Speaker Biographies

Mahfuz Ahmed
Chief executive officer and principal founder, Digital Intelligence Systems LLC

Ahmed is the CEO and principal founder of Digital Intelligence Systems LLC (DISYS), a global IT consulting services company. As CEO and current chairman of the board of directors, his primary role focuses on continuous strategic planning, securing strategic opportunities for his company, financial management, operations, and overseeing a growing portfolio of DISYS services. Ahmed possesses more than 25 years of applicable information technology and leadership experience. Ahmed prides himself on leveraging a process automation approach, his project management expertise, industry insights and innovative technical skills in order to provide services that accelerate project completion and drive client cost savings. Recognition of Mahfuz’s leadership includes the Washington Business Journal’s 40 under 40; E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year of the Greater Washington, DC, Region; member of the Young Presidents’ Organization; a governor’s appointment to the George Mason University Board of Visitors; a distinguished alumni award from GMU’s School of Engineering; features in multiple publications including the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal; Entrepreneur of the Year honor from the Capital Region Minority Supplier Development Council; and inclusion in Staffing Industry Analysts’ 100 Most Influential People in the Staffing Industry list.

Thomas Bailey
Managing director, Houlihan Lokey

Bailey is a member of Houlihan Lokey’s business services group. He specializes in advising clients in the human capital management, information technology, and professional services industries on sell-side and buy-side mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financings, and strategic alternatives assessments; he also leads the practice group for Houlihan Lokey. Prior to joining Houlihan Lokey, Bailey was a director at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey in the technology and services mergers and acquisitions group. Before that, he was with middle-market investment bank Childs Advisory Partners, where he focused on mergers and acquisitions for small- to middle-market IT and professional services companies.

Joanie Bily
President, RemX division of EmployBridge Holding Co.

Bily is president of the RemX division of EmployBridge Holding Co. She is responsible for the division’s growth strategy, including sales, marketing, operations, recruiting, and employee development. As an employment industry expert, she is often called upon to discuss the job market, careers, and workplace trends and speaks to the talent supply and demand cycles that impact U.S. employers. She is frequently featured as a keynote speaker at industry conferences, and her commentary on the employment market has been featured on several media outlets.

Jeff Bowling
Chief executive officer, Dallas-based Curative

Bowling is the chief executive officer of Dallas-based Curative, a physician staffing and direct hire firm with 150 internal employees. Doximity, the leading physician networking platform in the U.S., purchased Curative (formerly THMED) in April 2020. Bowling was tasked with combining the social networking power of Doximity with Curative’s experience and history in staffing to transform the business into the industry’s leading tech-enabled staffing company. A veteran of the staffing and recruiting industry, Bowling is the founder and former CEO of wildly successful and popular firm The Delta Cos., which he sold in a successful exit in 2014. He stayed on as CEO after selling the business, stepping down at the end of 2016. During the three-plus years between CEO stints, Bowling sat on several boards—including The Delta Cos. He also invested in service-based and tech companies while performing advisory work in those same industries. Bowling is still an investor and board member for ClearlyRated, a SaSS tech company in Oregon that supports the staffing industry, and ReSourcing, a NYC-based staffing business in the IT and F&A segments of staffing. He is a proud Texan, graduating from the University of North Texas, and resides in Dallas with his wife, Daniella, and their three children.

Andy Brown
Managing director, Fairmount Partners

Brown is a managing director with Fairmount Partners and leads the firm’s consulting and technology services practice. He is responsible for originating and executing middle-market investment banking transactions. He has more than 17 years of experience providing financial and strategic advisory services to growing middle-market companies. While his clients have come from a diverse range of industries, Brown focuses on the business services sector, specifically consulting and technology services (inclusive of staffing and related professional human resource services). Notable recent transactions include advising LaSalle Network in its majority recapitalization with Infinedi Partners, Optomi Professional Services in its minority recapitalization by FFL Partners; Cella in its sale to Randstad NV; Fidato Partners in its sale to Eliassen Group; OmniPoint in its sale to the Planet Group; ALKU in its minority recapitalization with WestView Capital; the Ascent Services Group in its sale to Innova Solutions (formerly American Cybersystems); BioBridges in its sale to the Adecco Group; Insight Workforce Solutions in its sale to Kelly Services; LeapFrog Systems in its sale to ASGN Inc.; and Artech’s acquisition of the talent and technology solutions business interest of CDI Corp.

Jessica Calzaretta
President, Insight Global Health

Calzaretta serves as president of Insight Global Health, the health care staffing and services arm of Insight Global. Insight Global Health is a leader in talent solutions and services to the health care industry and provides end-to-end staffing support to health care providers on their clinical and nonclinical needs. Additionally, Insight Global provides direct placement services; outsourced managed services; diversity, equity, and inclusion consulting; and culture consulting services to health care providers across the U.S. Calzaretta has held several key positions during her 13-year career at Insight Global. Prior to leading Insight Global Health, Calzaretta ran a $900M revenue technology vertical and served as president of the Women’s Leadership Council for Insight Global. She is a firm believer that when you put people first, anything is possible. She also has initiated the development of numerous parent support resources and advocated for improved benefits for family leave and fertility support, and she has been recognized in publications such as the Wall Street Journal.

Brian Delle Donne
President and chief operating officer, Talent Tech Labs

Delle Donne has been a leading force in driving innovation throughout his career, having served in president and chief operating officer roles at both public and privately held engineering project companies and staffing firms. He started his career in the power generation sector and moved to the environmental engineering field before coming to the staffing industry. Throughout this span he has amassed a wealth of insight into effectively applying innovation. Talent Tech Labs is entirely focused on analyzing technological developments in the field of talent technology. The company helps buyers and users of talent technology solutions gain a better understanding of the complex market and provides them the strategic direction to transform their business through the intelligent use of technology.

Susan Dietrich
Principal owner, TOPS Staffing LLC, AllTek Staffing and Resource Group Inc., e-Staff Consulting Group, AccountStaff Inc., Sterling Office Professionals, and TVS Inc.

Dietrich is a principal owner of TOPS Staffing LLC, AllTek Staffing and Resource Group Inc., e-Staff Consulting Group, AccountStaff Inc., Sterling Office Professionals, and TVS Inc. She began the western chapter of the Pennsylvania Staffing Association, an ASA-affiliated chapter, and served as its president for three years. Dietrich also has served on the ASA chapter leadership council and the chapter past presidents committee.

Chris Hartman
Global development officer, Allegis Group

Hartman has more than 23 years of experience with Allegis Group, a global leader in talent solutions, where he leads a team focused on strategy and enterprise-wide initiatives. In his role as global development officer, Hartman is responsible for driving the company’s strategic investments and stewarding the Allegis Group brand, as well as ensuring the company’s continuous growth and responsiveness to marketplace trends and innovations. He has held a number of global leadership roles across Allegis Group’s network of specialized companies, during which he built new business units and drove key acquisitions, market acceleration, and leadership succession plans for long-term success.

Jonathan Kaye
Managing director, Moelis & Co.

Kaye is a managing director at Moelis & Co., where he leads the global business services franchise. Under his leadership, this franchise has become a recognized global leader; he has advised on more than 100 transactions across the sector. He has worked in the investment banking industry for 20 years with a specialized focus on divestitures, mergers, acquisitions, and control and noncontrol investments. His expertise and coverage areas include industrial, white collar, and technology-enabled services across a range of end markets and delivery models. Kaye maintains extensive relationships with private equity investors as well as private and public strategic companies.

Jennifer Lee
Senior economist and managing director, BMO Capital Markets Economics

Lee has been with BMO Capital Markets Economics for over two decades and is perhaps best known for her analysis on the U.S. economy, as well as her commentary analyzing financial market and economic activity in Europe and Japan. Her entertaining, easy-to-understand and call-it-like-it-is writing style has earned her a devoted following. She is also one of the primary authors of the department’s hugely popular “A.M. Notes,” providing analysis of major global economic and political events. She is also co-author of “Rates Scenario,” covering currencies and markets outside the U.S. and Canada. Lee is also a regular in the media and is a frequent guest on Bloomberg.

Katrina Leslie
Founder and chairman, Swipejobs Inc.

Leslie is the founder and chairman of Swipejobs Inc., one of the leading W-2 digital staffing platforms in the U.S. Swipejobs’ platform operates in all 50 states and has more than 1.2 million temporary employees and 155,000 customer users. Swipejobs also operates a nationwide staffing firm primarily focused on the light industrial sector. Since its founding in 2014, Swipejobs has grown organically and through acquisitions, with the strategy of converting temporary employees and customers of traditional staffing firms to its digital platform. Before Swipejobs, Leslie founded, built, and sold three other companies focused on staffing, technology, and data.

Eric Ly
Founder and chief executive officer, KarmaCheck

Ly is the founder and CEO of KarmaCheck, a first-of-its-kind company that uses data-driven technology to bring truth, speed, and efficiency to background checks. Ly is the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social networking platform, where he served as the chief technology officer. Ly helped launch LinkedIn from a strategic perspective and assisted with the architecture and implementation of specific aspects of the networking and search algorithms. Ly even acted as the vice president of desktop, building a team of professionals to lead the desktop integrations. Ly attended Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor of science degree in symbolic systems, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned his master of science degree in media arts and sciences.

Stephanie Marken
Partner, Gallup

Marken previously served as chief methodologist at Gallup, where she was responsible for sample design, data collection approach, and methodology for Gallup’s public release studies in education and workforce development areas. In this role, she was the sample and design architect for Gallup’s largest education studies, including the Gallup Alumni Survey, formerly the Gallup-Purdue Index, and the Strada-Gallup Education Consumer Survey. Marken also was responsible for individual university projects surveying currently enrolled students and alumni and conducted complex program evaluations. To date, Marken has worked with more than 100 colleges and universities, designing complex research projects to address their unique research questions and measure the long- and short-term outcomes of a college degree.

Daniel Masata
Founder and chief executive officer, Volonte

Masata started Volonte in 2020 with the mission to turn workplace and career change into proactive, positive, and empowering experiences for employees and organizations that engage with the workplace agility platform. Prior to launching Volonte and boutique human cloud advisory firm Skill Principals, he was a senior executive at global human resource services leader Adecco Group for 15 years, where he most recently led the company’s worldwide strategy and digital transformation.

Sara Moss
Vice president, technology advisory, Newbury Partners

Moss helps staffing companies develop tech strategies that deliver strategic business outcomes. As head of Newbury Partners’ technology advisory team, and throughout her 20-year staffing career, Moss has supported a long list of leading staffing companies as they achieved their goals.

Art Papas
Founder and chief executive officer, Bullhorn Inc.C

Papas is the founder and CEO of ASA corporate partner Bullhorn Inc., a global leader in software for the staffing andwor recruitment industry. He was the original architect of Bullhorn’s flagship customer relationship management (CRM) system, which now helps more than 10,000 companies around the world run their businesses. In 2014, Ernst & Young named Papas an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award winner in New England. Prior to starting Bullhorn, Papas started his career as a software engineer at Thomson Reuters. He is a graduate of Tufts University, holding a bachelor of science degree in mathematics. He currently serves on the Tufts computer science external advisory board.

Paul Pincus
Partner, Ortoli Rosenstadt LLP

Pincus is a partner at the New York law firm of Ortoli Rosenstadt LLP and head of the firm’s private company mergers and acquisitions, and staffing, practices. He is one of the leading M&A attorneys in the U.S. for the staffing industry, having completed more than 85 deals in the staffing industry during the past 35 years ranging in size from under $20 million to more than $200 million in enterprise value. He has represented domestic and international staffing firms in purchases, sales, recapitalizations, and management buyouts, and in transactions with strategic buyers as well as private equity firms. Pincus has written and lectured extensively on M&A topics for the staffing industry.

Matt Rupprecht
Director, PMCF

Rupprecht is a director of PMCF and co-leads the firm’s business services and technology team. He has more than 15 years of experience advising clients with their buy-side and sell-side mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, and the placement of senior and subordinated debt. In addition, he has extensive experience across multiple segments, including human capital management, advertising, background screening, facilities management services, managed services, staffing, and business process outsourcing. Prior to joining PMCF as an analyst, Rupprecht worked as a consultant at UHY Advisors, a middle-market focused accounting firm, providing litigation consulting and valuation services. Additionally, he has written for numerous human capital management M&A industry publications, sharing his insight into various investment banking topics within the sector.

Bettina Schaller
President, World Employment Confederation

Along with her role as president of World Employment Confederation, Schaller heads up the group public affairs activities of the Adecco Group, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. She is also vice chair of the employment, labor, and social affairs committee in the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development’s business and industry advisory committee; co-chair of the future of work, skills, and mobility task force at the B20 summit; member of the International Advocacy Caucus; a steering group member on the World Economic Forum’s Center of New Economy and Society; and a steering group member of the American Swiss Foundation’s young leader alumni foundation board. She is a founding member of the Boardroom, launched in 2023—a Swiss initiative aimed at driving board diversity and developing a pipeline of future women leaders. Since 2017, Schaller has several times been recognized as a “Staffing 100 Europe Influencer” and included in the international 50 of the “Global Power 100—Women in Staffing” list. Last year she was recognized as one of the Latin America 25 Top Leaders in Staffing.

Bret Schoch
Managing director, Baird

Schoch manages the human capital management practice within the technology and services group covered by Baird. Since joining Baird in 1992, he has been active in a variety of private and public financing and buy-side and sell-side strategic financial advisory assignments, primarily for clients in services-related industries. He has worked with clients across the talent acquisition, talent management, and workforce management sectors building decades long relationships with strategic players and private equity investors.

Leo Sheridan
Chief executive officer, Advanced Group

Sheridan is chief executive officer of the Advanced Group, a staffing and outsourcing solutions provider with offices across the U.S. In 1988, Sheridan founded Advanced Resources, and as the firm quickly expanded, he added additional businesses to create the Advanced Group. Today, the Advanced Group includes Advanced Resources, Advanced Clinical, the WunderLand Group, and Advanced RPO. Sheridan earned a bachelor of science degree in business administration from St. Michael’s College in Vermont, and completed the executive management program at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He has provided leadership to a variety of professional organizations, including TechServe Alliance, the American Staffing Association, and the Young Presidents’ Organization. Sheridan serves on the board of directors and the board of trustees for Cristo Rey Network.

Jeff Silber
Managing director and senior analyst, BMO Capital Markets

Silber is a senior analyst in BMO Capital Markets’ equity research group, covering the business services and education sectors, including the staffing and information services industries. He is well-known for his deep dives into various industry topics, including his annual overview of the education industry. He was the long-time host and moderator of BMO’s annual Back to School Education Conference, which was considered a premier investor event for the industry. His research has been recognized widely, including on the Refinitiv (formerly Thomson Reuters)/StarMine top analysts list, Institutional Investor’s All-American Research team, the Wall Street Journal’s “Best on the Street” Analysts Survey, the Reuters survey of small- and mid-cap fund managers, and the Zacks.com All-Star Analyst team. Before the StarMine Analyst Awards were discontinued in 2020, Silber won this award for 10 straight years (2011–20), including being named the No. 1 stock picker in the diversified consumer services sector for three years in a row (2017–19).

Tobey Sommer
Managing director, Truist Securities

Sommer is a managing director in Truist Securities’ research division with 22 years of experience covering the services sector as an equity research analyst. His current coverage focuses on the commercial and government services sectors, including human capital management, consulting, business services, education, insurance distribution, and federal information technology contractors. He has been recognized by Thomson Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and TipRanks for earnings accuracy and stock picking.

Jim Tiller
Global chief information security officer, Harvey Nash and Nash Squared

As an internationally recognized cybersecurity authority on cyberrisk management, security technology, and industry leadership, and with multiple patents for innovation in security solutions, Tiller brings to a broad collection of unique capabilities and experience to drive business enabling cybersecurity strategy, architecture, and services for Harvey Nash and its clients globally. He is a published author on information security technologies and strategy and an internationally recognized expert in the development of solutions combining excellence in risk management, technology, and operations. Prior to joining Harvey Nash, Tiller held key cybersecurity leadership roles at organization such as British Telecom, Hewlett Packard, and Bell Labs, overseeing security services, solutions, and innovation.