A SHORT HISTORY
Matt Sakurada and Eric Williamson founded Transdata’s parent company, Blue Flash Solutions, in 2011, with the goal of creating advanced, yet cost effective and easy-to-use business modeling and simulation software.
Following several years of design, development, and testing, its flagship product TRANSDATA® became available on the market, together with support and consultative services. The development team continues to upgrade and update the system on a recurring basis, primarily incorporating suggestions from the install base.
Our evolution and growth to-date have been made possible due to the skill, participation, and commitment of our great team:
MANAGEMENT TEAM
MATT SAKURADA
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Matt founded Transdata Solutions with Eric Williamson in 2013. A veteran executive of multiple electrical generation and renewable power companies (Greenlight Energy, BP Wind, Westmoreland Energy, Newport Generation). He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering, a Masters of Engineering, and an MBA. Matt has diverse experience and interests, including being a chef and beer brewer at home.
JIM MESSINA
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
A strategic marketing and business development leader with more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience, Jim brings extensive experience defining, delivering, marketing and selling timely, profitable digital products, SaaS solutions, online products and professional services to small, medium, and enterprise businesses. Jim is a graduate of Harvard University and is an avid fan of all New England sport teams.
ADEE FEINSTEIN
Chief Operating Officer
Adee is a recycled entrepreneur who has started and developed businesses in Healthcare Information Technology, Patient Digital Health, Insurance Eligibility Screening, FinTech, and Enterprise Resource Planning Manufacturing Systems, all of which involved extensive sales and marketing efforts. A disciplined business developer and sales aficionado, Adee is a strong market communicator skilled in multiple media. All three of his children are musical creators and performers (Bluegrass-Rock-Hip Hop).
ANDY KERFONTA
CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER & CO-FOUNDER
TAL YIFAT
Director Data Science
Dr. Yifat is a data scientist who likes to work in the space between technology, users, and business, building data solutions that make good sense on all three fronts. He has extensive experience developing analytics software for multiple industries, leading teams, and engaging clients and is proficient with a wide range of data science techniques, including statistical modeling, machine learning, and deep learning. Tal has served in command roles in a technological intelligence unit in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he researched innovation processes that lead to the alignment of commercial success with social and environmental value creation. He loves exploring new places with his family through longs hikes and good food.
ADVISORY BOARD
ERIC WILLIAMSON
ADVISORY BOARD CHAIR
As a passionate believer in helping out companies data problems by mainly helping the data workers, Eric believes that software can be designed to help those that work with data become far more effective then they currently are. As a former programmer, he knows that software can do much more than the forced design limits and behaviors that software today contains that are imposed upon companies and workers. These software designs that purposely follow rigid norms that ultimately are conformity in the name of standardization, rather than fit for purpose design meeting the needs of the company and those that work with the data within.
In this spirit, Eric Williamson is a serial inventor with his name listed as the inventor on dozens of patents. He helped originate some of the core ideas behind the Transdata Solutions application. Eric currently works in the Corporate Finance and Accounting field focusing on solution delivery and business and process improvement, i.e. solving business data problems.
Eric holds a BS in Finance, a BS in Economics and a MBA.
ZEYDY ORTIZ, Ph.D.
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Dr. Ortiz has helped teams and organizations translate data into actionable insights to influence business strategy. Her strong analytical experience includes statistical analysis, modeling, simulation, and predictive analysis. An effective leader and recognized industry contributor, she is experienced in leading cross-disciplinary teams, and communicating across the organization at different levels.
JEFFERSON HEARD
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Jefferson Heard is a serial entrepreneur and software professional who is committed to an idea of “humane” software, which lets highly skilled people apply their experience and domain knowledge effectively without forcing them to become software or computer experts. He has been a co-founder of two software startups and is currently the Principal Software Engineer at TeamWorks in Downtown Durham. In addition, he is an accomplished data scientist, former research staff at UNC Chapel Hill’s Renaissance Computing Institute, and a data science mentor with Thinkful, Inc.
Jeff holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Central Arkansas, and an MS in Computer Science from the Illinois Institute of Technology.
MARK SELF
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Mark Self is the President & Chief Executive Officer of Entigral, Inc., a leader in sensor automation and smart manufacturing. Prior to Entigral, Mr. Self was the Vice President of Marketing for the retail division of NCR. Previously, he drove vertical industry strategy and execution at Motorola Solutions where he served as Vice President, Industry Solutions Group. Prior to that, he held various sales and marketing positions at IBM.
Mr. Self has devoted the majority of his career solving problems in the retail, manufacturing, and supply chain industries. He specializes in: go-to-market strategies, channel strategies, market positioning, market segmentation, sales strategy and execution. He holds a BS from the University of California, Davis, and a Masters of Management from Northwestern University.
ASHOK KRISHNAMURTHY, PH.D.
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Ashok Krishnamurthy is the Deputy Director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), and a Research Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is also the Director for the Biomedical Informatics Service at NC TraCS. Krishnamurthy has many years of experience with informatics and data science including data science cyber-infrastructure, medical image analysis, time series data analysis, machine learning and high performance computing. He has over 15 years’ experience as both a researcher and an administrator in advancing cutting-edge research in interdisciplinary teams. Krishnamurthy collaborates with researchers in informatics, biomedical and health research, and social sciences to develop projects and programs that leverage the power of data science and scalable computing to solve challenging problems that advance the state-of-the-art. He advises undergraduate, and graduate students, and mentors post-doctoral scholars and junior investigators. He is also involved in managing and enhancing research partnerships with faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University, and building relationships between RENCI and Triangle area businesses. Ashok’s research over the years has been funded by NSF, NIH, DoD, DARPA and DOE.
Prior to joining RENCI and UNC in 2013, Krishnamurthy was for many years at the Ohio Supercomputer Center and a faculty member at The Ohio State University. While at OSC, Krishnamurthy played a crucial role in establishing OSC’s successful industrial outreach initiative called Blue Collar Computing. He also helped develop and deploy cyberinfrastructure that allows researchers to easily access and use computing and storage resources at OSC.
Krishnamurthy holds PhD and master’s degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology.
GREGORY LEWANDOWSKI
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER
Gregory is the founder and president of Lewandog, Inc., a Data Analytics consultancy focused on helping clients transform their information cultures and embrace the new world of BI tools. Gregory leans on 20 years of experience in the Enterprise, where he has enjoyed success across multiple leadership roles and functions, including: Sales, Channels, Operations, Finance and others, using company data resources and organizational partnerships to aid the growth and scale of BI practices. His professional passions include Transformation, the creation of Centers of Excellence, Data Visualization, Storytelling, and aiding others in more effectively communicating with data.
A natural collaborator who uses data & analytics to tell stories, tease out insights, and aid others in articulating the questions they did not know they had, he holds a B.S from the University at Buffalo School of Management.
A devoted husband and a proud father, Gregory volunteers extensively with the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University.