Profiles

Mr. Sheppard is an independent consultant helping emerging to middle-market firms develop, implement, and manage their technology and information assets. His expert counsel ensures that clients receive full business benefits from their technology solutions. He also serves as interim or part-time CIO for small and not-for-profit organizations.

Early in his career, Malcolm served numerous business positions with The Gap, gaining valuable expertise in retailing, field management, merchandising, purchasing, and inventory management. During the latter portion of his service, he transitioned into a technical career track.

Malcolm's work with The National Board of Medical Examiners and the Institute for Scientific Information provided him with extensive experience in working with medical and scientific professionals on their information needs.

In 1993 he joined Microsoft, where he provided architectural, development, training and consulting to enterprise customers. Later, he developed program and service strategies that are a key part of Microsoft’s Enterprise Services offerings today.

Since 2003, Malcolm has served as CIO for a privately-held resort community — the Lake Paupac Club. He also serves as a Board Member of The Center For Emerging Visual Artists (formerly Creative Artist Network), a regional organization that supports the professional development of fine artists.

Malcolm studied Business Administration and Computer Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business.

Kara Rennert is a Project Manager with wide-ranging experience managing multi-faceted large scale projects from initiation to completion. She brings her unique combination of project management skills and creative mind to lead cutting-edge development projects. In addition, she has honed her skills as a liason between technical and non-technical people, listening to, understanding, and synchronizing the needs of both sides in order to facilitate the creation of tools with maximum functionality and useability in a timely and efficient manner.

Kara spent 11 years working at the Linguistic Data Consortium where she worked on a variety of data collection projects for voice recognition, speaker identification, and text mining purposes. Kara wore many hats at the LDC, including webmaster and technical writer, as well as lead designer on a variety of promotional materials and the company intranet. She was recognized by the user community for her clear, concise and thorough solutions which provided new users with a successful and positive experience.

Kara is also a multi-media artist and 2008 Fellow with the Center for Emerging Visual Artists. While her main medium is figurative ceramic sculpture, she recently completed an audio installation at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. This installation fills an old horse barn with numerous motion sensors and speakers.

Through her professional and artistic endeavors, Kara has also developed a knowledge and facility with audio and video recording and editing, Flash, and web design. As an artist and professionally, Kara is always looking for new ways to combine her technical side with her artistic side, expanding and exploring new technology and its possible applications.

Kara studied History of Art and Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as Media Arts and Ceramics at the University of the Arts and Penland School of Crafts.