ISRAEL DEL RIO

israel@paxorbis.com

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE & CONSULTANT

Innovative   ■   Transformational    ■   Strategic Partner    ■   Revenue Driver   ■   Technology Leader

■ Highly accomplished Visionary, Thought Leader, and Hands-on Problem-Solver with extensive experience building, managing, and motivating high-performance teams, able to implement large scale, enterprise-wide solutions

 ■ Proven success leading, designing, and implementing complex global solutions that increase revenue and competitive advantage in the hospitality, financial, and technology vendor industries

 ■ Strengths in analysis and innovation, combining strong technical and transformational skills with keen understanding of how to move from legacy to state-of-the-art systems that better respond to business needs, while consistently meeting budget and revenue goals

 ■ Known for ability to execute quick turnarounds, especially in international environments, including business support, systems engineering, systems analysis, architecture, and strategy. Bilingual: English, Spanish, working French

■ Honored by Computerworld as one of the Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2007; Member of CIO Forum

 ■ Areas of expertise

   Strategic Planning | Technology Development 
Service-Oriented Architecture | Business Alignment
            Team Building & Leadership 
     Life-cycle Standards & Methodologies  

ABSTRACTION CONSULTING
Atlanta, GA                                                                 Present 

Providing consulting services for technology transformation

President

• Provide enterprise architecture and solution analysis; perform engineering and scalability analysis; assist clients in defining product roadmaps and migration plans

InterContinental Hotels Group Plc
Atlanta, GA                                                              2006-2007

Global hospitality chain consisting of InterContinental, Holiday Inns, Indigo, Staybridge, Candlewood brands.

Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer

• Brought on to define technical direction and develop baseline architecture and plan for next generation enterprise system including Reservation, Revenue Management, Property Management Systems, Inventory, Enterprise Data, Business Intelligence, and Loyalty programs that generate billions in revenue and support millions of guests; staff of 100+, $27M budget; contributed key strategic, architectural, and business decisions to enable significant ROI

• Established high-caliber productive team; created customer and business focused accountability to deliver projects around timelines, budgets, functionality; set / met key metrics for performance, productivity, and customer satisfaction 

• Provided on-going thought leadership to ensure competitive operating model, with selective outsourcing and off-shoring; established strong relationships with key business stakeholders enabling consistent collaboration, information flow, system requirements, and on-time, on-budget delivery

STARWOOD HOTELS & RESORTS WORLDWIDE
White Plains, NY                                                      2001-2006

Global hospitality chain consisting of Westin, Sheraton, W, Le Meridien, St. Regis brands.

Senior Vice President Technology Solutions & Architecture

• Key strategist, designer and implementer for all enterprise-level guest value chain systems; conceived, architected, and delivered state-of-the-art multi-year technology program (Fusion) providing innovative Sales & Meeting applications, Distribution Channels ( GDS, Web, IDS, Call Centers), Backend (Property Search, Shopping (Galaxy/LightSpeed), Rates, & Availability), Reservations, Loyalty CRM, and Fulfillment systems; managed, motivated, and inspired staff of 160+, $16M budget

• Developed cohesive IT strategy to support strategic business imperatives, including migration to evolve legacy systems into strategic architecture and global methodology to achieve effective, scalable, repeatable processes; met financial objectives to reduce IT costs as percentage of revenue while improving services

• Spearheaded R&D and incubation activities for property emerging technology applications and broadband

• Defined core development life cycle practices, standards, and methodologies: built effective high-performance teams; facilitated communications between IT and business stakeholders; managed seamless releases

SABRE
Dallas/Ft. Worth,  TX                                                1997-2001

Global Distribution System used for airline and hotel reservations; owner of Travelocity web travel portal

Vice President, Architecture and Emerging Technologies

• Defined and introduced new open technology solutions supporting high-performance, complex transaction environments; created strategic architecture model for roadmap to high transaction service oriented technology; defined global TCP/IP solution; led senior level architects and developers, staff of 20, $6M budget

• Spearheaded engineering incubation activities for emerging technology applications

GALILEO INTERNATIONAL / UNITED AIRLINES
Various locations                                                  1985-1997

Global Distribution System used for airline operations and reservations

Director, Architecture & Engineering 
(Denver CO, 1991-1997)

• Pioneered Galileo Intranet, serving 3,000+ employees worldwide

• Designed and drove successful introduction of global TCP/IP network of 25,000 travel agency terminals that created competitive advantage and increase new client accounts

Senior Network & Distributed Systems Architect
(Swindon, England, 1988-1991)

• Engineered low-cost workstation for deployment in travel agencies worldwide that saved more than $4M dollars and included RFPs for 10,000+ PCs

Senior Workstation Architect
(Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1987-1988)

• Defined system network architecture for European distribution companies and successfully migrated 3,000 travel agencies from old ALC technology

Senior Systems Design Analyst and Developer
(Elk Grove, IL, 1985-1987)

• Developed and launched pioneering diskless workstation LAN infrastructure at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport

IBM
Various locations                                              1978-1985

Advisory Systems Engineer
(IBM World Trade, Boca Raton, FL )

International Technical Representative
(IBM World Trade, Raleigh, NC)

Systems Engineer
(IBM Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico)

 

EDUCATION, TRAINING, & AWARDS

2007 Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leader, Winner of InfoWorld’s 100 Innovative Solutions Award in 2002, Division Award for  Galileo, Award of Merit for United Airlines, Marketing Excellence Award from IBM

B.S. Electronics & Communications Engineering, Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico

ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES

Developed and commercialized Prophesy, state-of-the-art complex discrete event simulation tool using ground-breaking algorithms and techniques.  Built Abstraction Software to market and sell product.

PUBLICATIONS

"Series/1 UNIX Internals". IBM Red Book. 

  "Series/1 in SNA networks". IBM Red Book.

"A 6809 Assembler/Debugger". Color Computer News. Depicting software, I developed.

     "ANIMATIC. Automatic Animation". The Rainbow Magazine. Included a sprite animation package I developed.

      "Optimization of the Mexican collect phone system".  Professional Thesis.

TECHNOLOGY SUMMARY

• Experience developing with open systems: Java, J2EE, JavaScript
• Hands-on software development experience: Assembler, C, C++, Fortran, Cobol, VB
• Mainframe-based systems (TPF, MVS), to Open Systems (Linux), and desktops (Windows)
• Knowledge in Communications & Networking: Network design, provisioning, and protocols (SNA, TCP/IP)
• Discrete Event Modeling & Simulation
• Technical Writing and Communication  skills