Diversity In IT Hosted By aimWest

GRAND RAPIDS – Ever notice that IT teams are kind of homogeneous? You?re not the only one. Join aimWest on Jan. 22nd to learn how West Michigan-based companies such as Steelcase, Spectrum Health, Meijer and Kelly Services are trying to overcome this pressing issue in today?s competitive market by diversifying their IT staffs.

Panelists

TaRita Johnson ? Meijer

Mariana Craft ? Kelly Services

Richard Hagan ? Steelcase

Adam Bakker ? Spectrum Health

Speaker information:

Mariana Iannucci Craft

Mariana is a Business Intelligence Solutions Consultant/Business Intelligence & Data Analytics in the Business Intelligence Competency Center (BICC) at Kelly Services and Experience. She is a subject matter expertise in data warehousing, data analysis and decision support to enable the business to make better decisions regarding internal business matters as well as customer implementation, deployment and servicing strategies. With over 16+ years of Kelly business, operations and IT experience, she also has a Masters of Science in Information Technology with a concentration in Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing/Decision Support Systems, and a Bachelors of Science in Business with concentration in Accounting.

TaRita Johnson

TaRita is the Talent Acquisition Manager at Meijer, where she is responsible for Corporate Recruiting in the areas of Accounting, Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal, Properties, Procurement & Real Estate. Prior to Meijer, TaRita led the Campus Recruiting efforts at KeyBank headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. She was responsible for the creation and execution of the overall campus recruiting strategy. TaRita has a wealth of experience in recruiting. She has served on diversity recruitment committees, as a community liaison to source and recruit top talent and has presented to various groups and organizations on topics such as resume writing, interviewing skills and networking. TaRita holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology and Social Work from Miami University located in Oxford, Ohio and a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan.

Richard Hagan

Richard is a Project Lead at Steelcase. Originally from Baltimore Maryland, he holds a B.A. with a double major in French and Spanish. Certificate of programming from Control Data Institute. Held positions at Control Data Corporation and at Federal National Mortgage Association. After moving from Washington DC to Michigan, held positions at various contracting firms. Currently with Steelcase working on an application support team focused on manufacturing and sourcing related applications and, in particular, am focused on the SAP-based applications for those business areas. Richard was one of the original developers on the Fannie Mae Mortgage-Backed Securities application and took over as leader of the I.T. support team for MBS after it had been live for 6 months. Manager of a team of as many as 12 people at Fannie Mae for a period of two years. Project lead at Steelcase for the Y2K project.

Adam Bakker

Adam is a Team Lead for Education & Students-to-Business (S2B) in Information Services at Spectrum Health?West Michigan?s largest employer. In this role, he developed and deployed a highly successful structured internship program that has converted nearly 100% of eligible interns to full-time Spectrum Health employees since its inception. His team also designed and implemented an Information Services department onboarding and orientation program that was identified by Human Resources as a source of best practices for the rest of the organization.