GSA Technology Council

Knox H. White has been Mayor of the City of Greenville since 1995. A cornerstone of his leadership has been advancing neighborhood initiatives, neighborhood revitalization, and involving citizens in city government.

Now serving his 11th year as Mayor, he has spearheaded downtown retail and residential revitalization. His most ambitious project has been reclaiming the birthplace of Greenville, the historic Reedy River Falls, and the creation of a world-class public garden along the river.

A native of Greenville, Knox White is a partner in the law firm of Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd, P.A., where he heads the Firm’s immigration and customs practices. Mayor White graduated from Christ Church Episcopal School, Greenville Senior High School, Wake Forest University, and the University of South Carolina School of Law. He is married to Marsha P. White and they have two children.

Mayor White is a member of Christ Church Episcopal; North Greenville Rotary; Board of Visitors of the University Center of Greenville; and serves on the Board of Directors for the The Peace Center for the Performing Arts and Metropolitan Arts Council.

Senator, District 13, Spartanburg, Greenville and Union Counties
Majority Whip

Jim Ritchie was elected to the South Carolina Senate in November 2000. In his first term, Ritchie was instrumental in developing and securing passage of legislation such as the South Carolina Education Lottery Act and the deregulation of broadband technology. He was also the author of the South Carolina Venture Capital Act and the landmark Domestic Violence Prevention Act of 2003, which made domestic violence a felony in the state.

In a 2002 report by The State, after serving only two years, Ritchie was selected by his colleagues as one of the Ten Most Effective Senators in South Carolina. In 2003, the Maritime Association of the Port of Charleston honored Ritchie with its first Legislator of the Year award for his leadership in effecting expansion of the port.

Ritchie was named Majority Whip in 2004. That same year, he received the Golden Advocate Award from the South Carolina Solicitors’ Victim Advocates Forum for his leadership in restructuring the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network. The South Carolina Policy Council also presented him with its Palmetto Leadership Award in 2004 for his commitment to individual liberty, free enterprise and limited government.

In 2005, Ritchie successfully lead the fight to pass landmark tort reform, medical malpractice reform and economic development initiatives. Recognizing his leadership, the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce named Ritchie its Public Servant of the Year. He was also named Legislator of the Year by the South Carolina Medical Association Alliance and the Spartanburg Medical Society. In addition, he received the W. Mack Chamblee Jr. Quality of Life Award from the South Carolina Association of Realtors and was the recipient of the Palmetto Conservation Foundation’s Founders Award. Most recently, Ritchie was honored by the Home Builders Association of South Carolina with the 2007 Hammer and Trowel Award.

Ritchie currently serves on the Banking and Insurance, General, Judiciary, Medical Affairs, and Rules committees. In November 2005, he was named chairman of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission, a screening board for all judicial nominees in South Carolina.

He is a shareholder in the Holcombe Bomar, P.A. law firm. He received his law degree from Wake Forest University School of Law in 1986. He received his B.A. from West Virginia University in 1983 and graduated from the Fund for American Studies’ Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems at Georgetown University in 1983.

Ritchie is a Liberty Fellow. He also serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the Palmetto Conservation Foundation, the Urban League of the Upstate, the Arts Partnership of Greater Spartanburg, the Peace Center for the Performing Arts and the Orthopedic Research Foundation of the Carolinas.

He and his wife, Evelyn, have three children: Caroline, 19; Jimmy, 17; and seven-year-old Anna Grace.

Greg Hillman is a member of the GSA Technology Council’s Board of Advisors and the GSATC FastTrac® TechVenture™ Facilitator.

Greg Hillman is also an advisor to knowledge-based businesses, his general management and information technology career spans the spectrum from startups to the Fortune 50, leading businesses through conceptual design, formation, growth, global expansion and acquisitions. Greg is currently working with Champion Communications, Leighton Cubbage’s start-up that is developing markets for new-media products such as the Video E-Mercial.

As a founder and CEO of Integrated Business Solutions, Inc. for five years Hillman built a team and led that systems integration firm to become one of the largest information technology services companies in the mid-south to clients Federal Express, Sharing Plough Corporation, IBM, BellSouth, First Tennessee and Union Planters Banks and others. Greg served as chairman and CEO, investor, to start-up high-fashion bath and body company Indulge Beauty, Inc., as it grew to become a highly visible trend setter competing with major national prestige lines. As Principal Consultant / Program Director with Computer Sciences Corporation Consulting Division he led strategy, risk mitigation and enterprise-wide platform change implementation efforts globally at Dupont, Nortel and MCI (in the US) and contributed to the development of conceptual IT architectural plans for US government intelligence agencies and the USPS.

Hillman managed industry relations to Gartner Group, client PC manufacturers Intel, Gateway, AT&T, NCR and associated industry press while with Cincinnati Bell’s Information Systems (CBIS) $30m acquisition - (start-up) Software Support, Inc. (SSI). As systems engineer with Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems (EDS) he built relationships which later fostered success during the $90m acquisition of start-up cellular S/W and MTSO servicing firm Appex Corporation ($5m earl- stage investment by Greylock Partners) by EDS. As National Industry Director for publicly traded cellular / telephony systems development company - Auxco, his efforts were critical components of its $90m acquisition by CBIS. He holds an MBA in finance and economics from University of Utah and a BA in management / chemistry from Park University in Kansas City, KS. Hillman served as aircraft maintenance manager / technician and operations program manager while in the USAF stationed at Hickam AFB, Hawaii, MHAFB, Idaho and Pleiku, Vietnam.

Russell Cook is the Program Director for SC Launch!, an SCRA collaboration. SCRA leads the Knowledge Economy in South Carolina and the nation by successfully advancing applied research and technology through collaboration.

As Program Director, Cook maintains management responsibilities for launch zones located in the Upstate, Midlands and Coastal areas of SC. He works strategically with the SC Department of Commerce and other economic development organizations as well as the state’s three research universities: Clemson, MUSC and USC.

Cook serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for SC Independent Colleges and Universities, Inc. He is also a member of the SC Economic Developers’ Association, the SC World Trade Center, the National Business Incubation Association and the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds.

Cook earned his B.A. degree in economics from Wofford College and received post-baccalaureate training at the College of Charleston and Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a Certified South Carolina Economic Developer.

He makes his home in Chapin, SC with his wife Gloria, a kindergarten teacher, and his two sons, Chandler, a sophomore at Columbia International University, and Cameron, a senior at Chapin High School.

Peter Waldschmidt is an entrepreneur with a love for innovative technology. He co-founded TetraData Corporation in 1997, serving as its Chief Technology Officer. While at TetraData, he and his team designed an analytical software platform that enabled school administrators to gain insight into their strengths and weaknesses ( i.e. business intelligence for schools). During this period, he and his partners grew the company nationally becoming the market leader for educational analytics. In 2004 they raised venture capital to fund their continued growth and eventually sold the company to Follett Software Corporation in 2006.

Peter’s desire has always been to research innovative ideas and build businesses from the most promising ones. In February of 2007, Peter left TetraData to found Gnoso Inc., a technology incubator company that researches ideas and commercializes them. The first product is an innovative tool that helps software development teams maintain code quality by reporting metrics on the effectiveness of their automated tests. Several other projects are in the works.

While at TetraData, Peter served on the technical board of the Schools Interoperability Framework Association (SIFA), a standards body that produces interoperability standards for software in the education industry. During this period, Peter co-chaired the SIFA Technical Board, the Data Warehousing Workgroup and the Web Services Task Force. He also authored the SIF Web Services Reporting specification, and the SIF Extended Query specification.

Before starting TetraData, Peter designed and built software for Geerdes International that modeled global commodity trade-flows. He also created motion control software for various robotics and factory automation projects at Carolina Motion Controls and worked on the control software for the 3D modeler built by BPM Technology.

Peter holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Bob Jones University with a focus on Math and Computer Science. He has also partially completed an MBA from Clemson University. Peter’s hobbies include woodworking and high performance automobiles.

Peter will speak to the GSA Technology Council at it’s October 2007 Meeting.

Dan Wooster’s love of technology began in high school when his math teacher introduced him to the process of solving math and physics problems through programming a computer. It was love at first sight as he quickly realized this machine would do anything he could tell it, as long as he learned how to speak its language.

Dan loves looking for ways to build new or modify existing software systems to help meet the needs of computer users. In his spare time he enjoys racquetball, skiing, ping pong, billiards, and restoring his TR6. Recently, he spent time in China and is currently learning Chinese.

Dan has led the Computer Science department at Bob Jones University since he joined the faculty in 1981. His areas of interest include software development and computer networking. At the undergraduate level he currently teaches Computer Science II, Microprocessor Architecture, Operating Systems, Computer Science Seminar and Special Topics. In the MBA program he teaches a unique approach to E-Commerce in which he combines the best of his undergraduate computer science majors with the MBA students to design and build e-businesses in a competitive platform. Dan also heads up several computer programming teams which compete annually in the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. (http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/)

In addition to his teaching responsibilities, Dan helped develop the first BJU website (including the first version of The Linked Word Project), promotional multimedia CDROM, and campus multimedia kiosk.

He also founded a software development, Internet hosting and e-commerce business - The Worthwhile Company, Inc, where he serves as Chief Technology Officer. He and his wife Karen have a daughter Sara and two sons, Joseph and Jonathan. He especially enjoys helping ministries and outreach organizations make effective use of computer and Internet technologies.

Education: B.S., Bob Jones University, M.S., Bowling Green State University