Meet this year's expert panel of hackathon judges: leaders, innovators, and technologists shaping the future of Infor.
Representing diverse backgrounds across product management, product strategy, customer success, development, partner ecosystem and solution consulting, these judges have decades of experience and a shared passion for innovation. Our judges bring concrete insight into what drives real business value and will evaluate projects not just for their technical excellence, but for their potential to solve real-world challenges.
Get to know the minds who will crown the next wave of game-changing ideas.
Rick Rider
Rick Rider is the SVP of Product Management. With over 12 years of focus on Infor technology for both the commercial and product areas of Infor’s cloud technology and applications, Rick is responsible for strategy and growth for ERPs & applications, integration & automation, application frameworks, and data and insights. Rick holds a BBA and MBA, with a focus in strategic management.
Mari Cross
As the Chief Customer Officer at Infor, Mari Cross leads the Customer Success & Experience organization including Customer Success, Support, Customer, Partner and Internal Education, Customer Retention Services and Strategy and Operations. Mari has extensive experience delivering meaningful customer outcomes in the enterprise software industry, and has held key customer-facing leadership roles, including leading the Global Customer Success and Support organizations at Adobe and Confluent. Mari holds a Bachelor of Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Stanford University, and lives in Piedmont, California with her husband and two teenage boys.
Amul Merchant
Amul leads Infor’s global cross-industry application software development teams. He joined Infor in 1997, and throughout his tenure, he has proven himself to be an outstanding leader in application development and cloud architecture.
He led the Cloud Architecture and Tools team during Infor’s pivotal transition to being a SaaS-first company. When overseeing the Healthcare Development organization, Amul spearheaded the development of innovative solutions such as Clinical Science, Process Mining, and GenAI-based chatbot capabilities. These solutions benefit from significant innovations that enhance end-user productivity and reduce cognitive loads on frontline workers.
Amul earned a Master’s degree from Clemson University. He lives in Greenville, SC with his wife and two daughters.
Jeanne Newberry
Jeanne Newberry is the SVP of Ecosystem and Business Development for Infor. With over 25 years’ experience in technology GTM strategy and sales, Jeanne is responsible for building and activating Infor’s ecosystem of partners to deliver ACV growth and positive customer outcomes.
Prior to joining Infor, Jeanne served as the Vice President, Partner GTM Strategy & Global Commercial Sales for VMware, and previously held various sales leadership positions for Dell Technologies. Jeanne holds Bachelors of Science in Communications and Psychology and earned an MBA from the Mason School of Business at the College of William and Mary.
Lia McClure
Lia McClure is Senior Vice President of Solution Consulting and Value Engineering at Infor. With a foundation in Industrial Engineering, Lia's career journey began in the semiconductor manufacturing industry specializing in integrated business planning solutions for silicon wafer fabs in Asia, Israel, and the Silicon Valley.
Her career took an exciting turn as she ventured into the realm of energy and sustainability at a Silicon Valley cloud startup. She developed the company's implementation services practice and presales teams globally. It was this startup journey that brought her to Infor through acquisition.
Today at Infor, Lia's organization is responsible for showcasing to customers the business benefits and value of Infor’s industry-specific solutions. The best part of her team's job? "Immersing in the industries that we came from, helping customers to create an advantage within their marketplace and for their own customers -- Manufacturing, Distribution, Healthcare, State & Local Government; Innovating within the industries that we love is the best part of our jobs."
Bradley Stillwell
Bradley Stillwell is Vice President of Product Strategy for the Infor Industry Cloud Platform. He has overall responsibility for advancing technology adoption and strategic product direction. Bradley has been in the analytics and big data/machine learning space for over 20 years, having led go-to-market strategy around machine learning and AI for a leading data science and big data provider as well as designing new value-based healthcare analytics solution using cloud-based technology.
Manjunath (Manju) Ganimasty
Manjunath Ganimasty is the Senior Vice President of Software Development, leading the development of the technology platform at Infor. The technology platform includes Cloud Automation platform, Cloud Tooling, Observability platform, Infor Cloud Management Portal, Infor Container Platform, Security, Web Portal, Mobile Platform, iPaaS, Mongoose, Data Fabric, Analytics and Reporting, Governance Risk & Compliance, AI platform, Gen AI Platform, and Enterprise Performance Management. Manjunath has been part of the Technology platform team at Infor for more than 19 years and is based in Alpharetta, USA.
Vignesh Subramanian
With 25 years of experience in software product management and development, Vignesh Subramanian is a leader in shaping the future of enterprise technology. He leads the product management of AI, Data, Automation and Analytics at Infor. He is a firm believer of technology being an enabler for business. Specializing in generative Al, machine learning, large language models (LLMs), iPaaS, RPA, API management and SaaS architecture, he drives innovation that empowers many organizations to maximize the value of their technology investments.
David Heffler
David is a VP of Experience with the Infor OS team. With more than 25 years of experience in application development, he has worked with various clients in many lines of trade. During his time with Infor he has expanded his responsibilities to include OS Portal, User Analytics, Infor Go, Mongoose, App Designer and Infor Design team. Prior to joining Infor, he was an owner at RSVP Business Systems Inc which was an Infor channel partner. David holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, Canisius College.
Fraser MacLeod
Fraser Macleod is leading development of some of Infor’s most forward-thinking projects, most notably the Infor Data Fabric, Process Intelligence, and the AI Platform. Fraser has a background as a developer on Infor ERPs and ION and has a passion for innovation in the business application software space which can bring credible ROI in the short term and long term.
Amar Dhadli
Based out of the UK, Amar is a highly experienced Solution Consulting professional, managing a team of International Technology and Cloud Architecture Solution Consultants to support Infor’s direct and indirect sales organizations. As a team they are focused on elevating the adoption of Infor’s advanced technology innovation platform, Infor OS, and true multi-tenant SaaS Cloud to Infor's customers.
With 28+ years’ experience at Infor, in both Services and Solution Consulting roles, he is passionate about Infor’s technology and ensuring that customers understand how it can help them with their Digital Transformation journey. This is achieved by having the right platform which enables innovation, provides agility, brings new capabilities, and timely access to information – all to drive growth by enabling efficiency in the workplace, providing better quality products, higher levels of customer service, and so much more to bring value to the organization.
Our judges and the rest of our hackathon organizers want big ideas, but more importantly—we want to see you grow. So don't be shy! Sign up now and we'll help you bring your project to life with training materials, enablement sessions, and your own expert mentor.
