Meet our Bloggers

Eric Engelmann – President & CEO

Eric has provided strategic direction to Geonetric since its founding in 1999.  He has led Geonetric to many astounding accomplishments, including being named to the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing companies in the country for two years in a row, being recognized as the best place to work in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids Corridor by The Edge Magazine, and witnessing Geonetric clients winning 17 awards for Web excellence in 2007 alone.  Recognitions such as these illustrate his dedication to providing a superior product, working with innovative hospitals, as well as hiring talented, fun people. 

Ben Dillon – Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

Ben is a co-owner of Geonetric and serves as a thought leader for Geonetric’s prospects and clients – writing and speaking extensively about Geonetric’s research in eHealth and the industry leading efforts of its clients. With 12 years of professional experience in information technology, business and healthcare, he has helped lead Geonetric through its rapid growth.

Linda Barnes – Vice President, Marketing & Communications

 Linda brings more than 20 years of experience in marketing, communications, sales, strategic planning, and project management. She leads the marketing activities at Geonetric, evolving the company’s brand in order to increase awareness and drive market share. Her responsibilities include evaluating and building key industry partnerships. She also helps Geonetric meet business objectives by successfully planning and executing the company’s sales strategies.

 Sandra VanWyk-Fancher, PMP – Vice President, Operations

Sandra is dedicated to the success of Geonetric’s clients, overseeing and managing their initiatives and innovations from kickoff through launch. With more than 15 years experience, she leads the client services team working with them to develop new methods for optimizing engagements, including product planning, communication and strategic planning, site content planning, project management, quality and coding standards. Sandra is a certified Project Management Professional and SCRUM Master. 

Josh Griffin – Director of IT

Josh assists clients and provides technical support for their VitalSite implementations and is responsible for the daily IT operations at Geonetric, including network security and disaster recovery. Josh works with both the development and project management teams to establish best practices for client support. Prior to working at Geonetric, Josh ran an IT department of 60 personal supporting a network of over 6,000 on an aircraft carrier, serving as Lead Systems Engineer for the Ronal Reagan Strike Group and was responsible for the USS Ronald Reagan’s MEDWeb eHealth platform.

Tracy Trettin- Director of Marketing

Tracy develops and executes Geonetric’s marketing communication strategy and manages the creation of collateral and sales tools. Tracy brings more than ten years of experience to Geonetric, including experience developing integrated marketing strategies and plans to enhance brand awareness, improve market positioning and increase sales. Most recently, Tracy served as director of marketing and communications for NSCA, a national trade organization.  Prior to NSCA, Tracy held the position of marketing manager at Stamats, a national higher education marketing firm. 

Matt Youngblut - Engineering Manager

Matt leads a talented team of developers who create custom Web and Intranet applications for Geonetric’s clients.  He ensures his team uses their industry expertise and development knowledge to create function, accessible, and user-friendly applications for the healthcare industry.  Matt is an experienced Web consultant and developer and served Geonetric as an Application and Senior Application Developer before being promoted to management.

Deb Rolfes – Market Strategy Manager

Deb develops and maintains relationships with partners to advance product and sales development at Geonetric. To do this successfully, Deb implements a team concept to partnerships and brings in subject matter experts to analyze their areas of expertise. In addition to her partnership role, Deb is also instrumental in identifying and applying for grants to advance business goals.

Heather Stanley – Marketing Communications Manager

Heather writes and edits engaging copy including articles, media releases, case studies, newsletters, Web content, white papers and ROI stories for a variety of Geonetric’s audiences.  She brings eight years of marketing experience to Geonetric most recently as a copywriter at The Whetstone Group and director of communications at the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce. 

Kelly Hidlebaugh - Online Communications Manager

Webmaster. Project Manager. Writer. Kelly wears many hats in her role as online communications manager. She recently oversaw the complete redesign of Geonetric’s public Web site and now performs daily maintenance and enhancements.  She also manages Geonetric’s product demonstration site, CedarView, as well as Geonetric’s presence in the social media space.

David Sturtz- Product Owner

As the product owner at Geonetric, David is responsible for representing the ‘voice of the customer’ and helps prioritize and define future product enhancements.  In this vital role, David works diligently to collect the needs of various audiences and translate that information back to the development team.  Overall David draws on his extensive background in user-centered design to ensure Geonetric’s products are intelligent and intuitive. 

Eric George- eBusiness Strategist

Eric works with hospitals and health systems to help identify their online needs and understand the way they approach eHealth initiatives.  He is always eager to demonstrate how Geonetric products and services help hospitals meet the high expectations of their site visitors.  Eric brings more than 10 years of sales, customer service and management experience. 

 Angie Toomsen- Content Strategist

Angie manages all stages of client content from information architecture to writing, editing, placement and visual formatting. After a site’s launch, Angie helps steward content effectiveness through monthly and quarterly statistics and analysis, as well as through daily product and content support. Angie works with clients to improve readability and searchability and teaches principles of purpose-driven, user-centered content. 

Anne Ohrt – Human Resources & Event Coordinator

As the human resources manager, Anne welcomes every new employee to Geonetric with a smiling face and goes out of her way to make sure every employee feels at home. She is involved daily with recruiting and training employees, as well as coordinating internal communications and managing employee benefits. Anne is the mastermind behind the fun and engaging internal events and parties, and she takes a lead role in organizing the company’s annual client event, the eHealth Symposium.

Jim Kropa – Senior Application Developer

Jim leads Geonetric’s development team to construct interactive Web applications and portal solutions. He plays an essential role on the development team, helping to create an overarching software framework which is flexible enough to be integrated with diverse applications. He also provides insightful critical analysis of new technology and recommendations for integration.

 Angie Brunow – Senior Project Manager

Angie interacts with clients on a daily basis, managing projects throughout the entire deployment process, down to the smallest detail. She streamlines communications to ensure consistency, productivity and clarity for clients. Angie has been instrumental in launching GeoKits, which offers tools to help clients promote health awareness.  She also is the product owner for Geonetric’s Policy and Procedure Manager, which helps hospitals organize and streamline their documentation management.

 Devendra Shrikhande -Senior Project Manager

Devendra manages the implementation process for Geonetric’s VitalSite platform; ensuring projects stay on time and continually meet client needs.  He is the main point of contact for a number of key client initiatives.  Devendra has more than eight years of experience building and refining Web presences for various agencies including healthcare, non-profit, higher education, e-commerce, publishing, engineering and real estate. Some of the roles he has fulfilled include designer, developer, director, and project manager.

Megan Heater - Senior Project Manager

Possessing impressive communication and project management skills, Megan works diligently to ensure projects stay on course from kickoff to launch, and beyond.  With extensive work on process development, Megan creates strategic implementation plans for her clients and ensures overall client satisfaction and the delivery of a quality product.  Megan brings more than five years of experience in the IT field to Geonetric, including excellent client relations skills, experience with business requirements gathering and testing, as well as a proven project execution ability.  She honed these skills while as a business systems analyst manager at AEGON and as a project manager at Rockwell-Collins.

Kristen Everett – Data Analyst

Kristen uses her detailed, number-crunching skills to help generate case studies for Geonetric’s client initiatives. With an original background in actuarial science, Kristen brings to the table strong skills in mathematics, business analysis, finance and marketing. She is an integral part of Geonetric’s Annual Survey on Initiatives in eHealth, thoroughly analyzing survey data and developing trend maps. She is a key member of the business development team, handling database updates and SQL queries, as well as performing market research.

Blayne Fielder – Content Strategist

Blayne works with Geonetric’s clients to ensure their Web content appeals to their target audience and engages the reader to take action. He has more than seven years of experience in healthcare marketing and is a certified Google Adwords professional. Prior to Geonetric, he served as senior marketing consultant for St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, where his duties included content development for the hospital’s Web site.

Casey Hansen – Front-end Developer

Bridging client needs, fresh design and user experience isn’t always easy, but Casey balances this to perfection. As a front-end developer, Casey implements Web site designs and user interface tools for Geonetric’s clients. He brings new ideas and approaches to the design team and ensures final designs add value to both clients and end-users.

Jason Adams – Senior SQL Developer

Jason brings more than nine years of experience in database development and administration to Geonetric as a devoted SQL Developer.  His expertise is guiding our database modeling and design as well as database server configuration and setup.  Jason diligently works to improve query performance on the database, and also creates database objects such as tables, stored procedures, and user-defined functions.  For Geonetric clients, he provides detailed data reports.   Jason has experience in Visual Basic 6.0 and SQL Server 6.5, .NET, SQL Server 7.0, and SQL Server 2000. Jason is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist with SQL Server 2005.

 UshaRani Kachegere – Senior Application Developer

Usha is responsible for the development of VitalSite® modules, enabling consumers to easily navigate sites and find valuable information quickly. With excellent analytical skills and a strong understanding of object oriented programming concepts, Usha implements both site search functions and navigation interface tools that are streamlined and fully interchangeable. She has more than five years of experience in software development in .NET technologies and Web development with a knowledge base in Web programming using ASP.NET, Ajax, HTML, DHTML, JQuery and JavaScript.

Jill Ungs – Senior Project Manager

Jill personally welcomes all new clients to the Geonetric family by managing all project kickoffs.  She travels onsite and meets with Web site stakeholders to set the foundation for building an amazing Web presence. During project kickoff meetings, she helps new clients align the goals of the organization with the Web site and prioritizing their many online initiatives.  Jill is also in charge or creating and maintaining all of Geonetric’s training materials for clients, as well as producing and organizing client marketing materials.

Michael Deeter, Marketing Media Specialist

With video becoming an integral part of great design and modern storytelling, Michael handles all multimedia planning and production for Geonetric.  From promotional videos to online product demonstrations, he translates Geonetric’s brand into professional multimedia to support various communication needs.  He also lends his talents to help Geonetric fulfill its commitment to the local community by managing a Web site dedicated to flood recovery efforts in Cedar Rapids, Ia. Michael also plays a vital role in the design and development of a central community portal project.

Scott Youngblut, Application Developer

Scott is an essential member of Geonetric’s development team, writing developer-friendly interfaces to improve the speed of the overall development process.  He focuses on processor efficient codes, which improves the responsiveness of applications. Scott’s creative problem solving ability is put to use on many projects including the calendar and forms builder modules, as well as overall taxonomy. He is now working on integrating modules into portal applications.

John Oberreuter, SQL Developer

As a SQL developer at Geonetric, John creates and manages complex client database objects including tables, views, stored procedures and user-defined functions. He works closely with developers and clients to build effective processes for interacting with third-party providers and provides seamless data importing and exporting. John also uses his expertise to ensure data is properly secured and adheres to strict HIPAA and PCI compliance standards.

Pete Wendel, User Experience Researcher

Pete provides a critical component to Geonetric’s product team, aligning user experience needs with product management requirements. He fosters a dynamic, multi-disciplinary environment at Geonetric that encourages collaboration, invites challenge, and consistently exceeds business expectations.

Andy To, Application Developer

As online forms grow in both popularity and complexity, Andy ensures client forms are developed with usability and compliance in mind. In addition to managing forms development, Andy also enhances and maintains Geonetric’s policy and procedure functionality, as well as other various development tasks as client needs arise.

Andrea LeHew, Project Manager

As a project manager, Andrea provides strategic guidance and ongoing support to her clients.  From day-to-day project maintenance, to testing and training, Andrea coordinates project activities and works with developers and designers to ensure work is completed according to schedule. Andrea loves a challenge and is known for building strong client relationships and exceeding expectations.

Matt Hacker, Content Strategist

Matt’s unique mix of industry knowledge and online marketing expertise helps Geonetric’s clients consistently glean the highest possible value from their Web sites. He sets up and evaluates site analytics, helping create quarterly reports full of best practices and insightful recommendations. As one of Geonetric’s social media specialists, Matt works with clients to build effective online marketing campaigns tailored to each organization’s needs.  He also lends his knowledge of accessibility guidelines to designers and clients to help Geonetric build sites in a user-friendly and accessible fashion.

Katie Halligan, Project Manager

With strong communication skills and diligent attention to detail, Katie helps clients develop and improve their Web sites and manage their online activities.  She oversees day-to-day project implementation plans and ensures client satisfaction.

 

Grant Keiser – Senior Application Developer

Grant, a member of Geonetric’s team of lead developers, focuses on product and standards development for new versions and enhancements of Geonetric’s VitalSite® platform. Mr. Keiser also establishes the initial set-up process for VitalSite, building automated systems and administrating source control.

Carol Doser – Senior Project Manager

Carol’s 19 years of experience in the healthcare technology industry provides her with impressive insight into how to effectively implement hospital Web development projects. She continually looks for new ways to improve her clients’ online efforts, and her communication skills and attention to detail ensure project goals are met in the required timeframe.   

Michelle LeCompte – Content Strategist

Michelle comes to Geonetric with a wide range of project management and content development experience, principally in the area of healthcare. She was a founding partner of Think Safe, Inc., where she developed software providing interactive voice instructions for medical emergencies. Michelle has also written a book on pregnancy and childbirth, authored reference books for the Gale Group, and helped Gale transition its products from print to electronic media.