FSTC Executive Committee Biographies
Michael J. Gifford
President of FSTC
Manager, Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity for Information Technology
Group, The Capital Group Companies, Inc.
Michael Gifford, CBCP, is the Manager of Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
for the Capital Group Companies' Information Technology Group (ITG). His responsibilities
include emergency response and recovery, risk assessments, recovery strategy
development, recovery plans, and business continuity/disaster recovery exercises.
Prior to joining the Capital Group Companies in 2005, Mr. Gifford was the
Director of Audit Assurance and Regulatory Programs for JPMorgan Chase's Global
Technology Infrastructure team. Prior to the merger of Bank One with JPMC in
2004, he was the Director of Disaster Recovery for Bank One's Infrastructure
and Operations (I&O) team within Technology and Operations.
Mr. Gifford also worked for State Farm Insurance for 21 years in a variety
of leadership positions. He is the former component manager for State Farm's
business continuity planning team, which is responsible for developing and maintaining
the recovery strategy, business continuity and disaster recovery plans, and
test exercises for State Farm's mission critical business units. His background
also includes two years as manager of State Farm's Systems Catastrophe Services
team, which handles technology used at temporary claims offices following a
major natural disaster.
Mr. Gifford 's additional industry background includes earning the Certified
Business Continuity Planner (CBCP) certification from Disaster Recovery Institute
International and the Charter Property and Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) designation.
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John Fricke
Vice President of FSTC
Vice President and Senior Architect/Consultant, JPMorgan Chase
Widely recognized as an innovative leader with a vision of the future, John
Fricke brings more than 40 years of information technology experience, of which
31 years were in the financial services industry. Throughout his career, Mr.
Fricke has leveraged technology and managed change to help provide state-of-the-art
solutions for the industry. Highlights of his distinguished career within JPMC
include: architectural input on the Chase Enterprise Check Image Strategy; leading
a team from other financial institutions in the architectural design and development
of the Spectrum Electronic Bill Payment and Presentment Switch; and designing
and implementing a retail teller on a PC platform prior to the PC proliferation.
Mr. Fricke also served as the Chase representative on the FSTC e-check project
for operational considerations, and the FSTC PACES project team lead on the
operational issues, in addition to working with the Federal Reserve on several
check-related projects. He was the Texas architect for ECP, working with NYCH
and ECCHO. Mr. Fricke was a key member of the team that submitted a bid to perform
the nine-state-wide ATM and point-of-service (POS) switch processing known as
PULSE.
Prior to working with Chase, Mr. Fricke was instrumental in building ATM/POS
networks in Oklahoma and Iowa. He volunteers frequently for events that provide
needed services to local community.
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Pat Rosa
Vice President, Corporate Disaster Recovery, Wachovia Corporation
Pat Rosa is a vice-president at Wachovia Corporation, where she manages the
corporate disaster recovery function in the Information Technology division.
Before being appointed to this position in 2001, she was the Information Security
Officer for the e-Commerce Division at Wachovia.
Prior to joining Wachovia, Ms. Rosa managed software engineering functions
at Digital Equipment Corporation from 1980 to 1992. She is also a licensed teacher
in North Carolina, and has taught at all levels from elementary through college.
Ms. Rosa holds a Master of Education degree in reading and literacy from the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in
psychology and education from the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York.
She also attended the Master of Business Administration program at Fordham University
in New York. Ms. Rosa is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional
(CISSP).
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Mark SB Tiggas
Senior Vice President,Systems Architect, Wells Fargo Services Company
Mark SB Tiggas has more than 20 years experience in distributed computing,
including more than 15 years in Internet development. He has been with Wells
Fargo Services Company for seven years. During that time, Mr. Tiggas has led
the technology for payments related e-commerce initiatives. He also serves as
Wells Fargo & Company's representative to industry initiatives, such as
the IFX Forum, FSTC, and the W3C.
Mr. Tiggas has been a key player in the International Financial Exchange Forum
(IFX), with which he is a member of the board of directors; is active in several
working groups, including architecture; and served as a past president. The
IFX Forum has been active in the development of an XML vocabulary for the communication
of financial information. Initially, this work focused on retail banking and
bill presentment, and has of late incorporated corporate payments, foreign exchange,
and ATM support.
Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Mr. Tiggas led two systems and development consulting
organizations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., while also participating as
an active consultant. During this time, he introduced several businesses, including
many Fortune 500 companies, to the Internet and e-commerce. While serving as
the chief technician for an information services company, Mr. Tiggas was named
twice on the list of Fortune magazine's 50 fastest growing companies, and was
the principal architect behind a distributed search and retrieval system used
to house and research technical information.
Mr. Tiggas began his career as an industrial engineer for a Fortune 500 company,
introducing mini and microcomputers into the manufacturing environment for test,
measurement, and reporting.
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Thomas J. Hirsch
Recovery Management Services, US Bank
Thomas Hirsch heads the Recovery Management Services organization for US Bank's
Technology and Operations Services business line. His team is responsible for
the planning, operations, and execution of recovery and resiliency capabilities
for US Bank's Information Technology infrastructure.
Mr. Hirsch has more than 23 years of diverse information technology experience,
of which 10 years have been in the financial services sector. He has been directly
involved in continuity planning since obtaining his Certified Business Continuity
Planner credentials from the Disaster Recovery Institute in 1994.
Prior to joining US Bank in 2002, Mr. Hirsch was a practice director for Comdisco,
developing and implementing high availability disaster recovery solutions utilizing
disk-mirroring technologies. Prior to this, he held a variety of managerial
and technical IT positions at Fidelity Investments, Sprint Long Distance, and
Texas Instruments. He has been involved with the Financial Services Technology
Consortium (FSTC) since 2002, and has served as the co-chair of the Business
Continuity Standing Committee 2003.
Mr. Hirsch earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Southern Illinois University.
He currently resides in Minneapolis, Minn., with his wife and three daughters.
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Cynthia Sue Burke
Director Information Services, Systems Support Group, Key Corporation
Cynthia (Cyndee) Sue Burke is Director of Information Services for the System
Support Group reporting to Alan Buffington, Director of Development. The System
Support Group consists of 135 associates with a budget of $26 million. The focus
of the group is to deliver value-added technology in a way that meets the business
objective and first class support of applications to ensure continued business
success. A portion of the client base for the Systems Support Group include
HR, Finance, Procurement, Tax, Corporate Real Estate, Product Management, Check
and Item Processing.
Ms. Burke joined KeyCorp in January 1996. Prior to that she held various positions
within Key Technology Services. Most recently, she was responsible for all outsourcing/offshoring
development activities and created a Security Center of Excellence development
team. Prior to working with Key, Ms. Burke spent 13 years at Progressive Insurance
Company, one year at Reliance Electric and two years as a substitute teacher
with the Youngstown Public School System.
In addition to being part of FSTC's Executive Committee, she is also an Advisory
Member for the BITS Offshoring Committee.
Ms. Burke earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theatre from Ohio University
in 1978, an Associate Degree in Applied Science from Youngstown State University
in 1981, and a Master of Business Administration from Case Western Reserve University
in 1988.
She lives with her husband, Brian, and their three children, Sean, Erin, and
Moira, in University Heights, Ohio.
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Tony Buttrick
Strategic Technical Delivery Executive, Treasury and Payments Services Technology, Bank of America
Tony joined Bank of America in 2003 as the Strategic Technical Delivery Executive responsible for providing technical project management leadership for key large dollar initiatives for both domestic and international deployments. As part of the Treasury and Payments Services Technology organization (TPST), his team manages one of the largest project portfolios in Bank of America directly supporting Global Treasury Services (GTS), Service and Fulfillment Operations (SFO) and Global Treasury Operations (GTO) strategic investments.
Prior to coming to the bank, Tony spent 3 years with Fidelity Investments in a CIO role in Charlotte, NC, and 23 years total with the US Navy. He served 16 years on active duty in various assignments and 7 years as a DOD civilian with the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, DC. While working in the intelligence community, he served in multiple roles to include; leading the U.S. government’s most state-of-the-art imaging production facility, imaging technical advisor to the Central Intelligence Agency, and as Chief Technical Officer for the Digital Production Program Office.
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Alex Popowycz
Vice President for Information Security, Fidelity Investments
As Vice President for Information Security at Fidelity Investments, Alex Popowycz
is responsible for all facets of online security and customer privacy for Fidelity's
major Internet sites, including www.fidelity.com for retail customers; www.401k.com
for corporate benefits customers; and www.streetscape.com for institutional
brokerage clients. His responsibilities include application security, identity
management, systems security architecture, and enterprise security strategy.
Mr. Popowycz represents Fidelity Investments on various external organizations
and sits on the management board of the Liberty Alliance. He previously served
as the Information Security Officer for Fidelity Investments' Employer Services
division, which provides defined contribution, health and welfare, defined benefits
as well as human resources services and payroll processing for corporate clients.
Prior to working at Fidelity Investments, Mr. Popowycz was responsible for
systems management and implementation of major sales and management technologies
across the Northeast while at Prudential Insurance, after working in research
and development for various information technologies for the U.S. Air Force.
Mr. Popowycz earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Air
Force Academy and a Masters of Business Administration from Bentley College.
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James Sarras
Payment Strategy, Centralized Transaction Operations, JPMorgan Chase
James Sarras is Vice President of Payment Strategy,Centralized Transaction Operations, where he is responsible for influencing payment strategy initiatives for the bank.
Mr. Sarras has over 28 years of experience in the financial services industry. Mr. Sarras joined Manufacturers Hanover Trust (MHT) in 1978 in the International Operations Division, assigned to the Trade Service Operations. He held numerous management positions related to operations, product management and product development of mainframe and PC-based Letter of Credit payment solutions.
In 1992, Mr. Sarras joined the Float Management organization of Chemical bank and managed the development and implementation of Electronic Check Presentment (ECP). Mr. Sarras represented the bank at various industry forums such as the Electronic Check Clearinghouse Organization (ECCHO), Small Value Payments Company (SVPCo) and The Clearing House (TCH) ECP and Image strategy committees. In 2003, Mr. Sarras also worked with Viewpointe and ECCHO to develop the Image Exchange (Image on Demand) pilot with Bank of America.
Over the last decade, Mr. Sarras was involved with several merger related project teams, assisting in the integration of the former institutions of Manufacturers Hanover Trust (MHT), Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank and JPMorgan Chase Bank.
Mr. Sarras has an undergraduate degree from Saint Peter's College, where he majored in Economics and History. He lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
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Tim Boike
Vice President, Strategic Planning, Wells Fargo & Company
Tim Boike has spent the last 15 years working in various strategic planning and
relationship management roles for several financial service providers.
Currently, Mr. Boike is a Vice President working in Wells Fargo’s Enterprise
Payment Strategies group.
Tim joined Wells Fargo in 2000 just as enterprise payments management was
emerging from its conceptual stage in the financial services industry. Tim’s
past responsibilities included strategic consulting with both Wholesale and
Retail sides of Wells Fargo. Tim worked collaboratively to help shape Wells’
strategy on various payments-related topics including EBPP, transaction fraud
risk, ACH product enhancements,commercial credit card and other payment channel
& instrument operational efficiencies. In addition to his internal relationship
management duties, Tim serves as the Director of Wells Fargo’s Payment Industry
Relations Office (P.I.R.O.), an executive sponsored initiative to better
coordinate Wells Fargo’s involvement and communication in the payments
industry.
Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Tim had commercial portfolio management
responsibilities within U.S. Bank’s Corporate Payment Systems division. As a
Relationship Manager, Tim guided large global conglomerates in their
development of USB-facilitated payment activities such as retail electronic
commerce, small-value procurement, disaster relief, and travel & entertainment
management.
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