Advisory Board
Economics Advisory Board
Experience
Catherine currently serves as the Procurement Manager at American Eagle Outfitters, where she has been at for the last 11 years. In this role, she is responsible for sourcing and strategic initiatives related to indirect services and products. Prior to joining American Eagle Outfitter, she was the Manager - Procurement at Eaton Corporation.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/catherine-adams-b5b04811/
Education:
BGSU, B.S Business Administration, Economics, Marketing, International Business ‘01
Carnegie Mellon University - Tepper School of Business, MBA, Operations, Marketing, Strategy ‘09
Jacob currently works with Deloitte Consulting, as a senior consultant, specializing in the financial services industry. He enjoys helping clients achieve their strategic, operational and financial goals. Prior to Deloitte, Jake worked with J.P Morgan Chase where he focused on building the client experience strategy.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/j-dillon/
Experience:
After nearly 20 years employed in corporate positions from territory manager, sales and marketing manager, COO and CMO, Patric decided to leave to start my own company, Eye Magnet Management Marketing Agency, helping small to medium size businesses with their digital marketing needs. His business is currently 5 years old, and they enjoy helping businesses that do not have the time to dedicate to marketing but also do not have the budget for a full time marketer.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricfransko/
Education:
BGSU, B.S Business Administration, Economics ‘96
Experience:
Myron has been with JP Morgan Chase since 2013.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/myron-lewis-60aa68b/
Education:
Bowling Green State University, M.A. Economics 2007
Summer is currently a Senior Research Analyst at JobsOhio, which is Ohio's private economic development agency headquartered in Columbus, OH. She is responsible for analyzing industry trends and helping companies retain and expand existing operations as well as helping new companies establish a footprint in Ohio.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/summer-mcvicker/
Education:
BGSU, M.A. Financial Economics
BGSU, B.S. Economics
Sarah recently retired from her positions as Corporate Responsibility Officer, Corporate Secretary and General Counsel of National Fuel Gas Company (NYSE:NFG). At the time of her retirement, Sarah also held the position of Vice President and General Counsel of National Fuel Gas Supply Corporation, NFG’s interstate pipeline subsidiary. In these roles, Sarah provided legal, regulatory and governance advice and direction to National Fuel, as well as leading the enterprise risk management (ERM) and sustainability (ESG) programs, all in alignment with the company’s strategic priorities and with the goal of creating and growing shareholder value.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/Sarah-Mugel-708551145
Education:
BGSU, Bachelor of Science Business Administration, Economics ‘86
Ohio State University College of Law, JD ‘89
Eric currently serves as the Vice President, Business Intelligence & Analytics for the Sak, a leader in the designer handbag market. In this position, he controls all data enterprise-wide governance and utilization of information as a company asset, via data mining, analysis and strategy. Eric focuses his vision for business-wide data activities and champions for data ownership, standardization, accessibility throughout the international business. Before this role, he served as the Director of Finance, Pricing & Analytics at Trevco Inc. Throughout all of his career, his expertise has been shaped in the e-commerce and direct to consumer retail markets.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-peck-
Education:
BGSU, Master of Business Administration '20
BGSU, Bachelor of Science in Economics '18
Jim Pesek is Dean Emeritus at Clarion University of Pennsylvania. In addition to his many years of service as the dean (and interim dean) of Clarion’s College of Business Administration and as a professor of management, at various times he served Clarion University as an interim provost and vice president for academic affairs, special assistant to the provost and vice president for academic affairs and chair of the Department of Administrative Science. Prior to his tenure at Clarion, he was a faculty member at Mercyhurst College and worked as a labor market analyst/planner for the City of Cleveland. Since retiring from Clarion University, Jim has provided management consulting services, served as a Certified Volunteer Medicare Counselor, and Co-Chair of Fundraising for Rail 66 Country Trail, a rails-to-trails project in Clarion County Pennsylvania.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-pesek-48698728/
Education:
BGSU, Bachelor’s of Science, Economics ‘74
Bowling Green State University, Master of Arts, Economics ‘75
University of Pittsburgh, Ph.D., Business Administration (Human Resources Management & Industrial Relations) ‘84
Experience:
Robert joined Merrill in 2008, having begun his financial services career in 1992. Robert focuses on fixed-income strategies for the team and he enjoys working with clients to design approaches aimed at helping them achieve their financial goals.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-thompson-078b561a/
Education:
Bowling Green State University '91 & '93
Information Systems Advisory Board
Steve is an IT Leader at Owens Corning’s world headquarters in Toledo, Ohio. In his 30-year career he has held most positions within IT, and most recently is leading a newly-formed Personal Technology Experience group. He is active in early career recruiting for BGSU and also serves on the BGSU Computer Science Advisory Board.
Amy Golden is currently working at Worthington Industries as a Senior IT Project Manager. She has over 25 years of experience in IT Infrastructure services, having held engineering, project management and senior leadership positions. As a Senior Project Manager, she focuses on program and project management across the entire IT landscape. Amy currently holds a PMP certification.
Amy received her BSBA and EMBA from Bowling Green State University. She is currently venturing into the world of academia and hopes to add to her current responsibilities by teaching at the collegiate level.
Kevin Huelsman is currently working at Marathon Petroleum Company in Findlay, OH as the IT Director – Risk Management. He has over 15 years of experience in IT ranging from applications, infrastructure services, mergers and acquisitions, as well as leading cash & banking outside of IT. His current responsibilities are modernizing the Audit organization’s processes and technologies to become more data driven through enabling automation and analytics, while driving towards a more quantitative risk assessment process.
Kevin received his BSBA from Bowling Green State University in 2007 and was part of the Falcon football program from 2003 - 2007.
James Nester is currently working at OI Glass as the Director of IT, leading research & development, engineering and environmental health and safety. He has been with OI Glass for 23 years and has significant international experience implementing SAP ERP solutions across the company. In other previous roles he has led IT functions supporting business intelligence and project management.
James received his bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University and also earned his MBA from BGSU in 2022.
Jacob Nix is the Founder and CEO of RISCPoint, a proud graduate of Bowling Green State University, and a "Big Four" alumnus. Jake previously served in a Global Risk and Controls Transformation role working with firm leadership and executives to shape both firm methodology and design innovative compliance programs for Fortune 500 clients. He maintains an active CPA license and is a certified AWS Cloud Practitioner, amongst other specialty certifications, including CISM, CISA, CMMC RP, CDPSE, ISO Lead Implementer, CCSFP, and Okta Certified Professional.
Frances O’Connor is the Global Leader, Security Architecture and Engineering at Owens Corning, a world leader in insulation, roofing and fiberglass composite materials based in Toledo, Ohio and spanning 31 countries. She leads a technical Information Security team that establishes and maintains the security aspect of solutions; including processes, technical controls, implementation and integration to mitigate risk in the following security domains for the global organization:
• Architecture & Infrastructure
• Cloud Security
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Security
• Governance & Risk Compliance (GRC)
• Identity and Access Management
• Operational Technology (OT)/(ISC)
• Project Consulting
• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)
Frances has a worked in various aspects of Information Technology from systems administration to network engineering for over 20+ years. She has a broad background in the IT field.
Frances is a supporter of STEM programs. She likes read and learn about anything Cyber and emerging technologies related. Frances enjoys golf, traveling and gardening.
Frances earned her Masters in Business Administration from University of Findlay.
I have held positions within Enterprise Architecture and Enterprise Information Management (EIM) teams with architectural responsibilities related to customer relationship management, master data management, and enterprise data warehouse environments. The detailed responsibilities within these environments have included creating and maintaining current and target state data architecture documentation, along with the interim states to document the road map to the target state, data analysis, logical and physical data modeling, metadata management, documenting development design patterns, data management policies and standards, and other domain and application architectural reviews.
Jeff Smith is currently the Senior Director of Information and Technology for Toledo Public Schools and serves as an adjunct instructor at BGSU. He has a thirty-five-year career in Information Technology and Information Systems. His passion is solving business problems through the application of technology, process optimization, and building high performance teams.
Jeff is a proud alum as his Bachelor of Technology and his Master of Business Administration were earned at this fine institution. Additionally, he holds several industry certifications; ITIL, Six Sigma, Process Master, and Project Management. Jeff is an active member of Epsilon Pi Tau, International Honor Society for Professionals in Technology.
Updated: 04/10/2026 01:41PM