MANAGEMENT
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J.P. WINKER

J. P. Winker joins TalentFirst bringing a passion for the human capital space and a belief that Human Resources is “best practiced” as a business discipline.

Prior to joining TalentFirst Mr. Winker was a Principal Consultant with Metropolis Group, specializing in recruitment technology, product development, and marketing.

Prior to Metropolis Group, Mr. Winker worked at RecruitUSA during the breakout years of recruiting technology. As the Director of Business Development, he established distribution channels helping to make RecruitUSA the dominant vendor in its class. His last role was VP of Corporate Development with responsibilities including strategy, capital, and revenue development.

Prior to RecruitUSA, Mr. Winker was Director of Staffing with C.H. Robinson Company, a global leader in third party transportation. While at CHR, Mr. Winker developed a top flight recruiting division and managed it as a profit center. CHR was perhaps the only company in North America with a recruiting operation functioning as a business unit.

Mr. Winker has an MBA from the University of St. Thomas and an undergraduate degree with majors in Psychology and Anthropology from the University of Minnesota.

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Shashank Verma

Shashank brings over two decades of marketing experience to TalentFirst. Prior to joining TalentFirst, Shashank spent 11 years managing product launches and marketing drives for some of the leading technology companies in both domestic and international markets. Prior to his consulting days, Shashank was employed with IBM for 16 years. He started his career at IBM as an analyst and served the last 5 years as a senior marketing manager.

Shashank holds a Bachelor of Science degree with distinction from Babson College and an MBA from Duke University.

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Amit Jain

During his decade long tenure at PeopleSoft prior to joining TalentFirst, Amit has played many key roles in the development of PeopleSoft’s Human Capital Management suite of applications. Amit’s experience with the cutting edge technology and its application in the Human Resources horizontal led him to be one of pioneers in the development of PeopleSoft’s Recruit Workforce module.

Prior to PeopleSoft, Amit has held senior consultancy roles at some of the global leaders in Information Technology consulting. Amit possess a Bachelors degree in Computer Science Engineering from the renowned Indian Institute of Technology and an MBA from the globally reputed Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad.



THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
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Rishav Gupta

Rishav founded TalentFirst and led operations until 2005. He is now a part of the Aleutian Capital Partners' investment team. Aleutian Capital Partners is a private equity investment firm focused on middle-market, growth stage companies in technology, healthcare and other industries.

Rishav possesses over a decade of experience in mergers and acquisitions in the technology industry. Over these years, Rishav has been part of several industry-shaping transactions including acquisitions by PeopleSoft, divestitures following Fleet Bank’s merger with Bank Boston, sale of HNC Software and Sema PLC, and equity carve-out and the ensuing public offering of Nationwide Financial Services.

Prior to his focus in investment and M&A related activities within the technology industry, Rishav spent a few years with Nationwide Mutual Insurance assisting them with selection and implementation of several ERP software packages.  He received an MBA from Columbia Business School and a B.S. in Management Information Systems from The Ohio State University.

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Professor Robert Bontempo

Social Psychologist by profession and the 1994 Singhvi prize winner, Professor Bontempo is a distinguished contributor to the science of structured methods of behavior and skill evaluation of people. Professor Bontempo teaches Leadership and Managerial Negotiations at Columbia Business School and is widely published in well-known journals on human Psychology as it relates to job performance and evaluations.

Professor Bontempo sits on the Board of Directors of Baker Corporation – a $500 million Engineering and Energy firm with operations in 20 countries.

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Raghav Singh

Raghav is a talent management expert who has previously been in product management and marketing roles at Peopleclick, Recruitsoft, and Kenexa. His career has included work as a consultant on enterprise HR systems and as a recruiting and HRIT leader at several large companies including United Health Group and ADC Telecom.

Raghav is a frequent speaker at regional and national conferences on HR Technology and Talent Management and a regular contributor to online journals such as ER Exchange.

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Mohammed Asif

Mohd is a serial entrepreneur with several successful organizations to his credit over the last 15 years. Mohd founded these organizations and served in the capacity of CFO guiding and growing these companies until such time when he exited the ventures moving on the next big opportunity. Mohd’s relationships with various mid and large financial houses are just as diverse as his experience in founding and growing successful organizations. Over the years Mohd has demonstrated leadership and management skills to build, lead and manage organizations ranging from 20 to over a 1000 individuals. Though Mohd was primarily tasked with the financial management and fund raising efforts in his companies, he often proved instrumental in strategizing marketing approach, building and sustaining a winning organizational culture, and developing new business opportunities. The companies in his portfolio have consistently experienced rapid growth and profitability under his command.

Mohd’s portfolio of companies include UCA group of companies (grew to $100M in 4 years), pcWonders ($117M when sold to BuyItNow), Clear-to-Close and others. Mohd received his MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s in Business Administration from St. Mary’s University in Canada.