Steven Sondergard, Senior Consultant, Merrick & Company and author, Climate Balance...A Balanced and Realistic View of Climate Change

Steve Sondergard has a 34-year track record for operational excellence and optimization for major oil companies both within the U.S. and internationally. He has led the planning and optimization, plus merger and acquisition efforts for several companies, most recently with Suncor Energy.

Steve was a former refinery manager and led many improvement efforts within plants. He has also managed and optimized complex supply chains, planning, trading, and sales for multi-plant operations.

Currently, Steve consults on operational excellence and continuous improvement for plants. Additionally, he helps organizations understand the impacts and establish policy on climate change issues. His book titled Climate Balance was released in November of 2009, and it is quickly becoming the go-to book for a balanced view of climate change.

Walt Boyes, editor in chief, CONTROL Magazine

Walt has more than 30 years of experience in sales, sales management, marketing, and product development in the controls and instrumentation industry both for process instruments and environmental controls, including Executive Committee and Board experience in several companies. Walt currently is serving as Editor-in-Chief of CONTROL and www.controlglobal.com. Because of his broad subject matter expertise and business experience, he is uniquely qualified as a global automation industry analyst.

He serves as Principal of Spitzer and Boyes LLC, as an expert at business transformation for small to medium-sized companies. He provided strategic planning, organizational development, business re-organization and electronic business re-engineering services for companies from roughly $5 million to roughly $100 million in revenues per year. Walt has served both the profit and not-for-profit business sectors. He currently serves on the board of a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor.

Walt is an ISA Fellow. One of Walt's proudest accomplishments is the R&D100 Award he shared with four other product development team members for development of a novel flow meter for use in wastewater In addition, he is considered an authority on business-to-business marketing, on social media, and on electronic commerce in the business-to-business arena, automation marketing and sales management.

Walt was Senior Contributing Editor for Industrial Marketing Practitioner magazine and Contributing Editor for Flow Control magazine. He is the Editor of The Instrumentation Reference Book, 4th Edition, published in 2009. With David Spitzer, he is the co-author of the "Consumer Guide to…" series of handbooks on field devices. He co-authored, with Shari Worthington of Telesian Technologies, eBusiness in Manufacturing: Putting the Internet to Work in the Industrial Enterprise. Walt was a founder and President of the CorgiAid foundation, and is a member of the board of ReadAssist and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Public Library foundation. He is a published writer of science fiction, and is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). He also has served ISA for many years as a volunteer, and was Vice President of Publications for ISA, Vice-Chair of the Board of Department Vice-Presidents, served on ISA's Executive Board, and is Past President of the ISA Seattle Section.

BJ Stephan, Vice President - Operations, Gulf Chemical & Metallurgical Corporation

Scott Gray, Distinguished Advisor, BP America Inc

Cliff Pedersen, Manager, Product Production Processes, Suncor Energy (retired)

Pedersen recently retired after a 39 year career in the Oil Refining Industry. Most of that time was spent with Suncor Energy Inc. (pioneer in extracting and processing bitumen from the Alberta Oil Sands) where he held management leadership positions in process control, production optimization and information technology. Cliff continues to be active in the industry as a member of the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association (NPRA), the International Society of Automation (ISA) and the Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance (MIMOSA). His work with The Open Operations and Maintenance Initiative (OpenO&Mtm) is focused on driving consensus on standards for Enterprise Interoperability and has led to a role of Industry Facilitator for the Oil & Gas Owner/Operators.

Pedersen holds a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Alberta, a Master in Systems Design from the University of Waterloo and a Professional Manager designation from the Canadian Institute of Management.

Mike Pappas, Senior Vice President, MPC Energy, LLC

Doug Foran, Director of Innovation, PlantSuccess, LLC

Doug has spent his career taking new companies and new technologies to market. He was an early contributor to the Silicon Valley leader for integrated circuit design, Calma Corporation. He pioneered the Electronic Technical Publishing market at Information Displays Inc., which dominated this market niche and attained NASDAQ National Market status. At Xerox Corporation he started up two business teams solving problems in asset management for utility companies and technical document management for manufacturing companies, world-wide. He launched Concept Five Technologies as an early entrant in cyber security for pharmaceutical and financial services markets. Today, Doug works as part of a small team of entrepreneurs launching companies building renewable energy products and has taken a leadership role at a new venture commercializing nanotechnology innovations for treatment of cancer. Doug has taken an active role at PlantSuccess over the last five years assisting Carl Howk fulfill the vision of this important industry forum as a place where industry leaders engage in a trusted dialogue to improve operations that serve both industry and national priorities.