Foresight’s Editorial team and Advisory Board make it possible for us to bring our readers the very best combination of research from top academics and insights from the experience of leading business forecasters in the field.

Jim Hoover (Chairman), Professor and Director of Artificial Intelligence and Business Analytics Center, University of Florida

Following a career in OR for the U.S. Navy, Jim became a Managing Director within Accenture Federal Services with a focus on supply-chain analytics. Jim then received his Doctorate of Business Administration from the University of Florida in 2017 and joined the faculty there in 2019, where he is now a professor in the Marketing Department focused on AI and Business Analytics. Jim initially served Foresight as Software Editor and authored several articles on tracking forecast performance.

Carolyn Allmon, Senior Demand Planner, Interventional Cardiology and Radiology, Teleflex Inc.

Carolyn Allmon is a Certified Professional Forecaster (CPF) with extensive experience creating, leading, and improving demand and revenue forecasting modeling and processes in both public and private organizations.  The State of Minnesota, Tennant Company, ConAgra Foods, Zimmer Spine, and Det-tronics and Michael Foods are among her past employers. Carolyn holds a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Augsburg College and a Master of Arts in economics from the University of Hawaii. Her writing appears in a number of forecasting-related publications including the International Journal of Forecasting, Foresight, and Business Economics.

Ellen Bonnell, Analytics Consultant

Ellen Bonnell has been a thought leader on making forecasts actionable and an advisor to organizations on forecast method improvements for over 25 years. As Principal Consultant of TrendSavants, Ellen provided sales forecasts for the supply chain, and analytic insights for the demand chain. Ellen’s unique approach to forecasting is a combination of time series models, multivariate insights, marketing intelligence, and an understanding that every business is unique and the practicalities of working with data are never perfect. She is well known for her approach to measuring forecast quality as well as her ability to deliver highly accurate, small frequency forecasts for time periods of less than a day. She most recently served as Head of Global Statistical Forecasting for Hilti and is the author of one of the most widely praised articles in Foresight, “How to Get Good Forecasts from Bad Data” [Issue 7, Summer 2007]. Ellen completed her Bachelor of Science in business economics at Indiana University and Master of Science in supply chain management at the University College Dublin, Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business.

Charles Chase, Executive Industry Consultant/Author/Trusted Adviser, SAS Global Retail & Consumer Goods Global Practice

As an executive industry consultant, Charles Chase is a thought leader and trusted adviser for delivering analytics-driven solutions to improve SAS customers’ supply chain efficiencies. Charles has more than 20 years of experience in the consumer goods industry and is an expert in demand forecasting and planning, market response modeling, econometrics, and supply chain management. He is the author of Next Generation Demand Management: People, Process, Analytics and Technology, author of Demand-Driven Forecasting: A Structured Approach to Forecasting, and co-author of Bricks Matter: The Role of Supply Chains in Building Market-Driven Differentiation. He has written well as over 50 articles in several business journals in the areas of demand forecasting and planning, supply chain management, and market response modeling. His latest book is Consumption-Based Forecasting and Planning: Predicting Changing Demand Patterns in the New Digital Economy. His writings also appear in a number of related online industry newsletters, as well as on his SAS blog.

Ruben Crevits, Data Science Lead, OMP

Ruben Crevits is the Data Science Lead at OMP in Belgium, where he mainly focuses on demand forecasting. Ruben holds a Ph.D. in applied economics from the KU Leuven, with his research in deep learning for forecasting and robust estimation of time series models. His interests are explainability, the impact of demand forecasts on the supply chain, hierarchical forecasting, probabilistic forecasting, and deep learning.

Mark Chockalingam, Founder and President, Valtitude/Demand Planning LLC

Dr. Mark Chockalingam is the President and Founder of Valtitude, a strategy and solutions consulting firm based out of Boston, MA. He has over twenty years of consulting and corporate experience in the areas of Predictive Analytics, Sales Forecasting, Supply Chain Optimization, and Integrated Business Planning, working with clients ranging from the Fortune 500 to several small and medium-sized companies. During his corporate career, Mark worked in supply chain positions at FedEx, Merck, Proctor & Gamble, and others. He edits the Forecastingblog and frequently writes about emerging demand planning and supply chain issues on LinkedIn. Mark has a Ph.D. in Finance from Arizona State University and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India.

Robert Fildes, Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting

Robert Fildes is founding Director of the Lancaster University Centre for Marketing Analytics and Forecasting as well as of the International Institute of Forecasters. He is also Distinguished Professor of Management Science at Lancaster University. He has a mathematics degree from Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of California in statistics. His initial academic appointment was to the Manchester Business School where he rose to the position of faculty dean. In 1990 he joined Lancaster University Department of Management Science, where he set up the Centre. He works extensively with organizations on the practicalities of improving supply chain forecasting and the role of judgment in the age of machine learning.

Ram Ganeshan, Professor of Business, College of William & Mary

Ram Ganeshan holds the D. Hillsdon Ryan Professorship of Business at the College of William & Mary. Ram’s research and consulting interests are in the areas of supply chain management, data analytics, and logistics strategy, primarily in the chemical, hi-tech, and retail industries. He is a regular contributor to academic and trade journals and is the co-editor of two books: “Quantitative Models for Supply Chain Management” and “New Directions in Supply Chain Management: Technology, Strategy, and Implementation.” In 2001, the Production & Operations Management Society (POMS) awarded him the prestigious Wickham Skinner Award for Early Career Accomplishments for his research on how supply chains can be efficiently managed. In addition to his academic appointment, Ram is active in several corporate advisory boards, helping these companies embrace the latest developments in supply chain management and digital strategies.

Igor Gusakov, Integrated Planning Director and Product Owner, GoodsForecast

Igor Gusakov is head of the IBP practice at GoodsForecast, a vendor of forecasting, inventory optimization, and supply chain planning software. He is responsible for managing IBP software development, with his main area of expertise in forecasting and S&OP process for CPG companies. Igor is the author of a book on that topic. He has also written for Foresight and was interviewed as Foresight’s Forecaster in the Field in Issue 35. He received a Master of Science from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and his Ph.D. in applied math from the Institute of Numerical Mathematics.

Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi, Senior Research Scientist, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Sevvandi Kandanaarachchi is Senior Research Scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, working on statistical machine learning and data science problems. Sevvandi holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Monash University and a Graduate Certificate in Data Mining and Applications from Stanford. She works on interdisciplinary projects — linking different topics to get better results and insights — and has used time series forecasting as a pathway to detect anomalies in computer networks. Her main interests are in anomaly detection, complex networks, spatiotemporal data, algorithm evaluation, and algorithm fairness.

Jonathon Karelse, CEO, NorthFind Management

Jonathon Karelse is a global leader in forecasting, predictive analytics, and S&OP. He combines extensive experience with leading-edge theory to improve supply chain operations, optimally leveraging people, processes, and tools. As a frequent contributor to the Institute of Business Forecasting (IBF) and APICS, the Association for Supply Chain Management, Jonathon tracks trends and directly influences best practices in Demand Planning and S&OP. He has been cited for his work on Forecast Value Add (FVA) analysis; the integration of judgment and business intelligence into statistical forecasting; and conflict resolution in consensus forecasting.

Joe McConnell, Founder, President and Chief Architect, McConnell Chase Software

Joe McConnell leads McConnell Chase on the basis of 30 years of successful experience with every aspect of the enterprise forecasting and planning software business: idea conception, design, programming, applied mathematics, analytics and statistics, marketing, sales, consulting, implementation, customer support, conversion to new IT platforms, education, and training. His experience spans dealing with companies in a wide range of industries, company sizes, markets, and IT platforms. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business.

Polly Mitchell-Guthrie, VP of Industry Outreach and Thought Leadership, Kinaxis

Polly Mitchell-Guthrie is the VP of Industry Outreach and Thought Leadership at Kinaxis, a supply chain planning and analytics software company. Previously, she was Director of Analytical Consulting Services at the University of North Carolina Health Care System and worked in various roles at SAS in Advanced Analytics R&D as Director of the SAS Global Academic Program, and in Alliances. She has an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also received her BA in Political Science as a Morehead Scholar. She has been very active in INFORMS (the leading professional society for operations research and analytics) and co-founded the third chapter of Women in Machine Learning and Data Science (now more than 60 chapters worldwide).

Steve Morlidge, Product Director, CatchBull Ltd.

Steve Morlidge has 30 years of practical experience in designing and running performance management systems as a finance professional at Unilever and is the author of “Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting” and “The Little Book of Operational Forecasting.” His books are aimed at a general business audience, but he has also contributed articles to Foresight on forecastability, FVA, and other technical subjects. Steve is the creator of ForecastQT, a forecasting performance management application in the cloud, which exploits the insights and innovations described in his articles.

Dilek Önkal, Professor of Business Information Systems and Analytics and Head of the Analytics Subject Group, Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University

Dilek Önkal is Professor of Business Information Systems and Analytics and head of the Analytics Subject Group at the Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, UK. She received her BA from Boğaziçi University and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. She was a Director of the IIF (2006-2014), Editor of IJF (2015-2019), and Associate Editor of IJF (2002-2015). She currently serves on editorial boards of Futures & Foresight Science and Forecasting. Dilek is also an Associate Editor of the IMA Journal of Management Mathematics, a Review Editor of Frontiers in Psychology – Cognition, and a member of the Committee of Professors in Operational Research (COPIOR). Her research focuses on the role of judgment in forecasting and strengthening the synergies with scenarios and decision-making.

John (Jack) Pope, President, Investment Economics

Jack Pope is President of Investment Economics, a developer of decision-oriented investment systems and data analytics.  He is also an adjunct professor of Computer Science in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, where he teaches a variety of programming courses and leads the MnSCU Data Analytics Network.  Long ago, Jack was a fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research.

Johann Robette, Customer Success Manager, Vekia

Johann Robette is Customer Success Manager at Vekia, France, a software company specializing in inventory optimization and replenishment automation through probabilistic and value-oriented decision-making. There he helps mid-sized to Fortune 500 companies improve their inventory performance and measure their gains. A data enthusiast, he is also involved in research in Vekia’s Data Science Lab, where he focuses primarily on topics related to business value in the supply chain.

Christian Schäfer, Professor of Quantitative Management, DHBW Mannheim

Before returning to academia, Christian held several strategic positions in the pharmaceutical industry. Christian holds a PhD in Business Administration from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He has published articles in Foresight on strategic forecasting issues and challenges in the life sciences industry. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences on forecasting and management in the pharmaceutical industry. Christian leads collaborative projects and seminars on strategic forecasting in the pharmaceutical industry. He relies on a wide network within the pharmaceutical industry.

Jerry Shan, Senior Staff Software Engineer, LinkedIn

Before joining LinkedIn, Jerry Shan worked at Huawei. Prior to that, he was a chief data scientist in Hewlett-Packard’s Vertica Big Data Business. He was also a principal scientist in HP Labs. Jerry earned a Ph.D. in statistics from Stanford University in 1995 and has obtained 25 granted US patents on predictive analytics, detection, data analysis, and modeling. Jerry is the leading author of past articles in Foresight on life-cycle forecasting for new products (Summer 2008) and spare-parts forecasting (Summer 2009).

Sujit Singh, Chief Operating Officer, Arkieva

Sujit Singh is the COO of Arkieva, a supply chain solutions company that creates configurable software for demand and inventory management, sales and operations planning (S&OP), supply planning and scheduling. He is responsible for managing product delivery and implementations services, customer relationships, and the day-to-day operations of the corporation. His industry experience includes work in the semiconductor, chemicals, and glass (industrial and commercial) industries. Sujit is a recognized subject matter expert in both forecasting and S&OP. He received a Bachelor of Technology in civil engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a Master of Science in transportation engineering from the University of Massachusetts. Sujit is also certified in Production and Inventory Management and is a certified Supply Chain Professional by APICS, the Association for Operations Management.

Marina Sologubova, Senior Supply Chain Leader, The Estée Lauder Companies Inc.

Marina Sologubova is a Senior Supply Chain leader with over 20 years of experience in multinational companies, including Estée Lauder, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. Her expertise spans supply chain planning, sourcing, and external manufacturing, with a strong professional track record in demand planning and IBP. Marina holds a Ph.D. in economics, an MBA in supply chain, and a degree in IT.

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Eric Stellwagen, CEO and Co-founder, Business Forecast Systems, Inc.

Eric Stellwagen is the CEO and co-founder of Business Forecast Systems, Inc., a market-leading firm focused on providing software solutions and education to business forecasters. He is the co-author of the Forecast Pro software product line, which is currently in use at more than 25,000 companies worldwide. He consults widely in the area of practical business forecasting for numerous firms, including Coca-Cola, Kraft, Merck, Nabisco, Owens-Corning, and Verizon. He has presented seminars and workshops on behalf of many respected organizations including the Institute for Professional Education, the American Production and Inventory Control Society, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Tennessee, the Institute for Business Forecasting, the World Research Group, the International Institute of Research, the Electric Power Research Institute, the International Communications Forecasting Association, the Forecasting Summit, and the International Institute of Forecasters. Eric received his Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Oberlin College in 1984 and has spent the past 30 years working in the field of business forecasting.

Bill Tonetti, EVP Integrated Business Planning, Netstock

Bill Tonetti co-founded Demand Works which was acquired by Netstock in 2021. Netstock is a global supply chain planning software company with over 2,000 customers and offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Australia, and South Africa. Bill has more than two decades of experience in supply-chain operations, consulting, and general management and holds an MBA from the University of Virginia.

Nicolas Vandeput, Consultant, Trainer & Author: Data Science & Forecasting, Inventory Optimization

Nicolas Vandeput is a supply chain data scientist who specializes in demand forecasting and inventory optimization. He founded his consultancy company SupChains in 2016 and co-founded SKU Science – a fast, simple, and affordable demand forecasting platform – in 2018. Passionate about education, he is teaching both demand forecasting and inventory optimization in Paris, France. He published his best-selling books, “Data Science for Supply Chain Forecasting” in 2018 and “Inventory Optimization: Models and Simulations” in 2020.

Larry Vanston, President, Technology Futures, Inc.

Larry Vanston, Ph.D., is an internationally-recognized authority on technology forecasting for the communications and other high-tech industries. He’s also an expert on the impact of technology change on technology assets. He has led numerous studies for government and industry, including all of the major U.S. communications providers. Since 2005, he has directed the TFI Communications Technology and Asset Valuation Conference in Austin every January. He is the chair of the Communications Technology Forecasting Group (CTFG), which promotes the application of formal forecasting methods to support asset valuation and depreciation.