IEEE Management Council

Sophia (“Sophie”) Muirhead became IEEE’s Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer (COO) in January 2023. She manages a US$500 million+ business enterprise with a worldwide staff of over 1,100 employees.

Prior to becoming the Executive Director and COO, Sophie was IEEE’s General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer for four years, where she served as a trusted business and legal advisor to the organization’s Presidents and CEOs, Boards of Directors, senior volunteer leaders, and global staff.

Before joining IEEE in 2019, Sophie spent two decades at The Conference Board (TCB), a global business membership organization founded in 1917, with a mission to help its members anticipate what’s ahead, improve their performance, and better serve society. There she served as TCB’s first-ever Chief Legal Officer, building a legal team and internal legal function from scratch. She also had various operations roles, including leading TCB’s Marketing and Communications Center.

Sophie is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, the New York State Bar Association, and the Association of Corporate Counsel. She also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Hunter College Foundation and is a Trustee of the United Engineering Foundation.

Sophie graduated from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor and a contributor to the Harvard International Law Journal. Born and raised on the island of Jamaica, she received a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Hunter College, graduating magna cum laude, and also studied at the University of London and Boston University.

Dr. Cherif Amirat is currently the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at IEEE. Prior to joining IEEE, Dr. Amirat was a Senior Director of Business Technology at Pfizer Inc. with global responsibility for IT teams across the Emerging Markets where he directed digital marketing strategies and solutions.

Cherif has also worked in finance, management consulting, and as a member of Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories. He was an adjunct professor in various colleges and universities and is currently a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University teaching an "Information Technology Strategy" course for graduate students.

Cherif holds a master's degree and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. Cherif is an IEEE Senior member.

Liesel Bell became IEEE’s Chief Human Resources Officer in January 2023. She guides the organization’s overall strategic plans and development from a human-resources and employee-experience perspective. She joined IEEE as Senior Director, Human Resources, in December 2019.

Prior to joining IEEE, Liesel was with Tata Global Beverages, a division of Tata Enterprises, as the Vice President, Human Resources, for Canada, America, and Australia. In this role she was responsible for the design and execution of their strategic human-capital priorities. Over her career she has led HR teams in varied industries, such as consumer packaged goods, mobile-phone service delivery, water utility, retail, and manufacturing.

Liesel earned her bachelor’s degree in management from Pace University and holds a master’s degree in organizational behavior from Iona University. She is a professional member of the Society for Human Resource Management and World at Work.

She previously served on the board of the Hudson Valley Children’s Museum and as a volunteer for the Boy Scouts of America, Girl Scouts of America, and the American Red Cross.

Anta Cisse-Green is General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at IEEE. Anta has in-depth legal and compliance knowledge from multi-tiered organizations similar to IEEE. Prior to IEEE, Anta was General Counsel at the State University of New York, based in Albany, USA. She served as the chief legal officer to the 18-member Board of Trustees, SUNY’s Chancellor, and various members of campus leadership across 64 campuses, managing a team of over 85 attorneys, legal support staff, and professional staff; and a staff of 15 people in risk and compliance. She also provided legal support to each of the Presidents of the 29-state-operated SUNY campuses and their respective college councils, which serve as the advisory body for each campus; the SUNY University Faculty Senate, a governance body created by the SUNY Board and the official agency through which the university faculty engage in the governance of SUNY; along with many other key areas.

Anta also has life-long experiences of supporting and giving to communities in addition to building and leading teams by establishing cultures of accountability, fun, integrity, and diversity of thought. This was taught to her very early in her life through her family who immigrated to the US from Senegal, West Africa. Her family taught her the Senegalese concept of “teranga,” which means hospitality steeped in the foundation of kindness, respect, charity, and generosity. Anta’s broad-based background in grant agreements, tax law, commercial agreements, various international private foundations, charitable organizations, and lifelong experiences enables her to bring a wealth of experience to this role as she collaborates with IEEE’s Board of Directors, volunteer leaders, Executor Director, Management Council, and staff.

Anta, a 2022 inductee in the Cedar Crest College Alumnae Hall of Fame, has also spent time on campus presenting to students, alumnae, and the community on leadership and networking skills. Anta is a mother to three children (two boys and a girl) and enjoys spending time with her husband in Montclair, NJ, USA, where they binge their favorite shows and travel around the world.

Russell Harrison was named IEEE-USA's Managing Director in 2023, where he concurrently serves as Director of Government Relations. Russell is responsible for managing IEEE's Washington office, supporting IEEE-USA's Board of Directors, serving on the IEEE Management Council, and providing overall direction to IEEE-USA's government relations, member and professional activities, and communications programs. He is also the staff lead for IEEE's Global Public Policy Committee, which oversees IEEE's worldwide policy activities.

Russell has spent 25 years in the association government relations world. Prior to joining IEEE in 2003, he represented the Institute of Scrap Recycling, the American Iron and Steel Institute, and the American Trucking Association on Capitol Hill. Outside of IEEE, Russell is a member of the Manassas, VA, USA’s Planning Commission, is a former Chair of the Manassas Electoral Board, and has served on a number of nonprofit Board of Directors, including the Virginia state PTA.

Russell has a Master’s in Public Management, with a focus on International Trade Relations, from the University of Maryland, and a B.A. in Political Science from Allegheny College. He is a Planning Commissioner (Virginia Tech).

Karen L. Hawkins is the Chief Marketing Officer of IEEE. She is the leader of the Marketing, Sales, and Design organization, a cross-functional and highly talented team of professionals spanning sales, marketing, communications, product management, digital innovation, and customer engagement for IEEE worldwide. Karen and the team bring their expertise and diverse global marketing, commercial, and general management experience in the marketing and sale of intellectual property, creating and executing strategies to help further IEEE’s mission through developing talented professionals in a team environment, driving global expansion, facilitating new product development, and raising the visibility of the engineering profession.
 
Her career began in book publishing, serving in editorial and sales roles with Little, Brown and Company, Delmar Publishers, and John Wiley and Sons, Inc. During her 20-year tenure at IEEE she has held leadership positions in the Marketing, Sales, and Publications groups. Most recently Karen led the product design department responsible for the development, management, and marketing of new and existing information products. This team works to diversify and grow IEEE’s portfolio of products and services consistent with the IEEE mission.

Karen earned a B.S. in Communications from Boston University. She served on the Association of Learned and Scholarly and Publishers, North America Steering Committee, and co-chaired their Continuing Education Committee. She was also a member of the Purdue University Press Management Advisory Board.
 

Steven Heffner is the Managing Director, Publications, for IEEE, where he is responsible for the strategic vision and general operations of the institute’s portfolio of learned journals, books (through IEEE Press), and magazines, including Spectrum and The Institute.  Steven and the publications leadership team work with IEEE’s dedicated volunteers to develop and execute on strategic priorities for the publishing program that advance the IEEE’s objectives, meet the practical needs of researchers and engineers in academia and industry, and meet the highest standards of scholarly integrity.

Before joining IEEE in 2020, Steven was Vice President of Product Strategy at Wolters Kluwer Health, with direct responsibility for the Lippincott line of journals in medicine and nursing, the medical education and practice book collection, the institutional research platform Ovid, and other digital solutions for education, medical practice, and industry. Prior to Wolters Kluwer, Steven held various editorial and management positions in the trade, business, and policy sectors.

Steven has served on the Executive Council of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers, the board of the scholarly dark archive CLOCKSS, and co-chair of the PROSE Awards for excellence in scholarly and professional publishing. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Haverford College.

As Staff Executive of Corporate Activities, Donna Hourican directs strategic initiatives at the organizational level, a role that encompasses the leadership of IEEE’s corporate development and recognition, governance, enterprise strategy, philanthropic, and history functions. Donna also manages efforts to enhance and expand the global reach and impact of IEEE through the development of collaborative partnerships with other forward-focused organizations within the corporate, academic, governmental, and NGO communities.

Donna has been a vital part of IEEE’s growth and development since joining IEEE in 1995, particularly in her roles as Senior Director of the Business and Data-Related Services unit of IEEE, as Controller, and as Program Director for IEEE Collabratec^® and the IEEE Business Platform.

As leader of the IEEE Business and Data-Related Services unit, Donna has been responsible for stewardship of enterprise product, promotional and customer data; campaign management; enterprise release management for enhancements to IEEE’s business systems; and business intelligence efforts. In addition to these key enterprise roles, Donna served as Acting CIO from 2014 through 2015, overseeing the design, development, deployment, budgeting, and management of IEEE information technologies.

Donna earned her B.S. in Accounting from St. John’s University, NY, USA, where she was inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma, and was a former auditor for Coopers & Lybrand, LLP, specializing in financial services.

Cecelia Jankowski is the staff lead responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the member and geographic activities business unit. IEEE has more than 400,000 members and over 4,000 geographic units in 160 countries.

Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) responsibilities include the IEEE-wide strategy for member and membership development and member engagement in IEEE throughout the member’s lifecycle; member operations and the IEEE Contact Center; and geographic operations and volunteer engagement and leadership development. This includes responsibility for the IEEE offices in Singapore and Boston and those in the geographic units. 

Cecelia holds the B.A. degree with honors in Electrical Engineering from the SUNY at Stony Brook, a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Polytechnic University, in New York and a Master of Business Administration from Rutgers University. 

Prior to IEEE, Cecelia was at Northrop Grumman Corporation, Bethpage, New York, USA, where she progressed through a number of technical and management positions. Technical areas at Grumman included: application and integration of computer-aided engineering/computer-aided design (CAE/CAD) into the aerospace and avionics systems design and analysis process; development of digital signal processing architectures and hardware for next-generation radar systems applications; and computer system security. Cecelia  holds three patents for signal processing hardware and has written and presented technical papers at conferences of the IEEE, AIAA, SPIE, and SWE. She received awards from Grumman, IEEE, AIAA and Eta Kappa Nu, for her technical and professional accomplishments

Cecelia is a professional engineer and has been active in a number of professional associations and currently is a Senior Member of IEEE, Associate Fellow of AIAA, and a member of both Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies.

A globally recognized leader in standards development and intellectual property, Dr. Ing. Konstantinos Karachalios is managing director of the IEEE Standards Association and a member of the IEEE Management Council.

As managing director, he has been enhancing IEEE efforts in global standards development in strategic emerging technology fields, through technical excellence of staff, expansion of global presence and activities and emphasis on inclusiveness and good governance, including reform of the IEEE standards-related patent policy.

As member of the IEEE Management Council, he championed expansion of IEEE influence in key techno-political areas, including consideration of social and ethical implications of technology, according to the IEEE mission to advance technology for humanity. Results have been rapid in coming and profound; IEEE is becoming the place to go for debating and building consensus on issues such as a trustworthy and inclusive Internet and ethics in design of autonomous systems.

Before IEEE, Konstantinos played a crucial role in successful French-German cooperation in coordinated research and scenario simulation for large-scale nuclear reactor accidents. And with the European Patent Office, his experience included establishing EPO’s patent academy, the department for delivering technical assistance for developing countries and the public policy department, serving as an envoy to multiple U.N. organizations.

Konstantinos earned a Ph.D. in energy engineering (nuclear reactor safety) and masters in mechanical engineering from the University of Stuttgart.

Jamie Moesch joined IEEE in December 2007 and was appointed Managing Director of Educational Activities in January 2016. Jamie leads the staff team of Educational Activities to achieve the shared vision of success built with partners on the IEEE Educational Activities Board and other education stakeholders throughout IEEE. His direct responsibilities involve developing the education strategy and management of the programs, products, and services led by the department including: continuing and professional education, pre-university education, university education, standards education, awards, and IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu (IEEE-HKN).

Prior to joining Educational Activities, Jamie was the Senior Director of the Member Experience. In this role, he was responsible for the overall IEEE member experience across the globe. This included orchestrating the enterprise-wide member strategy, membership sales and marketing, constant improvement of the member product portfolio, management of member life-cycle engagement programs, and the service experience provided to members.

Prior to IEEE, Jamie was the Director of Business Operations at Easylink Services International Corporation (now part of OpenText Corporation), and Director of Sales for Quantex Microsystems. He holds an MBA in Finance and a B.A. in Psychology, both from Rutgers University.

Tom Siegert joined IEEE as CFO in 2010. In his current role, Tom is responsible for leading the finance and business administration effort within IEEE. Tom is a member of the IEEE Management Council and supports the company’s Finance, Audit, and Investment Committees.

Prior to joining IEEE, Tom had roles of increasing responsibility in the pharmaceutical, advertising, and financial services industries.

Tom earned a B.A. degree (with honors) in Economics from Boston College and an MBA in Finance from Pace University.

Tom is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (NJ) and has taught Accounting and Finance courses at Villanova University and Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Mary Ward-Callan is the IEEE Staff Executive responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the IEEE Technical Activities business unit. The IEEE has 46 technical Societies and Councils, several technical Committees (such as RFID, Smart Grid and Life Sciences), over 2,000 conferences, 145 Society publications, several certification programs, as well as numerous symposium, technical training seminars, and tutorials. Mary manages approximately 300 individuals who support these activities as well as support the IEEE Meetings and Conference Business. She also oversees an effort to increase the IEEE coverage in new technology areas and to apply IEEE member technical expertise to pressing world problems.

Mary is a Certified Association Executive, holds the B.A. degree in Mathematics from Vassar College (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa), and the M.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering and Computing from Princeton University. She completed the Executive Development Program at Bellcore as well as numerous other key management courses. 

Prior to joining IEEE, Mary was employed in the telecommunications industry by Telcordia, Bellcore, and Bell Labs. Mary’s career included significant contributions in local loop design, network simulation, network operations and management, sub-network control, and product testing and certification. She has extensive experience in business management, process re-engineering, quality, and project management. Mary managed network operations activities for several technologies such as SONET, ATM, DLC, and SMDS. Her last assignment at Telcordia was as the Executive Director of Product Testing and Certification and Bellcore Segment Manager for Supplier Certification and Conformance Testing. In this role, Mary launched the Bellcore Product Certification Program and corresponding Certification Mark. Mary also led an incubator effort with the automotive industry to transfer their private virtual networks onto the Internet, one of the very first implementations of VPNs.

Mary is a Senior member of IEEE and a member of ASAE.