About Us

IMSE Advisory Board

 

Ian M. Elius | Pilgrim Software

Ian Elius earned his bachelor and master of science in industrial engineering from the University of South Florida, College of Engineering – IMSE Department. Additionally, Ian earned a graduate certificate in technology management during the course of his academic studies. Ian started his professional career as an analyst in the energy sector (electric utility-power generation), and after completion of his academic pursuits transitioned to consulting in the health sector (life sciences). Ian has progressed in his current employer organization where he primarily leads process improvement initiatives and manages global quality system deployments for Tier 1 Life Science companies (pharmaceutical, medical device, and blood service organizations). The implementations he has led and participated in provide solutions that address the domains of document and training management, customer complaint handling, non-conformance resolution, and audit management.

 

Brandon Faulkner | Holland & Knight LLP

Brandon Faulkner is an attorney with the law firm of Holland & Knight LLP. Mr. Faulkner practices in the areas of commercial and appellate litigation. His litigation experience includes various subject areas such as commercial transactions, contracts, business torts, fraud, corporate governance, fiduciary duties, officer and director liability, and federal and state taxation. Mr. Faulkner has handled appeals in the Florida District Courts of Appeal and the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. He also has experience in general corporate and transactional law in the areas of securities and mergers and acquisitions for both public and private companies. Mr. Faulkner is authorized to practice in all state courts in Florida, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, and the U.S. Tax Court. Mr. Faulkner was designated as a "Rising Star" in the 2012 edition of Florida Super Lawyers magazine.

Mr. Faulkner obtained his juris doctorate, magna cum laude, from the University of Florida, Levin College of Law. While in law school Mr. Faulkner served as the Executive Articles Editor of the Florida Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Mr. Faulkner previously worked as an advanced manufacturing engineer for Honeywell International, focusing on the production of integrated electronic guidance and navigation systems for the defense sector. Mr. Faulkner obtained a bachelor of science, summa cum laude, from the department of Industrial and Management Science Engineering and the Honors College at the University of South Florida. As an undergraduate, he served as President of Alpha Pi Mu (the Industrial Engineering Honor Society), worked to improve the public school science curriculum as a National Science Foundation Fellow, completed an honors thesis that explored facilities planning for entrepreneurial biotechnology companies, and received an Outstanding Graduate Award. He is a registered engineer-in-training.

 

Jana Iezzi | Halifax Health

Jana attended the University of South Florida (USF) for both her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She completed a BSIE in 2004 and an MSEM in 2006. While pursuing her master's degree, Jana did a thesis in healthcare, working extensively with H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and the James A. Haley VA Hospital. Just prior to completion of her MSEM, Jana joined VHA Southeast, Inc., a regional office of a national not-for-profit healthcare alliance, where she spent nearly 10 years in Performance Improvement. In 2016, Jana joined Halifax Health in Daytona Beach, FL as their first Director of Performance Improvement. She is responsible for driving change across the multi-hospital, community health system through the application of Performance Improvement methodologies and tools. Her responsibilities include reducing hospital-acquired infections, improving throughput, improving the patient experience and overseeing nursing education.

 

Karen King | Publix Super Markets, Inc.

Karen has over 27 years of manufacturing and information technology systems and process experience at Publix Super Markets, Inc. and has held various positions within the Manufacturing business area. She is currently the Director of Industrial Operations Business Development & Information Technology. She is responsible for providing strategic leadership to Publix Manufacturing, Distribution, and the Retail Business Units for all Manufacturing based product offerings and associated movement through the supply chain, as well as providing Information Technology systems and strategic process leadership to the Industrial Operations business areas.

Karen earned a bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering for the University of South Florida (USF) in 1994 and began her career with Publix as an IE intern while attending USF.

 

Raymond LaCour | Raymond James

Mr. LaCour is senior vice president of Office Services at Raymond James, a diversified financial services company engaged primarily in financial planning, wealth management, investment banking, and asset management. He is responsible for the management of real estate, facilities, construction, procurement, corporate travel and meeting planning, production printing, and security. Previously, Raymond was vice president Corporate Real Estate, at Capital One Financial Corporation where over an 11-year period he held executive responsibilities for real estate transactions; development and construction; facilities management; workplace design; security; and client relationship management. Prior to joining Capital One in 1999, he held a number of different managerial and engineering positions at AT&T Paradyne, Gould Computer Systems and Northern Telecom, Inc. Raymond has a B.S. in industrial engineering from the University of South Florida and an MBA from the University of Michigan.

 

Steve Torbett | Capsa Healthcare

Steve Torbett is senior manager of acute care products at Capsa Healthcare. He has over 25 years of experience in product management and development working with Premier Inc., UPS, AT&T, Verizon, Sales Technologies, Cisco and IBM in computers, software, telecommunications, data analytics, and supply chain management. Twelve of those years were focused on healthcare applications. Steve has a B.S. in industrial engineering from the University of South Florida and an MBA from Duke University.

 

Chris Waring | Publix Supermarkets Inc.

Chris Waring graduated from the University of South Florida with a BS in industrial engineering in 2000. He is currently the Director of Retail Scheduling and Forecasting at Publix Supermarkets, Inc., and responsible for ensuring that the labor management system fairly and correctly utilizes engineered labor standards to generate hours for more than 150,000 associates. He is 41-years-old and began his career with Publix at the age of 16. He worked in nearly every department of their retail operations during his time in high school and college, and uses those experiences learned every day in his current position. Chris left retail operations in 1999 to gain experience in industrial engineering through an internship program and worked with the IE group at Publix until taking over the Retail Scheduling and Forecasting department. He has held the positions of industrial engineering intern, industrial engineer, senior industrial engineer, senior labor systems engineer, and his current position as Director of Retail Scheduling and Forecasting.

 

Michael Washington | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Michael (Wash) Washington, PhD, MS, is a Senior Health Scientist in the Health Economics and Modeling Unit (HEMU), National Center for Emerging and Infectious Diseases, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Wash earned his PhD and MS degrees in Industrial Engineering from the University of South Florida (1998 and 1995, respectively), and his BS degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Florida (1992). Wash joined the CDC National Immunization Program in 1998 with the 4th Prevention Effectiveness Fellowship Program class and was the first engineer accepted in the program. He worked on estimating vaccine wastage, designing laboratory networks, forecasting the US vaccine needs, and coordinating and creating models in response to public health emergencies. Internationally, he worked with World Health Organization, universities, and Ministries of Health (MOHs) in teaching epidemiology, mathematical modeling, economic analyses, surveillance, operations research, statistics, data management, geographical information systems, and monitoring and evaluation to ministry staff. In 2009, he led the Preparedness Modeling Unit. The goal of the Unit was to provide leadership and modeling expertise internally, nationally, and internationally to support the development of models and make them assessable to public health decision makers. In 2011, Wash joined HEMU, where he co-supervises staff and creates models for public health emergencies, such as the 2012 contaminated steroid injectable products that caused fungal meningitis among patients and the 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Was also works with the CDC Center for Global Health to provided epidemiological support and capacity building training in the areas of HIV/AIDS and TB. He is currently the team lead for the CDC/Bloomberg Philanthropy Data to Policy Initiative, in which he provides training in 18 countries and 2 cities to local MOH staff on how to use data to make informed policy decisions and briefs. Within this initiative, Wash has managed over 80 policy briefs that have had different levels of impact, such as the president of a country allocating public health resources to combat HIV/AIDS, changing treatment protocols to test and treat healthcare workers with TB, and obtaining donor funding to combat vaccine preventable diseases.