining Sara Lee, he worked as a consultant for 3 years, from 1992-2000 in a variety of operational and marketing roles supporting international operations for The Coca-Cola Company, and from 1987-1992 for Coca-Cola Enterprises. He has an Industrial Engineering degree from Georgia Tech and a Masters of Operations Management from Georgia State University. Kevin is a registered professional engineer and is a member of CSCMP.
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Martin Lavoie
Six Sigma Black Belt
Project Lead
Canada Bread Company Ltd.
Prior to joining Canada Bread (CBCL) in July 2004, Martin has worked in the telecommunications field. At Ericsson, he held project management roles and to lead multi functional team responsible for deploying mobile telephony systems to customers such AT&T in the USA, Movilnet in Venezuela and Telefonica in Argentina. In 2001, he joined Nuance Communication, a Menlo Park based speech recognition software startup. As a Professional Services Consultant he helped large banking customer design and deploy speech recognition CRM systems.
Martin is currently leading the National Handheld Hardware and Software Selection project which looks at replacing all of Canada Bread's 1200 routes Handheld technology used every day to order, service, merchandise and invoice its customers.. He's also involved in projects which looks at reducing out-of-stocks and returns.
Martin holds a B. eng. Degree in electrical engineering from Montréal's École Polytechnique school and has an MBA from HEC Montréal. He currently resides in Montréal, Québec, Canada.
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Stanley Makadok
President
Century Management Consultants, Inc.
Mr. Makadok is President of Century Management Consultants, Inc., located in Princeton, NJ, specializing in strategic planning, marketing, and distribution, with a substantial portion of his practice in Direct Store Delivery businesses.
Prior to establishing this firm in 1977, Mr. Makadok was Manager of Business Planning Consulting at Coopers & Lybrand, one of the largest consulting firms, was Vice President of Planning at Pepsi-Cola Company, and previously held executive positions at American Cyanamid Corporation and Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
He has had over thirty years of experience in consumer product marketing and distribution dealing with promotions, packaging, pricing, sales management, delivery, advertising, new products, and acquisitions. His assignments have included work in a broad array of industries such as: packaged foods and beverages, fast foods, pharmaceuticals, consumer electronics, publishing, packaging, printing, communications, transportation, equipment, and financial services. His clients include a number of major U.S. and international companies.
He has worked for over 70 companies in major U.S. and international markets on overall business planning, trade promotion management, and distribution system design and implementation. Mr. Makadok has conducted workshops on the management of trade promotions, strategic planning, distribution, channel management, new product sales, sales management, corporate economics, and negotiating strategy. He has been a guest speaker on the topic of Distribution Management at the International Beverage Convention. His Direct Store Delivery assignments include the soft drink, beer, bottled water, juice, wine, snack, cookie & cracker, and dairy categories. He has published a number of articles on management topics and is an editorial advisor to Beverage Industry magazine. His views have been quoted in Forbes and Business Week magazines, Bloomberg Business News, and various newspapers.
Mr. Makadok received his Bachelors degree in Engineering from CCNY and his Masters in Management Science from Rutgers University, where he was also a faculty member. He is a member of the board of directors of the Rutgers Alumni Association and chairman of its Long Range Planning Committee. He is listed in Who's Who in Finance and Business, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in the World. He can be contacted at 609/921-7070 or smakadok@centurymc.com.
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Brendan O'Malley
Director of Information Technology
Tasty Baking Company
Brendan O'Malley is the Director of Information Technology for Tasty Baking Company. Brendan led Tasty's SAP implementation and is currently working on the development of a breakthrough mobile sales application for the company. Before moving to Tastykake Brendan worked at Price Waterhouse, PwC and IBM as a business and technology consultant. He has more than ten years of experience leading and managing software implementations. Brendan has worked with a variety of applications and technologies including SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and others.
Brendan spoke at Sapphire in 2005 about the use of preconfigured solutions. He has been featured in Consumer Goods Technology, and Mobile Enterprise magazines speaking about IT transformation and mobile applications.
Brendan is a 1990 Graduate of Princeton University and has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business. Brendan is a former US Army Airborne Ranger. He now resides outside of Philadelphia with his wife and 3 children.
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Michael A. Warehime
Chairman
Synder's of Hanover, Inc./font>
Michael has a 40 year history of primarily the food industry with banking experience as well. His primary position is Chairman/CEO and majority owner of Snyder's of Hanover, Inc. snack food company focusing on pretzels. He was also Chairman and Director of Farmers Bank & Trust of Hanover from 1973 through 1992 resigning after the bank was successfully sold to Dauphin and eventually became part of the Allied Irish and M&T group. He now heads a private bank specializing in loans to specialty food distributors throughout the United States. Mike's area of expertise is Marketing & Sales along with Finance. He graduated from Lycoming College with a B.A. degree in Economics with a minor in Business Administration in 1964. He also attended Toledo Law School from 1964 to 1966.
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Michael Zielinski
President and CEO
Royal Buying Group
Michael Zielinski has over thirty-three years experience in the convenience store, petroleum, and automotive industries. He attended the University of Illinois in Champaign, IL, majoring in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing.
He has owned and operated eleven different retail locations involving Continental Oil Company, Marathon Oil Company, Amoco Oil Company, and Shell Oil Products US. His extensive representation of fellow marketers includes election as the Shell National Dealer Council Chairman in 1995.
He is a member of the National Association of Convenience Stores, the National Convenience Store Advisory Group, the California Service Station Automotive Repair Association, the Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association, the Texas Petroleum and Convenience Store Association, the Mississippi Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores Association, the New York Association of Convenience Stores, the Service Station Dealers of America-Allied Trades, the National Association of Shell Marketers, and the BPAMA.
Mr. Zielinski is one of the original founders of Royal Buying Group, Inc. (RBG), a national merchandising and marketing organization representing wholesaler and retailer locations of all brands of convenience stores and petroleum suppliers. RBG represents Shell Oil Products US, Sinclair, Gulf Oil, Getty Petroleum Marketing, Luk Oil, NATSO, NASM, AACSA, and Connect-2-One with merchandising and marketing services provided for their retail locations. Royal Buying Group, Inc. was ranked #252 on the 2003 Inc. 500 list as one of "America's fastest growing companies". Michael Zielinski is currently the President and CEO of Royal Buying Group, Inc.
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