Richard J. Welke, Ph.D. / Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute of the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University /
Director
Richard J. Welke has been an academic and professional entrepreneur (“pracademic”) throughout his professional career beginning in 1962 at General Motors Research Laboratories.
He was founder of Methodsworks, Inc. (in Burlington, ON) and owner/president of Meta Systems, Ltd. (Ann Arbor, MI), the first CASE (computer-aided software engineering) repository and interactive development environment for software development. Both were sold to LBMS, Inc. in the UK. Beyond this, he has been CIO/CTO at Atlanta-based companies including AMTEC, H.J. Russell & Company and Parkmobile, when it introduced its first mobile app.
Dr. Welke has been a professor or visiting professor at McMaster University (Hamilton/ON, CA), Erasmus University (NL), Delft University (NL), and Auckland University (NZ), among others, over the past 50 years of his academic career.
At Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Dr. Welke led the Department of Computer Information Systems (CIS) to national prominence, started a number of centers and institutes within the college including the e-Commerce Institute, Center for Process Innovation and now the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute. He initiated the business process management stream offered by the CIS Department along with other major modifications to its course offerings.
Outside the Robinson College of Business, Dr. Welke served as interim CIO for Law Companies Group, Inc. (the largest engineering and environmental services company in the U.S., now part of AMEC-Foster-Wheeler). He also co-founded Brainworks and AppsNmotion.
Dr. Welke received his Ph.D. in management systems from the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Management, his MBA from the State University of New York at Buffalo and his B.S.E. from the University of Michigan.
Andrew Hamilton / Parkmobile
CTO
Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in Software Engineering and Executive Management most recently as CTO for Cardlytics, the leader in Transaction Based Marketing. He began his technology career as a Research Developer with IBM in 1988, progressing to the role of Senior Architect working on government and corporate projects in the USA, New Zealand and the UK. Andrew left IBM to join promising start-up WebMD. Andrew was WebMD’s Technical Director responsible for managing the development of the flagship consumer page content management and news syndication.
On a personal level he lives in Buckhead and is married to his beloved wife of 15 years and has 2 wonderful children.