William H. Miller joined CCI in the spring of 2023 after 30 years of technology leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies. Miller enjoys operating in his current capacity as an independent consultant and technology advisor to industry. Miller previously served as SVP of Business Process Transformation and Chief Information Officer at NetApp where he helped facilitate the company’s rapid emergence as a Cloud-led, data centric software company. Bill was also proud to serve as NetApp executive sponsor for the NetVets veterans affinity group. Prior to NetApp, Bill was the CIO at Broadcom Corporation, a global semiconductor design powerhouse headquartered in Irvine, California. Miller operated for over a decade as CIO at the secure communications authority L3Harris Technologies. Miller contributed to several university advisory councils for business and engineering schools, including UCF in Orlando, UCLA in Los Angeles, and UC Irvine. Miller holds a B.S. in Engineering from Loyola University in Maryland, a M.S. in Materials Science from the University of Virginia, and an M.B.A. from the University of Central Florida.
Drawn to the firm by the power of peer-to-peer advice and member service, Carl Rhodes joined CCI in 2022. Immediately prior to CCI, he served as a Managing Director at EY, where he was a member of the firm’s global change management leadership team, and advised clients on issues of change, cultural transformation, leadership development, employee experience, and human capital analytics. Spanning a 20-year career of entrepreneurship, company leadership, research, and consulting, he has served as the Practice Manager of the Corporate Leadership Council (CLC); the Chief Executive Officer of The Human Capital Institute (HCI, acquired by Simplify Compliance); and the Chief Operating Officer of CorpU (acquired by Udemy). Carl began his professional career as a Professor at the University of Cincinnati, teaching quantitative methods. He holds a PhD from Rice University and a BS from Colorado College.
Aliina Hopkins has over 20 years’ experience in healthcare, including 16 years at The Advisory Board Company. Her career spans leadership roles in qualitative research, program evaluation, product management for a $50 million revenue cycle SaaS portfolio, and executive client engagement. Prior to joining CCI in 2021, Aliina was a VP at AVIA, where she served as a strategic technology partner to executives at large health systems.
An accomplished facilitator and public speaker, Aliina has been an annual guest lecturer at the Yale School of Medicine since 2005. She holds a B.A. from Williams College and a Master’s from American University, where she was on the faculty for four years before beginning her healthcare career.
Cecilia Stewart is an accomplished strategic planning, business analytics, and operations executive who has worked across multiple industries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Cecilia has held positions in Finance at Procter & Gamble, Strategy Consulting for McKinsey in Madrid, Spain, Financial and Strategic Planning for DHL Express, and was Managing Partner at Accelerated Globalization, Inc., a corporate finance and business planning/communications consulting firm. She joined Western Union as Director of Vigo and Orlandi Valuta Finance and assumed roles of increasing responsibility, culminating in leading Strategic Planning and Global Analytics, before joining CCI in 2017.
Cecilia earned a BS in Industrial Engineering at Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a MBA at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Barry Perlstein joined CCI in 2014. Barry has 25 years experience as a CEO, entrepreneur and management consultant. He was the CEO of SDI Media Group, the world’s leading language localization company serving the entertainment industry with offices in 35 countries. As CEO, Barry led a successful management buyout of SDI backed by private equity firm Warburg Pincus. During his consulting career, he advised clients in the media, technology, chemical, education, retail and financial services industries. He started his business career as a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. He has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A. from Harvard College in Applied Mathematics.
Brenda Curiel joined CCI in 2007. Previously, she was Senior Vice President, Member of the Executive Team, and General manager of the Life Sciences business unit at First Consulting Group, where she turned around her division from multi-year losses. Brenda is an experienced strategist, general manager, and analyst in healthcare management consulting and technology firms. Her career began at Baxter Corporation, where she held increasingly responsible positions in sales. Later, she led strategy and operations oriented engagements for APM Management Consulting, focusing on the life sciences, healthcare, commercial and government markets. She holds an MBA from Harvard and a BPE from the University of Alberta.
Jeff Weiss founded CCI in 1986. Previously, Jeff co-founded SO/CAL/TEN, 210 technology CEOs and was recognized by Inc. and Fortune as one of the first high tech networking organizations. He was Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and served as Director of Behavioral Medicine at the Family Practice Residency. He was on the Board of the California Academy of Family Practice Foundation and was a Trustee of CSPP. He is on the Board of Homeboy Ind., MindCare Solutions and South Central Scholars. A licensed psychologist, he holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Tennessee Medical School.
Michelle Abeson is a creative, versatile and focused leader with over 25 years of financial, operations, systems and process consulting work experience across multiple industries. After years of travelling nationwide to provide the above consulting services, she decided to leverage that work experience and build her own local services firm for closely held companies.
Michelle began her professional career completing a management-training program at JP Morgan in NYC and then returned to CA to join her family’s manufacturing business in various financial and operational positions. She then attended Business School and joined the Consulting practice at KPMG and then Deloitte Consulting, where she continued her focus on process and systems consulting. Michelle then co-founded Zytalis, Inc., a consulting firm providing ERP implementation services to mid-market companies. Axon Solutions Inc., a global Systems Services provider, acquired Zytalis and 18 months later HCL Technologies acquired Axon. She remained working for the merged entity as Vice President Enterprise Applications Services. Michelle then refocused her career by leveraging her educational background together with her vast business and financial experience to provide accounting, general consulting and business valuation services to local clients.
Michelle received her MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Georgetown University.
Sanjay Vaswani is the Managing Director of CCI. CCI develops and conducts ongoing executive forums limited to CEOs, Board Leaders, Presidents, and senior executives of major technology and healthcare organizations across the United States. Since 1985, CCI’s forums have provided fresh insight into tough business and industry issues by leveraging peer discussion and the resources of outside experts. Prior to CCI, Sanjay was at McKinsey & Company, Inc., where he worked with companies in the technology and healthcare industries. Before that, Sanjay was employed by Intel Corporation. For the past 20 years, Sanjay has also been an active angel investor and advisor to entrepreneurs, founding teams, and other investors. Sanjay serves on the Boards of Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN); Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST), an organization dedicated to preserving open space; and KQED, a public media outlet based in San Francisco, CA, which operates the radio station KQED and the television stations KQED/KQET and KQEH. Sanjay holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, and a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin.
