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Executive Team |
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James A.
Libby, Founder, President and Managing Director
James A. Libby is
the founder, president, and managing director of Decision
Support Sciences. Early
in his career, Jim graduated from the University of Illinois with
a degree in Physiology and Biophysics. From 1980 to 1984 he performed
research in microcirculation physiology and viral oncology, authoring
or contributing research to articles published in leading scientific
journals. Building on his background in computer assisted quantification
and statistical biophysical measurement, Jim completed his master's
work (with a thesis in the rather arcane field of statistical linguistics)
and brought a decidedly quantitative emphasis to the John Morton
company, a Chicago-based market research firm. There, as the senior
technical consultant, he applied his keen interest in leveraging
cross-disciplinary quantitative approaches to solving business issues.
In 1990, Jim designed and wrote Strategen, a software tool for brand
positioning, and sub-licensed it for worldwide distribution through
SPSS, Inc. That same year, Jim founded Decision Support Sciences
with the express mandate to reengineer the conventional tools used
in marketing science to address the following issues: product design,
positioning, segmentation, customer satisfaction, channel optimization
and migration, prospecting, site selection, and customer satisfaction.
The result of these development efforts culminated in 1996, with
a set of approaches and software tools which collectively constitute
the Strategic Decision Support System (SDSS). Under Jim's leadership,
Decision Support Sciences has performed over a dozen major strategic
super-regional or national consulting projects with top ten (U.S.)
banks in the last three years. Jim is also a frequent speaker at
banking and financial services industry conferences. |
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Les Blackford,
Ph.D., Director of SDSS
Dr. Les Blackford is the director of Strategic
Decision Support System Development
at Decision
Support Sciences. Les graduated from Iowa State University with an
M.S. in mathematics in 1984. From 1984 to 1986 Les worked at Northrop
Defense Systems Division of Northrop Corporation. In 1991, Les received
his Ph.D from the Illinois Institute of Technology. His thesis work
involved new algorithmic approaches to One-Pass Ray Tracing. Les
taught computer science at Wheaton College before joining Decision
Support Sciences in 1995. |
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