Team

Highly seasoned, executive IT Practitioners / Operators

Meet the Team

Managing Partner

David Bauer

HGDI Focus: business technology strategy alignment, organization assessments, decision intelligence and strategic advisory.

David has over 35 years of technology experience, much of which has been at C-Level positions or advising C-Level executives. He has held senior positions in strategy, engineering, technology infrastructure and operations, program management, enterprise architecture, and security. David was global CTO at Asurion, responsible for massive global infrastructure scale outs. He was the CISO on Wall Street, and a pioneer in information security at Merrill Lynch. In addition, he held major roles at Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Bell Communications Research. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, he specializes in technology, business strategy, and organization assessments, decision intelligence and strategic advisory.

Advisor to Digital Asset, Security Leadership Capital Fund, BYOS, DeepFactor.

Managing Partner

Phil Gilligan

HGDI Focus: business and technology strategy, product management, IT governance & SDLC, organizational design, and QA.

Phil has over 35 years of technology experience and has held numerous senior transformational C-level technology leadership positions within Financial Services including at Deutsche Bank, UBS, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, EBS/ICAP, and Moody’s Investors Service. Phil is highly regarded as a decisive, strategic, and innovative leader with extensive experience executing enterprise-level transformational programs and sourcing new technologies in support of strategic business initiatives. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, he specializes in business and technology strategy, product management, IT Governance & SDLC, Organizational design, and QA.

Advisor to Digital Asset, ZScaler, Puppet, Modelshop. Board Director at Datameer and Fintech Studios.

Senior Advisory Partner

Whit Thiele

HGDI Focus: architecture, software engineering and code review

Enterprise Architect, CTO. Whit Thiele is the founder of Bannockburn Developments Ltd. a software consultancy and product development company based in Canada. Whit is a seasoned technology veteran and thought leader in the enterprise software and communications space. Whit has worked with a wide variety of legacy and current state of the art technology platforms and systems for the past 20 years. He possesses deep knowledge of enterprise architecture, software engineering, data, cloud, systems integration, transformation, UDM, AI/ML, eCommerce, Mobile, UI/Ux, CI/CD, DevOps, Microservices, XaaS. He has delivered major transformational projects for a diverse slate of clients including FICO, Wyndham, Infor, Comverse, Genband, France Telecom, Wolters Kluwer, Blue Cross, Pernod-Ricard, Vidyo, Cisco and more. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, he specializes in architecture, software engineering and code review.

Logistics Manager

Mia Petersen

HGDI Focus: client coordination, setting up interviews and collecting evidence.

Senior executive with 15 years of consulting and program management experience at prominent financial services and IT consulting firms, offering a unique combination of strategy, marketing, and IT expertise. Highly skilled at managing strategic project assessment, removing duplication, and driving cost savings. Managed global teams at Credit Suisse and UBS. Delivered technology market assessments for major clients such as IBM, CGI, Unisys and Citigroup. Specialties: Technology marketing, new market evaluation, competitive intelligence, IT strategy, strategy development process, technology governance, benchmarking and new technology assessment. At Holding Ground Decision Intelligence, she specializes in client coordination, setting up interviews and collecting evidence.

Advisor to Fintech Studios, Modelshop and EEI.

Team

Highly seasoned, executive IT Practitioners / Operators

Meet the Team

Managing Partner

David Bauer

Managing Partner

Phil Gilligan

Senior Advisory Partner

Whit Thiele

Logistics Manager

Mia Petersen

In-Depth Analysis - Designed To Effect Change