Masa has 25 years of experience in the software industry. His first contact with lean took place when he was a graduate student in Japan; and with agile before the Agile Manifesto itself was created. Masa applied that knowledge, and gained experience, at many of the companies he worked for until he decided to start his own Lean-Agile, Kanban, and Value Innovation practice--founding Shojiki Solutions--in 2008.

In addition to being our CEO, Masa is also an associate with David J Anderson & Associates (David J Anderson is the creator of the Kanban Method for technology businesses); and a Senior Consultant with the Cutter Consortium, where he specializes in Kanban, Lean-Agile Mangagement, and Value Innovation.

In the USA worked at Apple Computer's R&D campus in Cupertino California on the Mac operating system. He then joined Electric Communities, also in Cupertino, a pioneer startup on virtual environments and secure transactions online, which also contributed to the development of the Java programming language. Masa then joined When.com, as part of the founding team, a startup in Redwood Shores California that developed the first fully functional collaborative online calendar and event directory, where he co-built the QA organization. America-Online purchased When.com together with Netscape. Masa joined Ingenuity Systems (also as part of the founding team), a genomics company whose products are used by the top pharmaceutical and biotech companies in the world, as well as by hundreds of research centers and universities, to do scientific discovery to, amongst other things, be able to develop better drugs cheaper and faster.

Masa then changed context and took care of the QA organization and helped with project management for Akimbo Systems, a pioneer of online high-quality video entertainment. Within the same industry, he was a founding-team member of Vuze Inc., a peer-to-peer based company for high-definition video entertainment online, where he created the QA organization and took care of project management until a PMO was formally started.

Before the USA, Masa lived in Japan where he worked as consultant for Justsystems Corporation, the largest Japanese software company, where he contributed to the development of some of the core algorithms for their text-processing and graphics generation products; and also developed intelligent systems prototypes. Prior to Japan, he worked in Mexico as software developer for Serfin Bank and for Operadora Vips (now part of Wal-Mart).

Masa also found time to teach graduate students at the University of Tokushima in Japan, undergraduate students at the National University of Mexico, and professionals at the Arturo Rosenblueth Foundation in Mexico.

Masa holds a Ph.D. in Software Engineering and an M.S. in Information Science and Intelligent Systems Engineering from the University of Tokushima in Japan (Both in the field of Artificial Intelligence); and a B.E., honors, in Computer Engineering from the National University of Mexico.

Masa is also a:

• Kanban coach
• Certified scrum master
• Certified product owner
• Member of the coordinating committee for the Agile Project Leadership Network, San Francisco Bay Area chapter
• Founder of the Bay Area Limited WIP Society
• Founder of the Agile Project Leadership Network, Mexico chapter
• Member of the Mexican Academy of Informatics
• Editor for the lean-agile section, Software Guru Magazine
• Contributing editor for the lean-agile section, PMI San Francisco Bay Area Chapter

Masa's passion beyond lean-agile is the outdoors. He spends his free time climbing mountains, rafting class V+ rivers, mountain biking, backpacking, and whatever else comes his way (including and expedition to the Arctic and extreme solo expeditions to climb mountains, explore rain forests, etc.). One of his dreams is to do a solo foot-traverse of Antarctica. He is also an avid photographer.

Bill has 26 years experience in project leadership and program management from an idea to a marketable solution. During that time, he has performed a multitude of roles ranging from senior executive positions to setting corporate strategies as well as line management and staff positions for Fortune 10 and startups.

In addition to his project and program management skills, Bill is a Certified Scrum Master and Master Performance and Leadership coach. His specific skills facilitate removing the “dis” from diseased organizations while creating high performance, lean teams that are fully aligned to strategies.

Bill was Director of Systems Integration at Ballantyne Computer Services where he exponentially grew the services group and offerings. After leaving Ballantyne, his entrepreneurial spirit led him to joining Quesix, a pioneer in the Electronic Medical record field. Bill served as VP of Professional Services and point for all VC funding. Quesix was acquired by Imnet and subsequently sold to McKesson where it became the platform serving their EMR offering in use today.

Following his success at Quesix, Bill became a member of Xerox’s strategic team of 32 Integrated Solutions Managers chartered with transforming the copier company into The Document Company through the mentoring of Xerox’s world class sales organization in Solution Sales via partnerships with PARC, Documentum, and a multitude of internal and external technology providers.

Following Xerox’s transformation, Bill joined Coris, later acquired by Quark, to market their offering of the first Java based publishing content management and authoring solution. After Coris, Bill founded Berenguer Group, now Ecocentric Strategies where he served a multitude of early stage technology tool companies as Acting VP Professional Services and VP Business Development and has successfully implemented critical strategies as Project Leader using a multitude of methodologies and frameworks from Agile to Waterfall.

A Systems Thinker, Bill’s mantra is “align resources in the business ecosystem, drive to value, and eliminate waste by building efficient, high quality, high availability systems that holistically serve multiple boundaries".

Bill is an internationally recognized photographer and his hobbies include promoting sustainability and green initiatives by using economic models to promote their value.

Bill Dominguez, PMP, CSM

Partner

Elizabeth has over 19 years of experience in software systems development for enterprises and projects of diverse kinds that range from the very large to the very small. Her analytical skills and attention to detail have made her stand out and be given high level of autonomy and responsibility on various projects throughout her career. We believe her skill set, energy, and charisma make of Elizabeth a fabulous candidate to become our first full-time lean-agile coach in Mexico and we are thrilled to welcome her as a consultant in training.

Elizabeth got her first job at Grupo Toda Internacional (leter became Productos Lorena, then absorbed by Hershey's), where she worked on the sales control system and provided technical support for the production environment. After Productos Lorena, Elizabeth worked for Unisys as an intern during their 2K migration. Once finishing her internship, Elizabeth spent several years at the University of Guadalajara developing and supporting its financial systems using Oracle and Delphi.

Elizabeth then joined the Oportunidades Program at Sedesol (Secretary for Social Development) to contribute on nationwide software projects for the National Insitute for Adult Education and for social development focused on people with limited finances. She started working at Sedesol's operations department on a project to capture statistical data for the systems previously developed. Because of her outstanding work, Elizabeth was promoted to Subdirector for the DB systems, working on Oracle, where she promoted existing systems to be migrated, and new development to be done, on web environments. She is currently improving the metrics systems and developing software for the publication of generated data on the web for public access.

Elizabeth is a M.S. on Information Technology candidate at ITAM (Autonomous Technology Institue of Mexico). She has certifications on Software Engineering from the University of Guadalajara; on Finance Foundations and on Neurolinguistic Programming from ITESO (Occident Superior Studies Institute of Technology); and Opensource Software Development from UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). Elizabeth has a B.S. on Computer Systems Engineering from ITESO.

Elizabeth's first contact with lean-agile was a presentation on that subject by Masa at ITAM. The more she learned about lean-agile the more she got convinced this is a great wat to make proyects succeed. She got interested on joining Shojiki Solutions because she agrees with its charter, modus operandi, business plan, and ethics.

Elizabeth enjoys her free time watching movies (even pays particular attention to their metadata), going backpacking, and reading scientific divulgation books.

Elizabeth Rivera, B.E.

Analyst

I am giving 3 talks at

Masa K Maeda, PhD

Founder and princpal consultant

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