Members of Barquin International’s Leadership Team average more than fifteen years of experience in their respective areas of expertise. Together, they set the strategic direction for the company and provide ongoing leadership and direction to the company's senior managers.
Corporate Management
Ramon C. Barquin
President and Chief Executive Officer
Robert E. Willitts
Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Owen Dall
Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
Kelley M. Willitts
Vice President, Finance and Administration
Nicolas Barquin
Vice President, Corporate Development
Ishita Yameen
Director of Program Management
Subramanyam B. Chaganti
Senior Manager
Advisory Board
Joseph P. Leo
Former CIO, USDA
C. Lawrence Meador
Chairman, MGI Strategic Solutions
Renny McPherson
Director of Operations, RedOwl Analytics
MG William Navas (Army, RET)
Former Assistant Secretary of the Navy; former Director of the Army National Guard Bureau
Ramon C. Barquin - President and Chief Executive Officer
Ramon C. Barquin, PhD is the President and CEO of Barquin International. He is a former IBM executive and an internationally known expert in the field of knowledge management, analytics and IT strategy. Dr. Barquin co-founded and was the first President of The Data Warehousing Institute, the leading professional organization in the field. He also founded and heads the Computer Ethics Institute.
An electrical engineer and mathematician by training, Dr. Barquin has taught at MIT, the University of Maryland, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He was the founding editor of the Prentice Hall series on Data Warehousing, co-edited two books on Knowledge Management in the public sector, and has published over 100 technical and management articles on information technology. He has organized and chaired the E-Gov Knowledge Management conference series, the most important KM forum for public sector in the world, which has held an annual conference uninterrupted since 2000. He has also conducted executive seminars in electronic government and knowledge management for the Brookings Institution.
Robert E. Willitts - Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
Robert "Bob" Willitts is the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Barquin International. Bob works with Barquin’s leadership team to effectively execute the company’s business strategy by providing overall direction and guidance for company operations. He also serves as liaison to it's partners and works with Barquin's Advisory Board to keep them abreast of programmatic strategies and challenges. Additionally, Bob has overall strategic and operational responsibility for all company programs and their managers to ensure that Barquin continues to exceed the expectations of its customers through superior performance.
Prior to joining Barquin, Bob led over 60 scientists and engineers providing support for customers across the spectrum of Maritime Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) programs at SAIC, where he managed the Advanced Solutions Division of the Maritime Systems Operation. His leadership and deep understanding of the business space strengthened and solidified SAIC’s position in those market segments. Earlier leadership roles included Senior Program Manager, managing a highly visible 200-member dispersed technical team, working with $60M annual budget and as a Senior Systems Development and Integration Manager, managing an Information Technology support contract covering a variety of system design, technical architecture, software and hardware development, configuration management, test, integration and operation activities.
Bob had a distinguished 24-year career with the U.S. Navy focusing on submarine special operations, where he served as a tactical advisor to submarine commanders. He achieved the rank of Master Chief and received several unit and professional awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal issued by the Director of Naval Intelligence.
Bob holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Owen Dall - Vice President and Chief Technology Officer
Owen Dall is the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Barquin International. Owen joined Barquin International in 2002, bringing 20+ years of software development experience. He has led major data warehousing, business intelligence, knowledge management, and mission-critical web application development practices for several of Barquin’s clients. He has also authored several software packages used by diverse clients in both the private and public sectors.
Owen has become an evangelist for agile and incremental development methodologies for Federal government agencies. His search for replacements to Java web frameworks led him to the “Hobo” open source framework for Ruby on Rails (RoR) in late 2007, which Barquin International has supported to this day.
He is the lead author of the book “Rapid Rails with Hobo” and co-author of the book “Hobo at Work”.
Prior to joining Barquin International, Owen held positions at American Management Systems (AMS), Budgeting Technology, Inc, NASD, and was President and founder of Chesapeake Computing, Inc., from 1984- 1997.
Owen graduated from the University of Maryland with a BS in Physics and an MA in Psychology.
Kelley M. Willitts - Vice President, Finance and Administration
Kelley Willitts is the Vice President of Finance and Administration for Barquin International. Kelley brings to Barquin over 25 years of extensive experience in a wide range of leadership, management and advisory positions. In the role of Chief Financial Officer, she provides oversight of the accounting and finance operations, as well as design and maintenance of all financial reporting structures. In addition to Kelley’s accounting and finance oversight responsibilities, she offers broad management, internal control and strategic advice to senior management. Moreover, her administrative management experience has greatly enhanced the company's effort to establish and document all business policies and procedures in addition to improving the Human Resource, Recruiting and Security processes. Kelley has been a member of the firm since March 1997.
Nicolas Barquin - Vice President, Corporate Development
Nicolas "Nick" Barquin is Vice President, Corporate Development at Barquin International where he is primarily responsible for strategic alternatives including the establishment of joint ventures, new product development and business opportunities. Nick co-founded Cabana Cachaça LP, a $35M Brasilian Spirits Import Company while in graduate school at Columbia University in 2005. While at Columbia he worked on the development of 101 Warren Street, a 1.1 million square foot mixed-use real estate development in Lower Manhattan. Until late-2008 he worked as an associate at Eastdil Secured LLC, a US based Real Estate Investment Banking subsidiary of Wells Fargo. In February of 2011, Nick completed a merchant banking transaction with Family Dining Group LLC, a holding company he co-founded for the purpose of acquiring and managing the metro Washington, DC Applebee’s franchise. Family Dining Group controls 30 restaurants in 4 states, and produced 2011 revenue in excess of $65M.
Throughout his career, Nick has been involved in over $7.5 billion of real estate related capital markets executions across North America and abroad as both Principal and Advisor. He has worked alongside REITs, Sovereign Wealth Funds, Real Estate Private Equity and Mezzanine Debt Funds, Independent Developer/Owner-Operators, and other capital and operating partners across all property types. He is currently a Managing Director in the capital markets group at Colliers International, a Real Estate Services firm in Washington DC, and simultaneously involved in several real estate and non-real estate related projects. He serves on the Advisory Board of Family Dining Group LLC, is a director of Cabana Cachaça LP, and is a Principal of Barquin Holdings LLC a family-owned holding company.
Nick earned his BA with honors in Art History and Economics from Trinity College (Hartford, CT) in 2002, and an MS in RE Development from Columbia University in 2006.
Ishita Yameen - Director of Program Management
Ishita Yameen has fifteen years of program management, consulting, and business development experience with a focus on public sector. She has extensive experience in implementing large enterprise-wide solutions and managing multimillion dollar deliverables encompassing all phases of project implementation, including: requirements analysis, business process reengineering, design, testing, solution development, training, delivery of final solution, and maintenance.
As a manager, Ishita routinely works with key stakeholders, manages and develops teams, serves as the Subject Matter Expert, and provides cross team support. She has in-depth experience with the public sector procurement process and has served as the Capture Manager for large Federal sales engagements. Ishita’s key projects include: Statewide ERP System Implementation, State of Missouri; Statewide HR System Implementation, State of Missouri; Statewide Electronic Procurement System Implementation, Commonwealth of Virginia; Agency wide Data Warehousing and Decision Support System, HUD; Agency wide GIS System, HUD; and Grant Management System, USDA.
Ishita graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. She also holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
Subramanyam B. Chaganti - Senior Manager
Subramanyam "CB" Chaganti joined Barquin International in 2001 as a Project Manager, who has more than 25 years of proven track record in managing, consulting, developing and implementing information technology solutions for commercial and State/Federal Government agencies such GSA, HUD, EEOC, and TSA. His leadership and expertise includes areas such as Business Intelligence, Decision Support systems, Data Warehousing, E-Government, and Enterprise Architecture, Financial/Credit Card, Telecommunication, Welfare, U.S. Securities etc. His extensive experience in System Development Life Cycle, Program/Project Management using PMI Methodologies has won him many accolades from Barquin customers.
Prior to joining Barquin, CB was the Co-Founder and President of a small consulting firm called ICUBE CSI that conducted multi-million dollar business with large systems integrators such as Deloitte Consulting and SAIC working for Federal agencies such as USDOT, SEC and State Welfare Projects for California and Nevada.
CB earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Roorkee, India.
Joseph P. Leo - Former CIO, USDA
Joseph "Joe" Leo is the former Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). He served in that capacity during 2000-2001 and provided USDA agencies with information technology (IT) policy guidance and oversight, data center and telecommunications operational support services, capital planning and investment control, computer security, privacy, information management and electronic government planning. Department-wide, he managed approximately $1.3 billion annually in USDA agency IT investments. He was also assigned direct management responsibility for all funding appropriated and requested for the Service Center Modernization's Common Computing Environment (CCE).
C. Lawrence Meador - Chairman, MGI Strategic Solutions
C. Lawrence "Larry" Meador is chairman of MGI Strategic Solutions. His interests are focused on technology and organizational strategy to improve organizational effectiveness, cycle time, agility and security. He served for nine years as a member of the Intelligence Science Board, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and its predecessor, the Director of Central Intelligence Advanced Technology Panel (2001-09). He served as chairman of the DCI’s Hyperspectral Intelligence Task Force (2002-03). He currently chairs the DNI’s Intelligence Community Strategic Studies Group Charter Panel. He is a member and Special Government Employee of the Joint Special Operations Command Science & Technology Task Force and is on the DSB Task Force on Cyber Security and Reliability in a Digital Cloud. At the National Reconnaissance Office, he chairs the AS&T Strategy, Technology and Engineering Panel. He has served in DoD Areas of Responsibility including CENTCOM, PACOM, SOUTHCOM, EUCOM, and NORTHCOM and served as a science and technology adviser in Operation Willing Spirit (OWS 2004-08).
Renny McPherson - Director of Operations, RedOwl Analytics
Renny McPherson is Director of Operations at RedOwl Analytics, a Baltimore-based data analytics start-up that uses inferential statistics to solve large-scale data analysis problems for a variety of industries. McPherson, an expert on intelligence and defense issues and the intersection of technology and human analysis, served as an active duty Marine Corps intelligence officer from 2003 - 2007, including tours in Anbar province, Iraq in 2006 and in East Asia in 2004-2005. Later, he was a civilian advisor to the U.S. military’s high command in Baghdad. While at RAND from 2007 - 2009, he advised senior military and intelligence personnel and published several monographs on al-Qaeda, corporations’ role in conflict areas, and articles on military leadership progression. At Harris Corporation from 2011 – 2012, he focused on development of secure cloud computing infrastructure.
After being nominated by President Bush, William "Bill" Navas was confirmed by the Senate on July 12, 2001 as the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Manpower and Reserve Affairs a position he held until December 2007. In January 2008 he was appointed as the Executive Director of the National Security Professional Development Integration Office responsible for the implementation and development of a national strategy for the development of national security professionals pursuant to Presidential Executive Order 13434 of May 2007.
Previously, Bill served as a citizen-soldier for over 33 years, holding a myriad of command and staff positions, to include a tour of duty as a Combat Engineer Company Commander in Vietnam. His final Army assignment was as the 17th Director of the Army National Guard in the National Guard Bureau in Washington, one of the highest positions for a National Guard officer in the Department of Defense. During his tenure as Director he formulated, developed and coordinated all programs, policies and plans affecting the Army National Guard and its more than 362,000 citizen-soldiers. He oversaw the Army National Guard’s participation in numerous overseas deployments and domestic crisis responses. He is the recipient of numerous U.S. military awards and decorations, including The Bronze Star Medal and the Distinguished Service Medals of the Departments of the Army and Defense.
