VMS Professionals 16th Annual Conference

Cynthia is Vice President and co-founder of VMS Professionals. VMS Professionals is a national user group founded in 2002 with over 300 corporate buyer members focused on the procurement of contingent labor.
Cynthia spent her career in contingent labor both as a supplier and a buyer. Prior to retiring in May 2021, Cynthia managed Allstate’s $130+ million contingent labor program and was responsible for contingent labor/external workforce across the enterprise, operation of the Fieldglass system and put together the Allstate contingent labor enterprise strategy. During her tenure at Allstate, Cynthia rebranded the program, drove supplier optimization, created strategies around MSP usage and implemented new Fieldglass functionality and integration with multiple systems. In addition, she worked to increase diversity spend within the program from 26% to 55%.
Prior to Allstate Cynthia spent six months creating Discover’s Supplier Diversity program, ran and completed multiple LEAN initiatives and managed Risk and Controls in Global Procurement. She originally joined Discover as the Sr. Manager for Professional Services Management in 2007. In that role her responsibilities included, managing a team responsible for all offshoring, consulting, staff augmentation vendor and engagement relationships. Successes included the implementation of a contractor tenure policy and overall program to mitigate co-employment risks across the organization, development of a non-employee policy to drive awareness of how resources should be leverage, centralization of all non-employee resources in the VMS tool which helped not only in identifying resources but identified savings opportunities and reduced risk as well as on boarding time by 80%.

Before Discover she was the Team Lead for Alternative Workforce at TransUnion where she was responsible for establishing Centralized Vendor Management at TransUnion LLC. She was instrumental in the selection and management of TransUnion’s web based vendor management system.

Prior to joining TransUnion, Cynthia was a successful co-owner of a consulting firm and performed sales, project and operations management for a variety of IT consulting and staffing organizations. As an account manager/area sales manager, Cynthia exceeded revenue and gross profits expectations on numerous occasions and received several sales awards for her efforts.
Today, Cynthia continues to lead VMS Professionals, consults with corporations on contingent labor and is engaged as a speaker at various conferences. When not working, Cynthia loves spending time with her grandchildren and loves to fish, camp, garden, read and cook.

Scott is currently a Senior Vice President in Procurement at Northern Trust. He is the current Global Head of Business Services, which encompasses all external labor, Human Resources, Marketing, and Outsourced Print. In 8+ years, Scott has taken his zest for process improvement, data analytics, and relationship building and utilized his multi-faceted experience to build a strong foundation and culture to support a complex labor program.

George Anders is a senior editor at large at LinkedIn, where he covers the future of work and writes the weekly Workforce Insights newsletter. Working in partnership with LinkedIn’s 300 data scientists, George publishes regular insights on topics such as career pivots, in-demand job titles and the ever-changing role of remote work.
George also is the author of five business books, including the 2011 title The Rare Find: How Great Talent Stands Out. He started his career as a journalist at The Wall Street Journal, where he shared in the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. Over the years, you may also have read his work everywhere from Harvard Business Review to Parade magazine.
Born and raised in Chicago, George now lives in Northern California. He’s worked repeatedly on both sides of the employer/contractor relationship, with an ever-growing appreciation of what it takes to make those relationships succeed.

Leading CBRE’s contingent labor program, direct search (perm staffing) program and TA vendor relationships, Jessica Jurica is a demonstrated leader with over 20 years in the contingent labor & vendor management industry.
Partnering across executive teams and various business lines, Jessica has a passion for improving the partnerships between client and talent vendors to enable better than expected business outcomes.
Jessica is inspired daily by her loving husband and their son, who recently left the nest to college. In her free time, Jessica enjoys running and spending time with friends and family.

Jeremy Kruse is an experienced staffing professional with over 20 years of experience in the industry. He has been working at the CME Group the past five years, and is currently the Director of Contingent Labor for the US. During his time at CME Group, Jeremy has developed a successful contingent staffing program and has been recognized for his work in the industry.
Jeremy has been involved in VMS Professionals for the past five years, and is passionate about connecting colleagues and learning from one another. He is also a co-founder of the Chicago Recruiter Network (CRN), an organization that brings recruiters together through quarterly, live networking events. CRN provides a platform for recruiters to build relationships, exchange ideas, and grow their network in the Chicago area.
Jeremy is a highly knowledgeable and respected leader in the staffing industry and is dedicated to helping companies find the right talent and build successful teams. He is passionate about providing value to the industry through his expertise in the field of vendor management.

Katie has been with Southwest since 2017 and has been working in the contingent labor space since 2019. She serves as the Program Manager for SWA Staffers, Southwest’s contingent labor program. SWA Staffers is an internal MSP with a large focus on Direct Sourcing. Outside of work she loves taking advantage of her flight benefits by traveling to National Parks, baseball stadiums and exploring new destinations!

Daniel Smrokowski is an award-winning and veteran podcaster, columnist, and an acclaimed advocate telling disability stories on his groundbreaking, global platform Special Chronicles reaching thousands of people each month. As a digital media creator, he produces podcasts, videos, blogs, columns, and public speaking to give respect and voice to people with special needs. Daniel educates and informs our communities that those with different abilities bring unconditional love and joy everyday. Even though Communication is Daniel’s biggest struggle it has been his biggest passion.

It all began when he became a Special Olympics athlete in his home state of Illinois competing in swimming and basketball. He is starting training in Unified Bocce and looking forward to having his mom as his Unified partner. Special Olympics gave Daniel the voice to make an impact in the world beyond sport. Early on, he decided to hone his skills by attending Roosevelt University in Chicago, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism. While at Roosevelt, Daniel received the Matthew Freeman Award for Social Justice for his continuing efforts via media and reporting to give people with disabilities a voice.

Daniel has received many awards for his work, but one of his proudest achievements was being a member of the Special Olympics 50th Anniversary Marketing & Communications Committee. He worked unified, helping his colleagues develop and initiate communications and media relations. Perhaps his most notable contribution was being a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Daniel is one of the four original Special Olympics athletes hired by Special Olympics global partner, United Airlines. He is employed as a Service Ambassador and currently serving on Bridge, United’s business resource group, connecting people of all abilities. United continues to take inclusion to new heights expanding their unified employment program. United has supported Daniel’s Unified at work podcast series which is sponsored by Bridge. Unified at work is a Special Chronicles original series featuring conversations about the meaning of inclusive employment.

Daniel is currently serving on the advisory team of a feature documentary that follows a team of U.S.A. athletes as they train, prepare and travel to Abu Dhabi to compete in the Special Olympics World Games. The film is expected to be released in early 2023.

In 2023, he will attend the World Summer Games in Berlin, Germany as an Sargent Shriver International Global Messenger. He hopes to contribute as a media expert to serve Special Olympics and his fellow athletes throughout the globe.

Daniel currently serves as Co-Chair of the Athlete Leadership Council for Special Olympics Illinois. The Athlete Leadership Council provides input to SO Illinois, mentors other athlete peers, and co-facilitates athlete leadership training and workshops. In addition, Daniel moderates orientation training for new members of the Special Olympics Illinois Board of Directors.

When not speaking or training, Daniel can be found creating new content, spending time with his girlfriend, family and young niece. He enjoys riding his bicycle, taking walks and streaming entertainment. To quote his mother, “If all the world were like Special Olympics, then there would be no wars.”

Karen A. Wilson
Retired President/CEO, MAKE Corporation
Founder, VMS Professionals
Board Member, Special Olympics Illinois and Feed My Starving Children

Karen was President/CEO of MAKE Corporation, a professional staffing and solutions organization with locations in Chicago and Dallas until her retirement in September of 2022 at the time of the sale of MAKE Corporation to DISYS. Over the course of her career, Karen established herself at the forefront of contingent workforce management through her thought leadership and IT services industry involvement.

VMS Professionals is an example of that thought leadership and was formed in 2003 as a vehicle for companies who strategically use contingent workforce to network and share best practices with their peers. VMS Professionals was acquired by DISYS as part of the MAKE acquisition and DISYS intends to continue and expand the mission of advancing the staffing industry through establishing best practices in the acquisition and management of contingent labor.
Karen is now happily retired and enjoying time with family, friends and travel.

Jena M. Valdetero serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s U.S. Data, Privacy and
Cybersecurity Practice where she advises clients on complex data privacy and
security issues. She has led more than 1,000 data breach investigations. A litigator
by background, Jena defends companies against privacy and data breach
litigation, with an emphasis on class action lawsuits. She has designed and
conducted dozens of data breach tabletop exercises to empower clients to respond
effectively to a data security incident. She also counsels companies on data privacy
and security compliance programs and advises on cyber risks associated with
mergers and transactions. Jena also advises a diverse array of clients on
compliance with existing and emerging privacy laws, including the General Data
Protection Regulation (GDPR), the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), the
Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA). She is a certified privacy professional through the
International Association of Privacy Professionals (CIPP/US), for which she is a
former KnowledgeNet Co-Chair. Jena is a passionate advocate of diversity and
inclusion. She is a former board member of the Chicago chapter of Women in Law
Empowerment Forum and served as the Co-Chair of her prior firm’s Inclusion
and Diversity Initiative. In 2021, Jena was selected as one of the Top 40 Incident
Response professionals by Cybersecurity Docket.

Sherry Kurek, Manager of External Workforce Services for Health Care Service Corporation (Blue Cross of IL, TX, NM, OK and MT). HCSC is a Mutual Legal Reserve Company, offers a wide variety of health and life insurance products and related services, through its operating divisions and subsidiaries and is the largest customer-owned health insurance company in the United States.
HCSC has been named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies® for an eighth straight year.
Sherry oversees a team of 7 employees who manage all day to day activities of helping our business partners find talent, onboard, offboard and everything in between the requisition to check process for all 3rd party labor. She was ranked the highest manager at HCSC for retention of her team.
As part of ongoing improvement, Sherry and her team recently implemented Workday and took the opportunity to streamline integrations, business partner actions, and to make our SAP VMS tool the system of record.

Sherry has worked for fortune 500 companies in the financial, pharmaceutical and healthcare verticals and has also worked on the supplier side for a VMS tool.

Chief Pilot – Washington D.C.
737 Line Check Airman/Instructor
President – Bridge BRG, supporting all customers and employees with disabilities

Eric Osterhout – Senior Specialist, Category Management, Contingent Labor
Two-Time SIA Game Changer Award Winning Contingent Workforce Management Expert, specializing in advising Procurement and HR leadership, regarding contingent workforce program strategy development, program improvement, emerging technologies and trends, and supply base optimization. My unique blend of experience as both a supplier of talent, combined with over a decade of buyer side program experience, allows for a pragmatic approach to Total Talent Management.
Enbridge CW Program Supplier Management Expert
Enbridge Direct Sourcing Program, Evangelist
Enbridge FMS Program Champion
Enbridge Contingent Labor Category, Diversity Champion

Todd Fiero-Randazzo is an External Workforce Business Partner on McDonald’s Global Workforce Solutions (GWS) team. In his role, he oversees the McDonald’s Global Technology Team’s SOW engagements, focused on stakeholder education, building strategic alliances with the Global Technology Managers, their Vendor Management Office, Legal, and Finance. From a strategic perspective, he focuses on streamlining SOW processes, devises creative solutions to keep business moving while ensuring policy compliance, and plays an integral role in modernizing customer experience. Prior to his current role, Todd managed contingent staffing for McDonald’s Global Technology team.

In a past life, Todd worked on the MSP side of the industry launching and managing first generation MSPs at Dropbox and Medivation (now Pfizer Oncology) in San Francisco.

Todd started his career managing an outsourced national Customer Training and Systems Analyst program for Xerox where he wore many hats, from recruiting for Trainers and Systems Analysts, to HR related tasks, to reporting and analytics, contract negotiation, and managing relationships with Xerox Regional Management and Procurement.

Tiffany S. Fordyce concentrates her practice on commercial litigation, with an emphasis on labor and employment. She is Chair of the Chicago Labor & Employment Practice and Co-Chair of the firm’s Labor & Employment Practice’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Group. Her employment litigation practice includes all types of discrimination and retaliation claims, wage and hour claims, trade secret misappropriation claims, whistleblower claims, restrictive covenants, Fair Credit Reporting Act claims, Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) claims and WARN Act claims. She defends single plaintiff, class action and collective action employment cases. Tiffany represents employers in federal, state and administrative courts, as well as before administrative agencies.

In addition to litigation, Tiffany also presents group and one-on-one employment training seminars. She advises clients on how to avoid litigation by counseling on employment related matters such as managing leave policies, responding to employee performance issues, national and local reductions in force, handbooks, BIPA compliance, drug testing policies, employment and consulting agreements, severance packages, social media policies, proper employee classification, and non-competition and separation agreements. She also is frequently called upon to conduct investigations and audit human resources practices and protocols, including as it relates to pay equity, whistleblower, harassment and discrimination complaints.