As CEO of Pathfinder Development, Bernhard leads Pathfinder’s management team and provides strategic direction to clients and their projects.
Before founding Pathfinder, Bernhard served as a consultant for clients such as Microsoft, Starbucks, Metropolitan Life Insurance, and the City of Seattle. Prior to this, he founded and served as President of Cobre Software, a developer of multi-dimensional analytical reporting software with customers such as General Motors, General Electric, Labatts, and the University of California.
Bernhard’s applications development experience began in 1989 with his contributions to one of the earliest online valuation analysis products while working as a financial analyst in Merrill Lynch’s mergers and acquisition departments. Bernhard has a BA and MA in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science from the Wharton School of Business. He is a native speaker of English and German, and is fluent in Spanish and French.
As the head of Pathfinder’s User Experience Design group, Matt brings over 15 years of experience in information architecture, usability, and solution design to bear on our clients’ projects. Matt’s experience with the challenges of designing for the web stretches back to 1993, when he left The Onion to begin an online publishing venture. Since then, he has worked as the lead information architect for First Chicago/Bank One’s Internet banking application, and lead brand, marketing and user experience design projects for clients such as Motorola, the NYSE, The Chicago Sun-Times and Procter & Gamble.
Dietrich Kappe is a co-founder and the CTO of Pathfinder Development, a firm that combines User Experience Design and Agile to speed software product development. Dietrich published one of the first 100 public web sites and launched one of the first Java Servlet-based web applications. He has been a software engineer for two decades, a frequent open source contributor, and has developed applications for the Media, Financial Services, Insurance and Healthcare industries.
Dietrich is a technical speaker on Agile Software Development, AJAX and Business Rules technology. He publishes the Agile Ajax blog and is a contributor to Ajaxian.com.
As Pathfinder’s Director of infrastructure, Alan is responsible for developing the hardware architecture, implementation and infrastructure management strategies for our solutions and our clients Data Center facilities. His mission over the last few years has been to increase Pathfinders clients sites uptime, performance and security while lowering the hardware and management costs through focusing on equipment that has a high “performance/cost” ratio, and the judicious use of open source software solutions for applications, application servers, security, networking and monitoring applications.
As the complexity of High performance, high availability environments has increased Alan has focused on the challenge of making implementation and management of the various hardware and software components easier and more transparent.
Prior to joining Pathfinder Alan’s focus was on international banking software. Alan consulted on many multi million dollar financial projects for 15 years in developing Banking and CRM software on 3 continents (Australia, South and North America).
Paul manages a team of business and technology consultants with experience in designing and redesigning business processes to improve efficiency and reduce costs. He is also responsible for marketing and business development for Pathfinder.
A Certified Public Accountant, Paul began his career as a “Big 5” auditor and has over 25 years of business and technology experience. Before concentrating on technology, he served as the finance and risk manager of a manufacturing firm with locations in the U.S. and Europe and as Vice President of a reinsurance consulting practice.
Prior to joining Pathfinder, Paul served as a Principal and Managing Director in the technology practice of a Chicago-based CPA firm. During his career, he has managed and delivered engagements covering all areas of Information Technology (IT) – IT Strategic Planning, Process Design, ERP Systems Selection & Implementation, Infrastructure Design & Implementation, Application Design & Development and Internet Design & Development. His industry experience includes manufacturing, distribution, construction, service, not-for-profit, and government. Paul is currently serving as the President of the Chicago Chapter of AITP (Association of Information Technology Professionals — www.aitpchicago.com). He has a BS in Accountancy from the University of Illinois at Chicago and a MA in Economics from Northern Illinois University. He taught accounting and economics at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.