Network Creators
Zack Rinat
CEO, Chairman, Model N
Role: In 1999, Rinat founded Model N, which provides software for and helps develop the EFS Network. Rinat helped interview candidates for EFS’ executive team. Model provided software for the ProvisionX marketplace until it was sold.
Pete Levangie
COO, EFS Network
Role: Levangie developed the concept for EFS Network. The idea came while he scouted e-business opportunities for food distributor Cargill. Levangie landed contingent funding for EFS from Cargill’s eVentures unit in the fall of 1999. He worked on EFS with executives lent from founding members until the spring of 2001, when EFS began hiring its own executive team.
Hank Lambert
CEO, EFS Network
Role: Lambert served as president of Nabisco’s foodservice business for nine of his 15 years with that company. Prior to joining EFS in May 2001, he was president of two dot-coms—the B2B marketplace Efdex and the e-tailer Wine-shopper.com. In the mid-1990s he helped write an industry report estimating as much as $14 billion of inefficiencies-plagued foodservice.
Tony Meigides
CIO, EFS Network
Role: Meigides developed a methodology for smoothly integrating customers into EFS. He formerly was a technical architect for Goldman Sachs’ Equities Architecture Group and a consultant for Accenture.
Network Participants
Stan Ryan
President, Cargill North American Refined and Foodservice Oils
Role: Ryan sits on EFS’ board and was Levangie’s supervisor when Levangie was a general manager at Cargill. He worked with Levangie and with other executives from Cargill and McDonald’s to bring Sysco into EFS.
Tom Lankford
Executive Vice President, Sysco
President, Sysco Foodservice Operations
Role: Lankford serves on the boards of both Sysco and EFS and has co-chaired the Efficient Foodservice Response Executive Committee. Like Tyson, Sysco was an early adopter of electronic transactions.
Wayne Wolf
Executive Vice President,
eMac Digital
Role: Wolf sits on EFS’s board. McDonald’s, which created eMac Digital for conducting e-business, had been working on an idea similar to EFS when Wolf and other McDonald’s executives talked to Cargill. McDonald’s agreed to join EFS if there was industry-wide participation.
Tyson Foods
Gary Cooper
Vice President, Information Systems
Role: Cooper oversees all of Tyson’s information technology, including the integration of systems from newly acquired IBP. He worked on IT strategy with EFS in Chicago when Tyson first became involved in the network. He is vice chair of mpXML, established to develop XML standards for the meat and poultry industry.
Adam Parisi
Director of e-Business
Role: Parisi worked with Levangie in Chicago on the technical side of EFS after the project became too time-consuming for Cooper to handle alone. He is focused on the implications of the IBP merger for Tyson’s e-business strategy.
Lela Tripp
Director of Customer Service and Business Development
Role: Worked alongside Parisi and Levangie to develop the business side of EFS. She also has participated in the industry’s Efficient Foodservice Response initiative and is helping to guide the automation of Tyson’s foodservice business.
To protect their privacy, roster members’ e-mail addresses are omitted. Direct inquiries to [email protected] . Your mail will be forwarded.
