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Renee Lewis, President

Renee Lewis, President

Renee has 25 years of building successful businesses and business units. She loves to work with inspired business leaders who know they can do more with what they have but don’t have the time to invest to realize that potential. She has always leveraged her love of software engineering principles (that is, designing for efficiency and effectiveness) and getting things done through others (that is, managing difficult teams). Her most interesting adventures were turning around and then selling a technology company to Cerner (wonderful experience albeit tough ride), and creating a viable and productive team after a four-company merger to create a stronger offering in eLearning.

Renee earned a reputation for delivering on time and under budget technology and software systems. Her most interesting discovery was that it’s the people who deliver and create value while the technology is just a “means” to an “end-point.” When you don’t have the skills to harness the “means” to achieve a high-value “end-point,” you potentially fail yourself, your company and your client. Team after team, she proved this situation is avoidable when you give team members the right skills and targeted support, which is easy to achieve when you use our proven approach.

Today, Renee finds the best use of her skills and experience is working for inspired leaders to develop the skills and attitudes of that drive high-value outcomes and really make a difference either collectively or individually.  Blending her experience in eight different startup companies and her tenure in large Fortune 500’s, she also has a love for entrepreneurship and applying entrepreneurial methods in large organizational settings (“intrepreneurship”) to keep businesses thriving, fresh and alive. Interesting note: most intrepreneurial ideas come from client-facing managers described above.

Renee is a business owner, speaker, wife and mom. In her “spare” time, she is actively involved in her community supporting local civic and school associations. She spends time with her family at Deep Creek Lake whenever possible consuming every business or history book recommended to her (please send your favorite book referrals!).

Here’s a little more detail about Renee and details of her past travels.

Renee has held a variety of roles and responsibilities in a number of industries. Here is a list of key roles she has held during the last 30 years of her career:

  • Pensare Group, Founder, CEO and President. Business advisory services.
  • Galt Associates, CEO. Technology, informatics, and outcomes research services supporting drug safety research (pharmacovigilance). Sold to Cerner.
  • QED Solutions, COO & CTO. Technology, data and services supporting drug safety research.
  • KnowledgePlanet (now Minza), CTO and VP Engineering. eLearning and employee performance tools and services.
  • Saba Software, Director East Coast Consulting Services. eLearning tools and services.
  • Wellspring Resources (now Citi-Street). Director Health and Welfare Systems. Technology tools and services for benefits administration.
  • Bell Atlantic (now Verizon). Director Software Engineering for billing and customer care.
  • First Annapolis Consulting. CIO. Management consulting for banking and payment services.
  • Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Practice Leader for distributed database technologies and implementation supporting both DoD and Civilian agencies.

Renee stays actively involved in the both the professional and local communities aligned with her interests:

  • Women President’s Organization (WPO) DC and NoVA, Chapter Chair.  2012-
  • Path Forward Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, co-founder and instructor for the flagship women’s entrepreneurship program ACTiVATE.  2007-2014
  • Project Management Institute (PMI) Registered Consultant Program (RPC) Advisory Board.  2012-2014
  • George Washington Alumni Association, representative for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). 2013-
  • George Washington University’s National Council on Education and Human Development, and advisory council for the Graduate School of Education and Human Development (GSEHD) 2002-2012
  • Mentor for George Washington University’s Entrepreneurs Round Table (GWERT) 2010-2012
  • National Association for Women Business Owners (NAWBO), Board member 2009-2013
  • NAWBO Richmond, VA Awards Committee Member 2012-2013
  • Women in Technology (WIT) Mentor/Protégé program 2009-2010
  • Wood Acres Citizen’s Association (WACA). Past president 2004-2007
  • Wood Acres Elementary School PTA. Past co-President, Communications Committee 2005-2006

Her educational background and certifications include:

  • BS from Pennsylvania State University
  • MS from George Washington University
  • Certified Facilitator – Achievement Seminars International (ASI)
  • Certified Quality Process Advisor – Total Quality Institute (TQI)
  • Certified Facilitator – Attribute Index

Some other interesting facts about Renee:

  • Renee received the 2014 National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) of Great DC Woman of Distinction Award for her leadership and support of women business owners around the world.
  • In 2011, she received the Women Impacting Public Policy AT&T National Innovator of the Year as the Co-Founder of the Path Forward Center.In 2009, traveled with Vital Voices to support the Qatari Business Women’s forum in Doha, Qatar presenting a half day seminar “Operational Effectiveness: Looking at Your Business from the Inside Out”.
  • In 2009 and 2010, in conjunction with Vital Voices facilitated the charter development of the Women Business Network (WBN) of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
  • In 2010 she took part in the Tuck Executive Program.
  • August 2008, completed a trip with Meridian International to support entrepreneurship for women in South Africa discussing “Operating an Effective Business” in three different cities across the country. The work in South Africa was nominated for a Stevie Award (although we didn’t win the award, we still had a great time in NYC).
  • Invented and patented a method for describing syndromes (ontology) using a commonly used taxonomy for drug safety.
  • Many moons ago, co-authored a paper for eXtreme Markup and eGov conference in 2004 called “Usability Imperative Inherent in Semantic Web” and co-authored a paper in 1990 for the Association for Computing Machinery in 1990 called “An Adaptation of Function Point Analysis and COCOMO for Estimating the Cost of Application Development Using SQL*Forms”
  • Co-authored and published a peer-reviewed paper with PMI in 2012 called “PM: Project Management or People Management?”
  • Frequently speaks on topics such as Technologists can Sell and Maintain Their Integrity;  Outperforming the Competition through Value;  Action Strategies that Actually Work; Customer Loyalty Strategies that Improve Sales; and Keeping up with the Fast Pace of Change in Business.
  • Regularly judges for George Washington’s Business Plan competition through the Office of Technology Transfer and Entrepreneurship as well as the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
  • Is an Official Blogger for:  World Business Forum (2009), World Innovation Forum (2010 and 2011), and NFTE (2011).
  • Is featured in Gordon Bernhardt’s work Profiles in Success.
  • Soccer/basketball/football mom.
  • Frequents Deep Creek Lake (DCL) year-round.