President and Chief Operating Officer
[see bio]
Paul Czarnik
Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer
[see bio]
Daniel S. Follis, Jr.
Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
[see bio]
Laura Fournier
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
[see bio]
Peter Karmanos, Jr.
Executive Chairman of the Board
[see bio]
Bob Paul
Chief Executive Officer
[see bio]
Denise Starr
Chief Administrative Officer
[see bio]
Pat Stayer
Executive Vice-President, Worldwide Solutions
[see bio]
Company Management Bios
Joseph Angileri
President and Chief Operating Officer
With a broad range of financial, legal and operations experience, Joe Angileri is Compuware’s President and Chief Operating Officer. He leads Compuware’s finance, human resources, legal and administrative organizations, as well as holding additional operational responsibilities.
Prior to joining Compuware, Joe had more than 26 years of professional experience with Deloitte, most recently as Managing Partner of the Michigan region. Throughout his career, he has applied a laser focus to meeting the needs and exceeding the expectations of his many clients. Joe has served public and private organizations including Meritor Automotive, Dow Chemical Corporation, Penske Corporation and more.
Among Joe’s roles at Deloitte were: National Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer for Corporate Finance, member of the U.S. Firms Operating Committee and National Managing Partner for Strategic Relationship Management. He also served on Deloitte’s U.S. board of directors. Most recently, he was responsible for all aspects of the organization’s substantial operations throughout Michigan.
Joe has achieved a JD from Wayne State University to accompany his BS in Business from Oakland University. He maintains his CPA.
Like many Compuware employees, Joe is highly involved in the community. He serves on the Boards of Directors for six not-for-profit organizations, including Junior Achievement, the Michigan Opera Theatre and the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. Joe also holds positions with the Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants and the United Way Campaign Committee.
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Paul Czarnik
Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer
Paul Czarnik is what is referred to as a ''lifer'' at Compuware. He joined the company in 1981 as a contract programmer for the company’s Professional Services organization. And with the exception of a brief ''prodigal'' period when he left to start up his own successful software and services company, Paul has worked his way through many technical and management positions at Compuware, en route to his current position as CTO.
A programmer at heart, Paul thrives on learning more about the vast and wide-ranging technology industry so that he can directly and immediately apply that knowledge to his work. He’s got an eagle eye trained on delivery and is a proponent of Agile Development. Paul also believes in working with the Compuware Sales organization, and feels very comfortable having a sales person at his shoulder to share customer feedback and needs.
He leads a team of more than a thousand employees who he refers to as ''proficient and prolific technicians.'' This team delivers world-class Compuware products and support to customers around the globe.
Paul attributes his achievement and sustainability to his own philosophy of technology development, patterned after the standard industry term ''FUD,'' which typically means Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. His interpretation of FUD is Focus, Urgency and Discipline. Those guiding words have served him, and Compuware, well for more than 25 years.
Paul attended Wayne State University while working the night shift as a programmer at Art Center Hospital in Detroit. He is an accomplished musician and songwriter, who lives in Union Lake with his wife and former Compuware employee, Donna, and their two children, Alexander and Ekaterina. The Czarnik family also enjoys getting away to their cottage in Au Gres, Michigan to soak up all that nature has to offer.
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Dan Follis
Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary
Dan is an avid sports enthusiast and participant, so it's not surprising that time on the ice rink contributed to his coming to Compuware. In 1998, his former youth hockey coach was Compuware's general counsel. He remembered the young hockey defenseman's determination and sense of fairness when Dan, after litigating in Chicago courtrooms for four years, applied to join the Compuware team as Senior Counsel. In this role, Dan was tasked with managing the company's corporate litigation, focusing on all employment matters, intellectual property infringement and contract disputes among other duties. Dan managed the high-stakes litigation against IBM, which involved complex antitrust and intellectual property claims, resulting in a $400 million settlement in favor of Compuware.
Dan's extensive knowledge of litigation and corporate law and his keen ability to effectively apply it when needed vaulted him in 2006 to Compuware's Associate General Counsel position. Here, his ability to recognize and utilize the talents of those on Compuware's internal legal staff and effectively manage outside counsel, allowed the company to save more than 50 percent of its annual legal fees.
Today, Dan leads the entire Compuware legal team, providing the company with comprehensive and practical advice for a wide range of legal matters including commercial litigation, employment law, immigration, intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, international law and SEC compliance. This seems a natural path for the attorney who made the Dean's list and Law Review while attending Detroit College of Law before transferring to complete his law degree at University of Michigan Law School in 1994.
Dan and his wife, Maureen, reside in Grosse Pointe Park and share in the excitement of raising their two young boys. Continuing in his sporting life outside of work, Dan has helped to coach his sons' hockey teams, and even plays pickup hockey when his schedule allows. Golf is also a sporting love of Dan's, although he preferred not to make public his handicap. He also has been known to play "music" on occasion in a Detroit rock band.
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Laura Fournier
Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer
To direct the finances of a worldwide company like Compuware takes all the attributes you would expect—intelligence, dedication and plenty of hard work. For Laura Fournier, Compuware's Executive Vice President, CFO and Treasurer, there's one more very important component—lots of heart. Lots of heart for the job, and lots of heart for the team she works with.
In fact, Laura followed her heart all the way along her career path. Although starting off with a degree in elementary education, Laura took a position in the accounts payable department of a lumberyard. In the process, she discovered a true passion, and went on to get her accounting and finance degree at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Laura credits UNLV for her rapid success, having been challenged hard enough in her studies to pass her CPA exam on the first try. Several successful years in public accounting followed, ultimately leading Laura to the post of Senior Manager at Laventhol and Horwath. Compuware became one of Laura's most challenging and interesting clients. As she explains, "Compuware was always doing something different!"
The opportunity to move over to Compuware appeared in 1990, when Laura was also considering an attractive post with a major automaker. Once again, she followed her heart, choosing the position in which she felt she would never become "a brick in the wall." She chose Compuware, joining as Director of Internal Audit and Controller.
Today, Laura's responsibilities include overseeing Compuware's Finance and Human Resources organizations. She also performs the treasury function and guides strategic planning and all business practices and policies related to finance. She has experienced some of the company's greatest moments in her present role, including the crowning achievement of going public. Although the role brings no shortage of challenges, Laura credits her success to her ability to step back from complicated situations and apply common sense to make decisions for the greater good of the company and its people.
One of Laura's mentors once assured her that "Good people do not languish at Compuware." She has cherished those words and made them her own guiding principle in building and guiding what she believes is the best accounting team in the business. As leader of this team, Laura works hard to continue honing her skills and maintains her CPA status to this day.
Laura has also built a successful team outside of her Compuware business units—one that brings comfort and joy to dozens of families each holiday season. Working with friends, fellow Compuware employees and the St. Vincent de Paul organization, Laura helps bring truckloads of holiday gifts and food to more and more families each year.
Laura and her husband make their home in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. Whenever she can, she enjoys spending time with her two children and her grandchildren.
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Peter Karmanos, Jr.
Executive Chairman of the Board
If you’ve met Peter Karmanos, Jr., you’ve met passion personified. As Executive Chairman of Compuware, Pete uses that passion to ensure that the company delivers value to its customers. How? Simple--through the hottest distributed products in the market, through outstanding professional services and through the most-respected mainframe software in the world, Compuware helps make its customers more productive.
Getting the company to where it is today, however, has not always been so simple. Flashback to 1973, when Pete sat in his dining room with two buddies and gambled. The stakes were higher than he could’ve imagined at the time, because with $3,000 each in tax-return money, Pete and his friends formed Compuware, a company that would become a worldwide leader in delivering technology value to customers. Pete, along with the late Thomas Thewes and Allen Cutting, Jr., wanted to build “…a 20-to-25 person company that would be a fun place to work.” Instead, they created Detroit’s technology giant, with more than 4,000 employees and nearly $1 billion in annual revenue.
Since Compuware began, Pete’s had a front seat on the rollercoaster of the technology industry, and he’s seen it all. He’s seen the fads come and go. He’s seen little sock puppets star in $2 million TV commercials only to end up bankrupt and on the auction block. What does it take to thrive in the midst of the madness? As Pete will tell you, there’s no big secret. It’s a time-tested formula consisting of highly visible leadership, hands-on management, a keen awareness of what’s happening in the industry and--most importantly--a strong foundation.
For Pete, that foundation is the straightforward, unwavering mission of Compuware--to deliver value through technology, allowing customers to focus on what they do best, from selling cars to selling widgets. This focus has allowed Pete and his worldwide teams to see through the trends and fads and build real solutions that customers want and need. With solutions that help software performance surpass expectations, Compuware continues to help people do things with computers.
Compuware has been called the blue-collar software company, and perhaps that all began at Peter Karmanos, Sr.’s diner in Detroit. They called it Pete’s Place, though it was really named Grand & Lahser Hamburgers. That’s where Peter Jr. learned firsthand what it meant to meet the expectations of customers. And the value of coming to work every day and getting something done has stayed with Pete since his days running the cash register.
Another thing that’s stuck with Pete since his days in the diner is his respect for the hardworking people who help drive business forward every day. Having well overshot his goal of building a 25-person company, Pete also strove to over-deliver on the promise of giving his employees a fun place to work. Today, with its fresh, open design, incredible views, health club, day care facility and many other employee amenities, the Compuware headquarters building in Downtown Detroit is a perfect encapsulation of Compuware’s fun, friendly culture.
Pete is an avid gardener, a master gardener in fact. He’s also a member of Mensa and has had the good fortune to have his name be one of the (incorrect) answers on a famous trivia game show. He is also an athlete and sports fan, which led Pete into co-ownership of three hockey teams--the Carolina Hurricanes (National Hockey League), the Plymouth Whalers (Ontario Hockey League), and the Florida Everblades (East Coast Hockey League)--and drove him to create youth hockey programs for the children of Southeast Michigan.
In addition to his personal and business pursuits, Pete is deeply committed to philanthropy. Pete has made gifts of more than $60 million to establish and support the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, the only nationally recognized center to be named for a woman. Pete, along with Compuware employees around the world, supports a wide variety of other causes. Pete attended Wayne State University in Detroit, before pursuing his fascination with business and technology.
Pete lives in the metropolitan Detroit area with his wife Danialle and their three sons Socrates, Leonidas and Spiros. Pete now has six sons and eight grandchildren.
Danialle—in addition to her ongoing work as a nationally acclaimed video producer—founded Danialle Karmanos’ Work It Out (DKWIO), a 501(c)3 organization that fights childhood obesity by providing kids with the tools they need to make healthy choices. Pete and Danialle enjoy movies (with popcorn and "Milk Dudes"), traveling, reading the paper and golfing. The couple is already working on ideas for the documentary they'd like to co-produce someday.
For a glimpse of what is on Pete’s mind, read his blog at www.karmanosunplugged.com.
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Bob Paul
Chief Executive Officer
Bob Paul is a business leader with a proven knack for building healthy companies with strong growth. As Chief Executive Officer of Compuware, Bob puts these capabilities to use as the daily and strategic leader of all company operations, with a focus on delivering continued profitable growth. He is also a member of the company’s Board of Directors.
Bob joined the company in 2004 through its acquisition of Covisint and was most recently Compuware’s President and Chief Operating Officer. In this role, he has since 2008 led the company’s products and services operations, as well as a number of other key operational, strategy and marketing functions. Through a successful strategic plan, a significant reengineering of operations and key divestitures and acquisitions, Compuware has returned to a position of growth, leading the company to a top-ten tech stock performance in 2011.
Bob has also served as CEO of Covisint, a subsidiary of Compuware acquired in 2004. A rapidly growing provider of SaaS-based collaboration solutions, Covisint could achieve a more-than billion dollar valuation in an IPO later this fiscal year. Prior to his Covisint days, Bob's experiences include serving as the President of Future 3, a provider of supply chain management procurement applications for the auto industry. Bob was also President and COO of Coherent Networks, Incorporated (CNI).
His position at CNI gave Bob the opportunity to experience the second of three turnarounds in which he has played a leading role. By guiding the company to focus on differentiated customer value and by applying technology and services to solve those problems, Bob and his team were able to achieve top-line revenue growth goals with substantial expense reduction.
Bob's influence at Covisint was even more significant. Coming in as a Vice President of Sales and Marketing in October 2001, Bob built and executed powerful go-to-market strategies that helped stabilize the organization and positioned Covisint for great success. Redesigning the organization for scale was fundamental to Covisint’s reinvention, and with Bob’s help, the company grew its registered user base to almost 100,000 in the first year of the turnaround.
Advancing to CEO and President of Covisint, Bob's next challenge was to manage the acquisition of his company. On March 1, 2004, the acquisition by Compuware was completed. Covisint has since quadrupled in size and is now positioned as market leader in two vertical industries with expectations of greater than 40 percent growth this year.
In addition to his dedication to Compuware, Bob is an active industry citizen. He speaks on IT and healthcare trends at business schools and industry events all over the world and chairs a number of charity programs in the region. Bob also sits on the Governor of Michigan’s Healthcare IT commission.
Beyond corporate walls, Bob has always been a serious sports enthusiast. He attended Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on a soccer scholarship and went on to study at the University of Michigan. Bob continues to play soccer and is now retired from 25 years of coaching. Bob is also a golfer and former University of Michigan club rugby player. In support of his golf habit, Bob served as President of Walnut Creek Country Club.
Born and raised in England until he was 12, Bob now lives in Novi, Michigan with his wife, four kids, and two dogs—a treasured Bernese mountain dog and an equally beloved mutt. When not working or coaching, Bob can usually be found cheering on his kids at one of their many activities.
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Denise Starr
Chief Administrative Officer
Officially, Denise Starr is known as Compuware’s Chief Administrative Officer. Unofficially, she could be called Compuware’s Resident Miracle Worker.
To begin with, some may consider it miraculous that anyone can handle as long a list of vital functions as Denise manages at Compuware. Among her responsibilities are all corporate real estate, facilities, purchasing, shipping and receiving, fleet operations, license management, product distribution, insurance, travel, security, building telephone operators, mail services, administrative support and Compuware’s 24-hour customer service hotline.
Denise joined Compuware in 1989, and held positions of increasing responsibility in facilities and administration including Manager, Director, Senior Vice President and Executive Vice President. In her tenure, Compuware’s offices in North America have grown in number from six to more than 45.
Among Denise’s most notable accomplishments is her role in making the new Compuware world headquarters an incredible place to work and visit. Throughout Compuware’s relocation, she oversaw the construction and occupancy of the building, but the job didn’t end there. Denise also played--and continues to play--a leading role in bringing services and retail establishments to the building. Denise is responsible for Compuware’s child development center, wellness center and cafeteria, as well as the popular shops and restaurants that occupy the building’s ground floor.
Denise will explain that, in one way or another, everything she does boils down to service--a skill she honed early on in her 13-year career with the Detroit Free Press. As a manager in the circulation department, she was responsible for customer service. She also oversaw the carrier billing system, which she helped to create and roll out to district managers.
Doing what Denise does every day takes time and plenty of effort. But she credits her endurance to two things: a passion for having fun and a knack for finding creative solutions to unique challenges.
Before switching her major to business administration at the Mercy College of Detroit (now the University of Detroit Mercy), Denise studied social work--and she values the experience for helping her to inspire groups to work together more effectively. A big part of that is keeping work fun. Denise loves what she does, and she shares that passion by openly expressing her sense of humor and encouraging creative thinking among her coworkers.
While Denise brings miraculous results to Compuware every day, it’s perhaps even more impressive that she still finds time to work miracle after miracle in her community. She makes it a priority to share her talents, influence and compassion with others in some very unique and outgoing ways. Denise serves on a long list of non-profit boards including, Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, American Red Cross-Southeastern Michigan Blood Services Region, Downtown Detroit Partnership, Michigan Colleges Foundation, Mercy Education Project and Joint Employment Procurement Advisory Board.
Denise also participates in the Make-a-Wish Foundation’s Wish-a-Mile 300-mile bike ride every July. Although not a bicyclist, she’ll train three months for the trip. Denise has helped increase participation within Compuware each year, which recently resulted in a donation of more than $80,000. Denise also supports fundraising efforts for the Karmanos Cancer Institute.
These considerable contributions are not the limit of Denise’s generosity. Very sensitive to problems in her community, Denise always feels compelled to help in any way she can. In the recent past, Denise found clever ways to help the parents of a young girl with the expenses and travel problems associated with getting their daughter a liver transplant.
Denise has a grown son who lives in the southern United States. She shares her home in Oakland County with her husband Joey and teenage daughter, Haley. Additionally, Denise enjoys reading management literature and humorous books--a combination that may someday inspire her to turn her journal into a book on her amusing experiences serving customers.
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Pat Stayer
Executive Vice President, Worldwide Solutions
Because you’re reading Pat Stayer’s bio, chances are good that you’re either considering working with him or for him. For over 20 years, people – both customers and employees – have done so for many of the very same reasons: exceptional integrity, a powerful work ethic, a maniacal need to understand his customers and an unblinking focus on delivering results.
Pat joined Compuware in 1989 as a sales executive, and quickly demonstrated a remarkable ability to not only win business, but to build strong, mutually-rewarding relationships with his customers. He did this by working to understand their needs and challenges better, and more thoroughly, than his competition.
Since then, Pat’s responsibilities have grown steadily as he formed, trained, directed and inspired Compuware sales teams in both North and South America. In his current position as Executive Vice President, Worldwide Solutions, Pat is responsible for the success of the company’s APM, Mainframe, Uniface and Changepoint business units and their customers -- in all of the 40 countries around the world where Compuware does business.
The key to the success of Pat Stayer’s global sales teams today is the same key he used to unlock his own sales success back in ’89: a laser-like focus on understanding the customer – their industry, their business, their competition, their challenges, their goals – everything. Armed with this in-depth understanding, Pat and his teams build strong, lasting relationships based on one very simple principle: deliver solutions that improve the performance of the customer’s technology. By so doing, Pat and his teams provide customers with tangible, measurable value in the form of growth, profitability, cost savings and customer retention.
Pat’s leadership style is to be engaged at the field level. In fact, he spends fully 50 percent of his time with his teams, in front of customers. In fact, he has accumulated over 3 million frequent flyer miles.
Pat believes that a fully-functioning sales team is one in which everyone has a clear understanding of the goal and a shared vision of success. He’s a strong believer in the power of consistency – having a common go-to-market strategy, whether the market is in Michigan or China.
The people Pat hires for his teams are what he calls athletes – highly-competitive individuals from a variety of backgrounds with a hunger … a passion … for winning. When he identifies such individuals he tells them that now is a great time to join the Compuware team – because the Company’s growth potential in this industry is second to none. Pat tells them this because Pat believes it. With a passion.
Pat and his wife Anne have four children, all of whom – not surprisingly – are competitive athletes.
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