"We are delighted to welcome our newest members to the ISyE Advisory Board. Their commitment and dedication to the Stewart School is extremely valuable to ISyE's continued success," said Chelsea C. White, III, ISyE school chair.

The new board members bring decades of experience in their respective areas of expertise. Retiring from BASF after thirty-three years, David Bailey consults much of the year, assisting manufacturing sites in finding and applying effective business process solutions for their planning and supply issues in complex local and global environments. Robert Martin has over thirty years of financial, general management, and consulting experience, both in the U.S. and internationally. He is currently a partner with the Interlochen Group, a boutique financial advisory firm, which does interim chief financial officer and financial project work. In 1983, Phillip Scott helped found and then served as a chief operating officer for Paging Network, which became the largest paging company in the United States. Scott returned to Atlanta in 1993, where he purchased Southern Ideal Door, a company he continues to own and operate. John A. White III, who has more than twenty years consulting experience, is the president of Fortna, Inc., a leading provider of supply chain solutions. At Fortna, White is responsible for U.S. and Canadian operations and personnel as well as participating in all strategic matters for the firm outside of North America. Charlene Zalesky has fifteen years experience as an internal and external consultant in health care, manufacturing, banking, and public water service industries.  Consulting with companies such as Clorox, Citibank, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Northern California and East Bay Municipal Utility District, Zalesky’s work has focused on traditional IE applications of work simplification, cost-benefit analysis, facility design, staffing, project management and organizational development.  

Ed Rogers, who remains on the board as chair, has twenty-eight years of experience in industrial engineering, management consulting, program management, business process redesign, operations improvement and strategic planning. He is a global strategy manager with UPS’s corporate strategy group and is responsible for global scenario planning, enterprise strategic planning, and the company’s sustainability strategy.

To find out more about these interesting new advisory board members, continue reading their individual biographies.

David Bailey (IE 1969) worked for BASF for thirty-three years, retiring in 2003.  His last position was with the company’s internal supply chain consulting team.  Since retiring, Bailey continues to work with the consulting team much of each year.  His primary area of interest is assisting manufacturing sites in finding and applying effective business process solutions for their planning and supply issues in complex local and global environments.  Earlier in his career, Bailey used applied simulation techniques to define and confirm design parameters for automatic palletizing systems and complex wire guided material transport systems.  He has written customized planning and scheduling tools for a number of manufacturing processes.

Robert D. (Bob) Martin (IE 1969) has over thirty years of financial, general management, and consulting experience, both in the U.S. and internationally.   He has worked in public companies (divisions and on corporate staffs), had active roles with global equity investors, and consulted with businesses, large and start-ups.  Industries with which he has been associated include consumer products, sports, apparel and textiles, and casualty insurance.

Martin is a partner with the Interlochen Group, a boutique financial advisory firm, which does interim chief financial officer (CFO) and financial project work. He was senior vice president and chief financial officer of Russell Athletic Corporation from 2000 to 2004 and was the International Division senior vice president and CFO of Sunbeam Corporation from 1999 to 2000. He held various positions at Sara Lee Apparel Group from 1977 to 1999, including divisional chief  financial officer, vice president, and general manager, and was CFO of the European Apparel Group (fifteen divisions across Europe and South Africa), headquartered in Paris, France, from 1990 to 1998.

In addition to his bachelor of Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech, Martin earned an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  He was a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Chemical Corps from 1970 to 1972, during which time he received the Army Commendation Medal. He serves as an advisory board member for the International Center of Executive Options, is a member of Financial Executives International, and was a member of Business Executives for National Security.   He is on the Board of Trustees of a Georgia Tech-related 501-C-3 organization and has assisted at ISyE.  Martin has been inducted in Georgia Tech’s Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni.

Martin has two children. a son and a daughter, and two grandchildren.   He and his wife Sheree live in Smyrna, Georgia.

Ed Rogers (IE 1982, MS IL 2002) is a global strategy manager with UPS’s corporate strategy group.  He is responsible for global scenario planning, enterprise strategic planning, and the company’s sustainability strategy. Rogers has twenty-eight years of experience in industrial engineering, management consulting, program management, business process redesign, operations improvement and strategic planning.

Rogers joined the UPS corporate engineering group in Atlanta in 1994, helping to establish an internal consulting group, a process reengineering team, and a program management group.  After rotating through special assignments in the Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia districts, Rogers became the Industrial Engineering manager for the Gulf South district in 1999, where he led the operational planning, productivity improvement, service quality enhancement, and technology support for that district’s $200 million annual business.  In 2002 he returned to headquarters to join the corporate strategy group.

Prior to UPS, Rogers served four years as a U.S. Air Force officer, managing programs to modernize the defense manufacturing industry.  Then for eight years he was an engineering management consultant, first with BDM International and later with Coopers & Lybrand Consulting where he consulted on a variety of manufacturing and logistics systems improvement projects for more than twenty clients, including UPS.

Rogers affiliations include the Institute of Industrial Engineers and the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.

Phillip Scott (IE 1969) served in the U.S. Air Force as a Logistics Officer after graduating from Georgia Tech with his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering in 1970.  He went on to earn an MBA from Claremont Graduate School in 1972.

 Scott held several management positions with AT&T before joining Gencom, Inc., a paging company in Atlanta as vice president and general manager.  Scott moved to Dallas, Texas, in 1983 as one of the early founders and then chief operating officer of Paging Network. The company grew to become the largest paging company in the U.S. and went public in 1991.  Scott returned to Atlanta in 1993 to pursue other interests and investments.  He purchased Southern Ideal Door in 1994 and continues to own and operate it.

Scott has served on the Alexander-Tharpe Fund Board and on the Board of Trustees of the Tech Alumni Association.

John A. White III (IE 1992) is the president of Fortna, Inc., a leading provider of supply chain solutions. Fortna designs, implements, and supports business solutions to optimize its client’s supply chain.

At Fortna, White is responsible for U.S. and Canadian operations and personnel as well asparticipating in all strategic matters for the firm outside of North America. White has over twenty years of consulting experience with the top tier consulting firms as well as working for a leading software provider in supply chain management strategy, supplier relationship management, and price and revenue optimization.

Prior to Fortna, White was a managing officer and vice president of Supply Chain Management with Cap Gemini, LLC.  Prior to Cap Gemini, White served in a number of senior executive management positions including Manugistics, Inc., as the group vice president of Strategic Consulting Services and Supplier Relationship Management, and Accenture, where he was a senior manager in their Strategic Services Supply Chain Management Practice.

White is a past president of the Atlanta chapter of the Warehousing Education and ResearchCouncil and a past advisory board member of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute’s Leaders in Logistics. He is a member of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals, the Board of Trustees for the United Methodist Children’s Home, and the Board of Advisors for wRatings. White is a frequent speaker and contributor on the subjects of supply chain strategy, supply chain planning, global supply chain operations, supplier relationship management, fulfillment strategy, and warehouse and distribution design.

In addition to his bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering, White holds an Accelerated Executive MBA certificate from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Charlene Zalesky (IE 1977), who specialized in Health Systems, has fifteen years experience as an internal and external consultant in health care, manufacturing, banking, and public water service industries.  Consulting with companies such as Clorox, Citibank, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Northern California and East Bay Municipal Utility District, Zalesky’s work has focused on traditional IE applications of work simplification, cost-benefit analysis, facility design, staffing, project management and organizational development.   She established Employee Involvement Teams in all of these organizations and Multidisciplinary Productivity Coaching Program at Clorox.

The subject areas of Zalesky’s publications and conference presentations have included emergency room staffing using queuing analysis, nurse staffing models, keeping emergency rooms open, use of employee involvement teams in problem solving, and company-wide cost reduction and productivity improvement programs.

Zalesky currently lives outside of Houston, Texas, with her husband Rick (CE 1978) and daughter Zola.  Their son, Zack, is a sophomore co-op student in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.  Zalesky has spent 20 years working with a number of non-profit and educational agencies as consultant, volunteer, educator, board member, and board president.  She spends much of her time working with high school students and mentoring and educating parents of teens.