Optiant - Executive Team

Sean is one of the industry's leading thinkers in supply chain optimization, and in the past five years has been responsible for ground-breaking research that has been applied by Fortune 500 manufacturing companies. His findings are at the core of Optiant's supply chain design solution, and he continues to lead the algorithm-driven research that will form the foundation of the company's future offerings.

As a consultant, Sean has helped Bay Networks, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Monsanto Corporation and Nortel Networks improve ROI and streamline their supply chain operations. His applied research addresses many of the most critical issues manufacturers face: life-cycle transitions, strategic inventory management, vendor selection strategies and reducing costs for all parties within an integrated supply chain.

Sean is published in the leading supply chain journals, and regularly addresses industry conferences. He is also an assistant professor at Boston University's School of Management, where he specializes in operations management and supply chain management. He earned a Ph.D. in operations management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, a master's degree in Operations Research from MIT, and a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

John Ruark Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer

John spearheads the company's technical and product strategy and leads the software development team. His experience creating intuitive, enterprise-class applications directly influences how Optiant designs high-performance solutions for complex production environments. John's focus in developing Optiant's solution is to equip customers with the tools to identify the key issues impeding optimal supply chain performance. His approach helps companies pinpoint the most significant data, which in turn drives results, improves accuracy and increases the profitability of the supply chain. John wrote the initial versions of Optiant's software, including the core algorithms and interface. His expertise in operations research techniques includes optimization and queuing, which are applicable to inventory management and other critical supply chain problems.

Earlier in his career, John worked at Kenan Systems Corporation and as a Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Bell Labs, which acquired Kenan. There, he managed an engineering team that created a revolutionary design tool for generating bill formats as part of an award-winning enterprise-class billing software system. The application dramatically reduced the time required to customize clients' bill formats with easy-to-use report design tools, eliminating thousands of dollars in consulting services costs. He also was a senior systems architect for Mascot Networks, the higher-education enterprise portal, where he redesigned the core database and middle-tier architecture, improving stability and performance as the Mascot network expanded to more than 100 schools.

John earned a Ph.D. in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Harvard College.

Chris Russell, Vice President of Sales

Chris is responsible for developing and implementing the company’s sales strategy and overseeing day-to-day operations of the sales organization. A 20-year veteran of the software and technology industry, he brings laser sharp focus and expertise in successful sales strategy process and execution.

Prior to joining Optiant, Chris was a founder and management team member for GEOCOMtms, which was successfully acquired by RedPrairie in February of this year. Before the founding of GEOCOMtms, he was a Vice President with Baan Company leading a team of over 50 pre-sales consultants. Prior to Baan, he held various positions with Numetrix, Visibility Inc., and Digital Equipment Corporation, leading many successful account engagements.

Chris holds degrees in Business, English and Electrical Engineering. Living in the Boston area, he will be based in Optiant’s corporate headquarters in Burlington, MA.

Jeremy Shapiro Ph.D., Slim Technologies

Dr. Shapiro is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of supply chain management. He is a Professor of Operations Research and Management Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). For 9 years, he served as Co-Director of MIT’s Operations Research Center.

A supply chain thought leader for more than 25 years, Jeremy has published numerous articles in industry publications such as Supply Chain Management Review and authored a book entitled, Modeling the Supply Chain. He is a frequent speaker at conferences like Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) and has been published over 50 papers in the areas of logistics, management science, mathematical programming and optimization.

Prior to Optiant, Jeremy founded and successfully grew several companies, named SLIM Technologies, Resource Management Services, and J.F. Shapiro Associates, Inc. that focused on the development, application and support of optimization & decision-support solutions.