Michael Whitmer - President 

CIO & EVP of Operations, Hudson Highland Group

Michael Whitmer is responsible for all aspects of application solutions, technical operations, and IT delivery and strategy. Whitmer has a strong background integrating technology into business operations and managing complex enterprise technology, from infrastructure to applications. His professional achievements include a multi-million dollar ERP implementations; the architecture of multiple reporting & analysis solutions, customer contact and data warehousing platforms; and technology integrations for mergers and acquisitions. 
 
As VP of Information Services for Spherion Corporation, Whitmer led the Applications Solutions, Field Technology, and Technology Strategy organizations for Spherion's Staffing and Professional groups. Previously, he served as Director of Technology Strategy for software and services firm Witness Systems, and he also has experience as a manager, senior consultant, and technical architect with firms such as AT&T, MCI, and Turner Broadcasting Systems.

Jeff West - Executive Vice President

Questar Corporation

Jeff West is the Enterprise Portfolio Manager for Questar Corporation, where he has worked for 26 years. In his current position, he works with internal audit, the company’s ERP systems, information security and IT portfolio management.

Currently, West manages PeopleSoft Financials and HR. In the past, he’s worked with MSA, D&B systems and Oracle Financials. He brings a wealth of user group and technology board experience to his new role on the Quest Board of Directors. In the past, he’s served on the MSA Customer Advisory Board and the PeopleSoft International Customer Advisory Board.

When he’s not working or volunteering, West enjoys travel, snow skiing, hiking, laughing with family and friends, reading historical fiction and watching college football.

Kirby Miner - Treasurer

Trex Company

Kirby Miner is the Chief Information Officer for the Trex Company, the nation’s largest manufacturer of composite decking, railing and fencing. Miner is responsible for assessing the relative impact of emerging technology to strategic business needs and interprets their meaning to the organization’s senior leadership team. In his current role, he participates in overall business technology planning, bringing a current knowledge and future vision of technology and systems as related to the company’s competitive position.

With over 20 years of technology experience, Miner has overseen numerous large software implementations for mid-tier industrial and medical manufacturing corporations, including several international deployments. Prior to joining Trex, Miner has held several technology leadership positions in public corporations including Triarc (Arby’s Restaurant Group), Coloplast and 11 years with Harsco Corporation.

Amy Doherty - At-Large Officer
Senior Director, Corporate Systems, Freddie Mac

Amy Doherty serves as Senior Director, Development of Corporate Systems at Freddie Mac.  In her role, she is responsible for application development and maintenance for a large portfolio of corporate applications including PeopleSoft, eDiscovery and other legal applications, Lotus Notes applications and risk management applications.
 
Prior to joining Freddie Mac, she held technical leadership roles in financial services and real estate industries, including executive level positions with both PeopleSoft and JDEdwards customers.  She has led international teams to implement and upgrade PeopleSoft applications on four continents.  Before joining the Quest Board, Doherty was already very active in the PeopleSoft community, serving as President of the Philadelphia Regional Users Group, presenting at industry conferences such as Oracle Open World and the Gartner Outsourcing Symposium, and leading grassroots CIO networking groups.  She has been featured in CIO Magazine and was named to RealComm's "35 to Watch" list.
 
Doherty is a graduate of the Pennsylvania State University with a MBA and BS degree, is a certified ScrumMaster and holds a Business Process Design certificate from Babson College.  She lives in the Washington DC Metro area with her husband and son.

Darrell T. Hawkes, Jr. - Immediate Past President
Senior Business Systems Analyst, Turner Industries Group, LLC

Darrell Hawkes is an IT project manager and manager of fabrication systems for Turner Industries Group in Paris, Texas, and Baton Rouge, La. Hawkes has been with Turner Industries for eight years in various roles increasing in responsibility. He is responsible for working as interface between the IT department and all levels of Fabrication Division Management. Ultimately, Darrell is tasked with evaluating the needs of Turner’s internal and external clients, developing solutions for those needs, and supporting or improving Fabrication Business processes. 
 
Prior to joining the Quest board of directors, Hawkes was an active member of Quest for more than four years, attending multiple conferences and serving as president of the Industrial Manufacturing SIG. His goals as a Quest board member are continuing efforts to bridge the recently acquired JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customer bases with Oracle so Quest members can continue their focus on collaboration and shared value. Hawkes also hopes to add the perspectives he has gained through industry and user group service and apply his analytical skills to help move Quest into the future.
 
Hawkes is a graduate of Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. He resides in Paris, Texas, with his wife, Dee, two daughters, Nichole and Michayla, and son, Samuel.

Sue Shaw - Past President
Lead, ERP Solutions, Cenovus Energy
                         
Sue Shaw is a past president for Quest. In her day job, Sue is responsible for maintaining a multi-year vision (people, process, and architecture) to support the ERP Solutions area at Cenovus Energy. This is a new opportunity for Sue which began early in 2010 after spending 20 years with Shell Canada. Her expertise is with JD Edwards software, in particular EnterpriseOne. 
 
Shaw has been involved with Quest for quite some time. She began participating in the Technology SIG in 2001 and eventually became president. She moved on to lead the PeopleSoft Technology Product User Group. Shaw has also been involved with COLLABORATE education committees, the IOUC Support Quality council and the IOUC Product Development Committee.
 
Shaw's goal as a Quest board member is to promote Quest's benefits to Oracle by clearly communicating that end users have the most valuable input for the vendor, particularly for future products such as Fusion. She feels it would be beneficial for both customers and Oracle to strengthen relationships with user groups.

Sue Duggins - Director
Senior Manager, Financial Systems - YUM! Brands, Inc.

Sue Duggins is the Financial Systems Manager for Yum Brands, Inc. Yum is the world’s largest restaurant company in terms of system wide restaurants. They operate more than 35,000 restaurants in over 100 countries and territories under the Brand names of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants with revenues in excess of $10 billion. Yum utilizes PeopleSoft Financials and HCM for their domestic operations and JDE Enterprise One for international operations. They also utilize Hyperion for reporting and consolidations across both domestic and international platforms.
 
As the Financial Systems Manager for Yum, Duggins is responsible for the management of all domestic PeopleSoft Financial and Hyperion applications on the domestic functional side of the business. Her team provides end user support on upgrades, system enhancements, financial reporting and training. Duggins also participated as Project Lead and subject matter expert in Yum’s decision to implement PeopleSoft as their ERP solution in 2004. She has worked for Yum or one of the Brand’s for the past 28 years in various accounting and IT management positions.
 
Outside her Quest Board responsibilities, Duggins currently leads the RIUG (Retail Industry User Group) for both PeopleSoft and JDE. She is also a member of the Quest PeopleSoft Advocacy Committee and has presented or led sessions at both COLLABORATE and Oracle Open World for the past 2 years.
 
Duggins is a graduate of Bellarmine University in Kentucky with a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce with an emphasis in Accounting. She resides in Louisville, KY with her husband, Dean, and their two children Sarah and Sean.

Dale Dunn - Director
 

At Capital One Dale was in charge of corporate horizontal services, including all design, development and DBA services for Corporate Systems.  He also managed all third-party labor for internal systems work. 

His prior roles included Risk Management Design and Development Director, and prior to that, Director of  Application Integration Services at Capital One. This involved work in PeopleSoft & Hyperion Development as well as Open Text. Dale has over 16 years of experience working with PeopleSoft.  Dale has managed the Design, Development, Production Support and Technical support of PeopleSoft Version 8.8 for Finance, HR, and PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal.  Dale has directed the technical teams at Capital One responsible for Environment Management and Release Management for  GL, AP, AM, PO, IN, e-T&E, e-Procurement, HR, Ben Admin, ESS, MSS, e-Recruit, e-Performance Management, e-Compensation, and Payroll Interface to Canada, France, UK, and US sites, and more recently managed deployment of GRC systems as well. 

Prior experience also includes managing the deployment of PeopleSoft Financials and HR at R.R. Donnelley and Sons Company in Chicago, Illinois, and implementing and upgrading PeopleSoft HR and Payroll at Ameritech, also in Chicago.

While working in Chicago, Dale also was the Communications Director for the Mid-West Regional User Group (MWRUG) and also hosted some of the Quarterly MWRUG events along with Tim Taylor, President of the MWRUG.  Dale has also been a speaker at the 1998 and 2004 PeopleSoft Connect Conferences - both in San Francisco on the subject of Upgrades (1998), and Self-Service Deployments (2004).

Patrick Kys - Director

Regional Vice President and CIO, Lafarge Americas

Biography Coming Soon!

David Lyle - Director

CIO, Carolina Biological Supply

Mr. Lyle currently serves as the Chief Information Officer of Carolina Biological Supply Company of Burlington, North Carolina.  Carolina Biological Supply is a leader in the industry that provides teaching materials to science and math educators worldwide.   He is a results-oriented IT professional with 25+ years of in-depth manufacturing and information technology experience across the textile, bedding, manufactured housing and education industries.  His past employers include Milliken, Simmons USA, Burlington Industries and Oakwood Homes.  He is a 1985 graduate of the Auburn University College of Engineering where he specialized in Textile and Computer Technologies.  He currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with his wife of 27 years, Jonita.  David and Jonita have three college age children; a daughter (Auburn) and two sons (William & David).  His hobbies include flying, family and Auburn football.

Kevin Touchette - Director

Assistant Director of Information Technology, Washington Business Services

Mr. Touchette is the Assistant Director of Information Technology for Washington Business Services and has worked in all aspects of technology for twenty five years.  In his current role Kevin helps develop and execute the technology strategy that supports the privately held companies owned by Industrialist Dennis R. Washington in the transportation, construction and mining industries.  His primary focus has been around implementing, supporting and utilizing enterprise software applications used across all of these companies where he has led a multi-million dollar effort to implement ERP, Business Intelligence, Employee Self Service Portal Applications and Business Process Automation Software throughout the entire group of Washington Companies.

Kevin and other members of the Washington Companies have been members and supporters of Quest for twelve years.  He hopes to bring all of the knowledge and experience that he has gained throughout his years of IT strategy, ERP implementation and support to the Quest board to help make it a great resource for others now and into the future.

He resides in Missoula, Montana and is an avid hiker, sports enthusiast and traveler.

James Watson - Director

CPO, Energy Alloys

As CPO, James Watson provides leadership, coordination and management for all aspects of Energy Alloys’ global IT infrastructure and line of business applications.

Mr. Watson joined Energy Alloys in 2007 as Global IT Director. In the prior 17 years he has held several IT leadership positions most recently as an IT Director for Hines Interest Limited Partnership, a $12.5 billion international Real Estate development and management company. He has successfully led enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations both domestically and abroad, working with companies including General Electric, Schlumberger and Stewart & Stevenson Services. Additionally, he has proven experience with process improvement and organizational change.

James Watson is a licensed CPA and holds a BS in Accounting and a MBA from the University of Houston.

James Whalen

SVP & CIO, Boston Properties

James Whalen serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Boston Properties, Inc.  Prior to joining the Company in March 1998, he served as Vice President, Information Systems for Beacon Properties.  He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and a recipient of the New York City Urban Fellowship.

Boston Properties is a fully integrated, self-administered and self- managed real estate investment trust that develops, redevelops, acquires, manages, operates and owns a diverse portfolio of Class A office, industrial and hotel properties. The Company is one of the largest owners and developers of Class A office properties in the United States, concentrated in four core markets -- Boston, Midtown Manhattan, Washington, DC and San Francisco.

Jim oversees the direction and implementation of technology and applications at Boston Properties including the support of JD Edwards EnterpriseOne. Jim has been an active member of the Oracle Real Estate Users Group (and its predecessors) since 1995 and served on the Quest Board of Directors from 2001 – 2004 where he lead the direction of support activities for user groups. He joined PeopleSoft’s International Customer Advisory Board (ICAB) in 2002 and became its chairperson during the acquisition by Oracle Corporation.  Jim continues to champion activities in support of user group collaboration and influence.

Jon Vaughn - Executive Director

Executive Director, Quest International Users Group

As executive director of Quest, Vaughn is the primary liaison for the Quest Board of Directors and membership. He oversees all of Quest’s day-to-day operations and leads a staff focused on executing the Quest board's strategic vision and ultimately fulfilling the Quest mission.