Executive Team of the Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement

Ram Manchi, President and Board Chair

Ram Manchi was elected AGMA's President in July of 2007.  As President, Manchi is responsible for driving AGMA's goal to mitigate the gray marketing and counterfeiting of technology products around the globe.  Manchi will lead the organization in increasing awareness and visibility of the issues surrounding gray market and counterfeit.  As such, Manchi will facilitate AGMA's growth and help foster the exchange of best practices and successes between members, solution vendors and the community.  He will also help to further develop and build partnerships with government entities and spearhead development of industry whitepapers and reports driven by AGMA members.

Manchi was elected to the AGMA Board in 2004 and most recently served as its Vice President.  Manchi has been an active member of AGMA and a strong advocate of the AGMA mission over the past four years.

Currently, Manchi is Director, Global Business Controls, Customer Advocacy Finance at Cisco Systems, leading Cisco's customer advocacy business controls organization.  His areas of focus include containment of unauthorized service usage, compliance initiatives and introducing and ensuring best practices in Cisco service access and usage.  Manchi has extensive knowledge on the topics of service abuse, gray markets, export compliance and the impact of unauthorized product on business and their customers.  Manchi has over twenty years of diversified global corporate experience.

Manchi's work experience includes several business areas including business development, supply-chain management and marketing.  Prior to Cisco, Manchi worked several years at AT&T and Lucent.

Manchi also served on the Board and is Treasurer of One World Children's Fund, a non-profit organization to serve underprivileged and orphans worldwide.

Marla Briscoe, Vice President and Public Relations Chair

Marla Briscoe was re-elected AGMA's Vice President in July of 2007, having previously served as Vice President from 2001 to 2005, and most recently as Secretary.  Briscoe has been a driving force in the development and global expansion of AGMA, and as Vice President takes an active leadership role in supporting the AGMA President in spearheading the organization's growth and strategy. Briscoe is also currently the Chairperson of the PR committee, a role in which she has helped champion the awareness of AGMA's efforts and helped develop AGMA's reputation as a thought leader on gray market and counterfeit technology issues.

Briscoe is Brand Protection-Americas Manager for Hewlett Packard and is responsible for the global management, education and prosecution of gray market infringements.  She has a strong legal background, which is balanced by her excellent business process management.

Prior to the merger between HP and Compaq, Briscoe served as Legal and Investigative Manager for Compaq's Global Cross Border Office which was responsible for driving mitigation of gray market activity for Compaq.  Before coming to Compaq, she was a transactional attorney with the firm of Doherty, Doherty & Adams and a litigator with Filteau, Sullivan & Georgantas.  Briscoe attended The University of Houston Law Center and upon graduating clerked for the Court of Appeals for the First Judicial District of Texas, Houston Division.

Marie Myers was instrumental in the formation of AGMA, the first technology industry association to address gray marketing of which HP is a founding member.  Myers currently serves as the President Emeritus.

A global executive with over 12 years of experience in international business, Myers is Hewlett Packard’s Vice President of Internal Audit, Finance and is responsible for the global internal audit department, managing key relationships with internal and external auditors.

Myers served as Director of Internal Audit and in a prior role, was the Director of Finance, Worldwide Sales and Services, where she led Compaq’s initiative to address global gray market issues.  Myers was responsible for worldwide audits of distribution channels and developing global business practices and strategies to prevent the diversion of Compaq branded products.  Prior to joining Compaq, Myers held several management positions in Australia for the Department of Trade and Industry and Treasury.

Myers has a Master of Business Administration from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, TX and graduated from the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia with a Bachelors of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Peter Dyer was elected to AGMA's board as Secretary and Membership Chair in August 2007.  Over the past 2 years, Dyer has been a strong global advocate for AGMA. Dyer will help AGMA's efforts in membership growth and actively assist AGMA enhance their membership activities and benefits.
Dyer currently directs business governance for Sun Microsystems and is accountable for the global identification and resolution of gray market matters through to litigation.  He is also responsible for global deal management and process compliance and works with key business and process leaders to design and deploy world class governance assessment programs, driving process improvement and profitability.

Dyer manages a global team which partners closely with legal, audit, finance and security functions within Sun.

Dyer has a wide and detailed knowledge across all areas of governance and has worked in the IT industry for 22 years. Dyer specializes in audit, business controls, channel and sales operations and customer fulfillment at Sun Microsystems, and formerly had similar focuses with IBM.  Dyer has extensive experience in global business and has spent much time with Sun over the last 4 years operating in the Asia Pacific Region.

Dyer received a Bachelor of Arts Honors degree in English from the University of Stirling in Scotland. He is currently based in the UK.

Peter Hlavnicka was elected AGMA Treasurer in 2005 while already serving as a member of AGMA’s Board of Directors since 2004, and is responsible for AGMA’s financial health.

Hlavnicka is responsible for Nortel’s Global Enterprise Pricing and Brand Management.  Hlavnicka has been one of the key players at Nortel in the developing and implementing internal processes and controls as well as channel and end user awareness to prevent gray and black market of Nortel branded products.

Prior to his role with Nortel’s Global Enterprise Marketing, Hlavnicka brings over 14 years of experience in various Sales & Marketing, Business Development, Operations, and Engineering positions.  Prior to Nortel, Hlavnicka worked on his PhD in cybernetics and artificial intelligence at Technical University Kosice in Slovakia.  He received a master's degree from Technical University Kosice in Slovakia and a MBA from University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Anne Kiernan was elected to AGMA's board in 2005 and has been an active member since 2003.

Kiernan is currently Vice President of Worldwide Sales Operations for Hitachi Global Storage Technologies in San Jose, California.  In this role, she is responsible for sales operations, contract negotiations, channel compliance and customer fulfillment for distributors and OEMs worldwide.

Kiernan's work experience has spanned over 21 years.  Starting with IBM in 1985, she has held various financial planning positions, including development and SG&A expense, and also worked as a pricing manager for the PC division.

Kiernan also has global experience serving two international assignments, one in Hungary at IBM's European HDD manufacturing plant, where she was responsible for the start up of the Greenfield financial organization; and one in China, acting as interim CFO for a manufacturing facility.  Returning to the states, Kiernan served as a business advisor to the Vice President of Finance for the Technology Group before taking a position at IBM as Worldwide Sales Operations Director.  Prior to the joint venture, she led the effort for sales on the pre-merger integration work to combine IBM and Hitachi's hard disk drive businesses.

Kiernan received her Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and Law from Clarkson University in New York.

Franziska Hanreich has rejoined the AGMA board as the Seagate Representative in January 2008; she previously served on AGMA's board from 2005-2006 as a representative of Maxtor Corporation.

Hanreich was recently appointed Director of Global Marketing Integrity by Seagate. Her responsibilities include developing practices and strategies for the continued mitigation of product diversions.

Franziska joined Seagate with more than 25 years experience in the storage industry, including 10 years at Maxtor. While at Maxtor, Hanreich has also served as Director of Sales & Marketing - Business Planning, responsible for managing worldwide desktop pricing and demand forecasting, as well as Director of Corporate Financial Planning. Prior to Maxtor, Hanreich has also held executive & management positions with Storage Tek (now Sun Microsystems) and JD Edwards (now Oracle).

Roger Klein was elected to the board of AGMA in 2006 and has been an active member over the past two year.

Klein has held a variety of director and vice president level product management positions at startups and established technology companies in the storage and server industry, including Burroughs Corporation, Unisys, CMD Technology, and QLogic Corporation, where he is currently the vice president and general manager of the Computer Systems Group business unit.

As head of the Computer Systems Group, he has overall responsibility for the company’s highly successful and market-leading Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and ASICs, as well as the company's new iSCSI and TOE HBA and ASIC product lines.

Klein is a graduate of The Ohio State University.

Phyllis Massey was elected to the board in 2007 and represents HP.  Massey is a founding member of AGMA and has participated in several AGMA projects since the inception of AGMA in 2001.

Massey is the Manager of HP’s Brand Protection Team, and is responsible for the development and execution of Hewlett-Packard‘s global gray market mitigation strategy, managing a worldwide team. This includes the development of global business practices and policies to prevent the diversion of HP branded products, and tracking the success of the strategy.  She joined the team in 1999 and has provided its leadership for the last 5 years before and after the HP and Compaq merger.

Prior to the merger between HP and Compaq, Massey held several positions in the North America region in Human Resources and Channel Marketing.  Massey has a broad educational and business background with over 30 years of experience in sales, marketing and brand protection management.

Massey has an MBA from the University of Southern California in New Venture Management, and has worked for such corporations as Toshiba and Frigidaire.

Mathew Vaughan was elected to the AGMA board in 2007 and has been a member since 2003.

Vaughan is currently the Director of Corporate Security for 3Com Corporation. His responsibilities and areas of expertise include brand protection, physical security, investigations, converged information security, risk management and safety for 3Com's world wide operations. He has lead 3Com's anti gray market and counterfeit programs since 2004 which resulted in successful raids, prosecutions and recoveries for 3Com across the globe.

Vaughan has 17 years of experience in security management and investigations and is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Protection Professional (CPP), and a member of the International Security Managers Association (ISMA).

Vaughan received his BSS degree in Administration of Justice from Southern Illinois University..

Lily Mei is responsible for the strategic development and membership growth for AGMA.   As Executive Director, Mei drives and coordinates AGMA’s worldwide activities.  In 2004, Mei assisted with AGMA’s global rollout of the EMEA and APAC regional councils.

Prior to joining AGMA in 2003, Mei worked for 3Com Corporation for seven years.  She served as the Worldwide Sales Financial Planning and Analysis Manager and was responsible for managing worldwide pricing programs, channel claims programs and channel inventory reporting.

Mei brings AGMA over 12 years of experience in various marketing and sales roles.  Her background includes product management and strategic competitive analysis expertise which she has leveraged for both PC hardware manufacturer, AMAX Engineering, and a software management information systems company Shared Medical Systems now Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.