2014 Board President, Karen Semonson presented the 2015 Americas award winners at the HP Discover Conference in Las Vegas on June 2, 2015. The Champion of the Year Award went to Amy Heindel, Leader the Year Award went to Dan Boswell, Speaker of the Year Award went to Bernard Szymczak, and the new Top Virtual Contributor Award went to Steve Williams.
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This year marks the seventh anniversary of the awards presentation recognizing outstanding service to the Vivit community. Winners are chosen from submissions by members worldwide. "The volunteers in our organization are exceptional,” said Laura Walker, Local and Special Interest Group Chair, Board of Directors. "As full-time employees, they also make time to organize and lead invaluable events, either online or in-person, to enhance the careers of their peers. Because of their efforts, our organization has been able to provide our membership with education, networking, knowledge sharing, and career opportunities. Our award winners this year have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Without these volunteers, the HP Software community would lack much of the innovation and knowledge sharing that makes the HP client base so successful in delivering real value to their business.”
| Champion of the Year
Amy Heindel, Presales Enterprise Software Consultant, Hewlett-Packard, received the Champion of the Year Award for expanding the Vivit community in the United States. Heindel has been a consistent advocate, participant, and supporter of Vivit, beginning with OpenView Forum Local User Groups in Michigan in the late 1990s. She has shared her knowledge by presenting at Local User Group meetings, and she encouraged customers to collaborate and share best practices in Vivit meetings and online events to drive the most value from their HP Software investments. Heindel has over 19 years of experience as an HP Software Technical Sales Solution Architect focused on IT Management solutions, with over 10 years of experience working in Corporate IT and Internet consulting before her tenure at HP. |
| Leader of the Year
Dan Boswell, Manager of Testing for the ATC contract at the USDA, Ace Info Solutions, Inc., received the Leader of the Year Award for his outstanding guidance of the Kansas City and St. Louis Local User Groups. Boswell organized meetings for HP customers in both cities, creating plenty of events and collaboration opportunities. He frequently spoke and extended the reach to members not in the local area by broadcasting the meeting virtually. Boswell has worked in testing and automation for over 15 years and has been in the IT field for over 25 years. He has expertise in Application Lifecycle Management and Unified Functional Testing.
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| Speaker of the Year
Bernard Szymczak, IT Systems Engineer Lead – Enterprise Software Services and Architecture, Progressive Insurance, received the Speaker of the Year award for presenting on Software Quality topics at Local User Group Meetings, at Ohio State University, and through a series of well-attended webinars. Szymczak has more than 12 years of Software Quality Management experience and is a leader in his field, specializing in IT Service Management Incident and Problem Management for quality insurance systems from HP and others, HP software infrastructure design, consulting best practices, training for HP systems at Progressive’s IT University, and upgrades and new solutions for HP and others in the Business Innovation Garage. He supports an HP Software user base that is currently over 3,500 and across 18 business platforms.
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| Top Virtual Contributor
Steve Williams, GTM and Offering Manager for HP Helion Managed Cloud Broker for HP Enterprise Services, received the Top Virtual Contributor Award for his participation in and contributions to Vivit’s website which is the hub of the worldwide community. Williams works with the US Public Sector region and is based in Maryland near Washington, D.C. For the last 15 years, he has helped enterprise customers evolve into agile IT by utilizing enterprise automation solutions and focusing on process enrichment for true IT and business transformations.
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For a complete listing of past Vivit Award winners, visit the
Vivit Hall of Fame.
