Wes SonnenreichIf you're looking for my most current Curriculum Vitae, you can download it as a PDF or view it in your browser. Please note that contact information is only provided in the PDF version for spam control purposes. Click here for Wes Sonnenreich's CV (pdf) Click here for Wes Sonnenreich's PGP key and related info. Some extra background not found on the CV:I'm currently doing a few things at once (ok, I've been doing that for a long time). A bit more than half of my time I'm in charge of science and technology for Sirius Minerals. It's a fascinating company and I've learned a lot about how potash is essential to feeding the world's growing population. My goal is to find technologies that can help us develop our resources in the most sustainable manner possible. I look at innovations in agricultural science, material science, renewable energy, carbon capture and sequestration, mine and processing automation, geoscience, data analytics, transportation and logistics. Some of my challenges are very specific: for example, if anyone can find a safe use for over 100,000 tons per year of hydrochloric acid, I'm all ears! Most of the rest of my time is spent on Intersective Learning, a company I founded with a friend and colleague, Beau Leese. Intersective creates courses that give students hands-on experience with the companies they want to work for, helping to solve major problems that these companies are facing. It gives the companies that work with us a unique way to build meaningful relationships with potential recruits while getting fresh thinking about their problems from the students. Our flagship course is the FASTRACK Challenge, which is about intrapreneurship and innovation. The corporate sponsor, Deloitte, provides mentors and coaches who bring the students significant problems and challenges for which they, and their clients, need innovative solutions. The University of Sydney and RMIT are current participants and we're looking to bring FASTRACK to universities across Australia in the next few years. I'm currently working on developing Intersective's next course - Serious Games. This one is going to be a LOT of fun to create, teach and participate in... I'm pretty excited and you can see our progress on the Intersective Learning Blog, as well as thinking around some of the more esoteric issues on my personal blog, The Muskrat Ramble. Intersective Learning is a spin-off company from Deloitte; much of the groundwork for the company was developed while I was national Director of Deloitte’s Innovation program. I worked at Deloitte for about three years - for the first year in Perth in the consulting group and then for the next two years out of Sydney running the innovation program. It was a great role and I got to work closely with the Deloitte executive. The insights into the strategic decision process of a service firm that earns nearly a billion dollars a year in Australia alone were fascinating. The rest of this goes into a bit of history... ok, a lot of history - it goes back to high school! But if I don't put it down somewhere, I'll eventually forget I did some of this stuff and then will be at a loss for words when someone does a twigoobook search ten years from now and asks me about one of these things! The Sonnenreich Corporation is a family business that was started by my grandfather (Anthony Simeone) in the 70's. Major clients have included General Electric, Disney, Novartis, Guess Inc. and others.Today I use it as the springpad for new ventures and for independent consulting projects. From 2002-2007 I co-founded an information security consulting and software service company called SageSecure. Our flagship product was called SecureMark and was an information security risk-management assessment tool designed for executives. From 1998-2001 I was a founder and Chief Technology officer for Glocal Communications, an internet strategy and solutions company dedicated to the pharmaceutical industry. With offices in Boston,D.C., London, Basel, and Tokyo, Glocal's client list represented over 60% of the global pharmaceutical industry. I was also the founding director of the
Over the course of the 1995 academic year I co-organized MIT's $50K entrepreneurial business plan competition. We raised the prize fund from $10K to $50K, and expanded the organizational staff so that future competitions would no longer dependent on a single person, as the case had been. In 1990, I was part of a three person team that used a $250,000 grant from Cablevision and equivalently valued equipment donations to design and built a fiber-optic distance learning network, TV production studio and computer graphics lab for South Side High School in Rockville Centre, NY. The studio rivals many professional broadcasting centers and is constantly used by students to produce network-quality broadcasts of plays, concerts, sports, events and original student films. Education:I received a B.S. in Computer Science and Music from theMassachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996. In 2001 I attended Harvard Business School's Executive Education "Program for Global Leadership". Major Research and Publications:The Rosetta Stone – A framework for comparing security regulations and standards (2006) “Return on Security Investment (ROSI) – a practical quantitative model” (2006) “Network Security Illustrated” (McGraw-Hill, 2003) "Internet Strategy Guide" (2001): Information collected and organized by the Sonnenreich Corporation throughout its extensive consulting experience in the field. A thorough reference guide for any Internet initiatives. There are also accompanying lecture slides since this document is often used as backup for consulting presentations. "Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls" (Wiley): With Tom Yates authored a step-by-step guide for building and operating a firewall using open source technology. We also maintained a related website: OpenlySecure.org which contained original content on topics related to Open Source security. "The Web Developer's Guide to Search Engines" (Wiley): With Tim Macinta authored a book that aims to help webmasters choose, install, and configure search engines for their web sites. "A Finance Major's Primer" (McGraw Hill): I co-authored and edited this text book used in graduate finance classes at NYU's Stern School of Business. US Patent 5,974,446 (Issued: Oct. 1999): Title: An Internet based distance learning system for communicating between server and clients wherein clients communicate with each other or with teacher using different communication techniques via common user interface. "Universe Symphony" (
Lectures, Conferences:Internet Strategy Issues: First presented to the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants annual assembly. The Sonnenreich Corporation's Internet Strategy Guide was handed out. Follow the link for HTML and PDF versions of the guide, lecture notes and slides. Privacy and Security on the Internet: First presented at the American Association of Medical Society Executives annual meeting, this lecture has proven extremely popular. Lecture notes are available. Firewall Technology: With Tom Yates first presented this day long course at The Bazaar, an open source exposition held at the Javits Center in NY, 1999. The course, geared for network professionals, was one of the top attended/rated courses at the event. Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Marketing Issues on the Internet: (Sept, 1999) Medicine in the Public Interest held a conference on Internet DTC marketing. I discussed new techniques for promoting medical information on the Internet with a panel that included from Tufts Medical School, the FTC, and the Pharmaceutical Industry. New Opportunities with Distance Education: This lecture is targeted towards teachers and academic officials as part of the Global School District program. It has been presented at a number of Junior Science and Humanities Symposium conventions (a major national competition jointly sponsored by the US Armed Forces), as well as at smaller academic meetings. Software Developed:EZAdmin (2001): The EZAdmin system is a complete content management system written in PHP. It is a GPL-licensed open source project that is being hosted by SourceForge. The software is used by the Sonnenreich Corporation to create effective and flexible informational web sites. NatWest Markets (1995): I built a system for trading options based on volatility analysis. System interfaced with real-time Reuters stock data and historical databases through an easy to use and intuitive graphical interface. MIT Media Lab -- salient stills (1994): I created a user interface for an image analysis package that had previously been command-line input only. Interests:Music: I play the trombone and the piano. I used to play trombone with various jazz and rock groups around the Boston area, including the Go Luckies, the MIT Jazz Collective and Fred's Bowling Ball (a group formed by the remaining sane members of the Go Luckies). I also compose and arrange. Major projects include "Mars, the Bringer of War" (from The Planets Suite by Gustav Holst) arranged for massive brass ensemble, a restoration of the "Pines of Rome" (Otto Rospiggi), "Fantasy on Joy Spring" (an original suite based on a Clifford Brown tune) for brass ensemble, and numerous jazz originals and arrangements for various orchestrations (4 trombones, jazz combo, big band, brass ensemble, etc.). I am a big fan and occasional roadie for the Aardvark Jazz Orchestra. I've also enjoy electronica/trance/techno/etc and periodically produce remixes and original tunes. Philanthropy: I've worked with a number of non-profit organizations pro-bono, including the Academy for Applied Science, the Foundation for Nutritional Advancement, Medicine in the Public Interest and the Boston Medical Center. Eventually I hope to start the Sonnenreich Foundation. Its charter will be to fully realize the promise of the Global School District. Crypto Info:If you wish to contact me via secure email, please use PGP. You can find my public key here. Note that you MUST verify the fingerprint of this key before using it. You can do this in a number of ways:
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