Meet Us

Tim Wise is the co-founder and CEO of Advocate, The Premier TBM Services Company, that provides enterprise clients with Technology Business Management (TBM) consultation and services to reduce IT costs and connect new demands with real-world IT savings.

He has 20 years of experience in the domestic and international telecommunications industry specializing in financial and business case modeling, procurement and contract negotiations and strategic planning.

Before co-founding Advocate Consulting in 2001, Tim was the co-founder and COO of Rapid Link Communications, an international telecom service provider, where he led the growth from inception to over $55M with offices globally in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

He has also been recognized by Inc. 500/5000, with three different companies – Rapid Link Communications (1999), Avoxi Communications (2004) and Advocate Consulting (2006-2015 for 10 consecutive years).

He is an investor and serves on the Board of Directors of Social123, a leading social data aggregation company.

He practiced law in the area of corporate litigation from 1994-1997.

Tim holds a Juris Doctorate from The University of South Carolina Law School and a degree in Finance, magna cum laude, from The University of South Carolina. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina with his family.

Scott Fogle gained his insider knowledge of products, sales and professional services at leading companies like NCR, AT&T and Scientific-Atlanta. He met Tim Wise at RapidLink Telecommunications in 1998, as they began their entrepreneurial pursuits. In 2000, Scott started Dantis, a web hosting company, and was Chief Operating Officer. In 2001, Tim Wise and Scott Fogle founded Advocate to help enterprises create a clear strategy for structuring their growing internet-connected systems. The firm would soon emerge as a leader in TEM … and then network optimization … and ultimately become a premier TBM consulting and services company. After working with IT leaders at over 600 enterprises to assess over $50 Billion in spend, Advocate knows how to uncover more savings to invest, enable more business outcomes and create more influence overall to do what matters more.

Scott has been recognized on the Inc. 500/5000 with two separate companies – Rapidlink and Advocate (11 consecutive years). He graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1987 and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with Honors. Scott is a member of the Board of Directors at Pinnacle Bank and lives with his wife, Donna, outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

Chad Doiron is a consultant with 25+ years of experience in Information Technology management and consulting. Chad spent the first part of his career in various corporate roles with a range of responsibilities including team leadership of application development, infrastructure design, database architecture and administration, and IT operations. Over the last 15+ years, he has been serving in various consulting roles including most recently as the executive lead for a national CIO Services consulting practice. During his consulting career, he has designed and launched multiple categories of service offerings including Interactive Retailing, IT Strategy, Performance Excellence, and Program Management Office. He is considered an expert in several technology-centric areas within the retail industry and is a published author in IT and consulting trade publications. Chad graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1989 and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering.

Angela Saldana brings over 15 years of telecom industry and audit experience to Advocate. From telco, to cloud, to IT, she has led and built audit teams to ensure billing compliance to negotiated contracts and industry tariffs. She has successfully grown and scaled audit groups with expanding client bases through thought leadership and change management – focused on client satisfaction and team efficiencies. Angela graduated from the University of Georgia in 2001 Magna Cum Laude and with High Honors. She earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in International Business and minored in Spanish. In 2009, she graduated from Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business with a M.B.A. focused on management and leadership. She is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and a Leadership Academy fellow with Emory University.

As the Practice Leader for Strategy, Keith Coggin infuses Technology Business Management (TBM) principles into Advocate’s strategy and financial management services in order to deliver solutions focused on the intersection of the CIO-CFO relationship. His passion is to amplify our clients’ contributions to their enterprises through better cost transparency and improved business outcomes identification allows them to “Do What Matters More”. Prior to Advocate, Keith spent 10 years delivering solutions at EY where his expertise spanned multiple industries including Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Food Services, Automotive and Transportation, Distribution, and others. Keith has served our nation as a member of the United States Air Force where he spent seven years as part of the 5th Combat Communications Group focused on extending tactical cyberspace capabilities across multiple branches of our nations armed forces. Keith earned his bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Georgia, Terry College of Business.

Talon Frost serves as Director of Optimization and Value Creation. In this role, Talon leads teams of consultants engaged in pricing, audit and optimization activities across all IT cost towers. Talon joined Advocate in 2013. He holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, a Master of International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and graduated with a degree in Japanese and International Trade from Clemson University.

As the Vice President of Sales for Advocate, Emily Hyde excels by sharing new and innovative ways to close the technology gap. Unlike many sales people, Emily will show you exactly what you have, what to do with it and how to do it. Her fusion of market knowledge and conversational demeanor enables her to connect with clients and peers at a friendly and familiar level. Emily gives back to the technology community by holding several leadership roles in large technology organizations such as President of Atlanta Technology Professionals (ATP) and Chair of the Annual ATP CIO Golf Tournament. Emily was recently recognized as Advocate’s 2016 Founder’s Cup recipient and achieved the company’s first annual Founder’s Club status. Emily graduated from Georgia Southern University and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Marketing with an emphasis in Sales and Sales Management.

As Vice President, Practice Leader of Transformation at Advocate, Brad leads the discipline and enablement for enterprises to create strategic network architecture roadmaps focused on high performance, reduced cost and cloud adoption. Prior to joining the Advocate team, he led the growth and success of several award winning (Inc. 500, Deloitte Fast 500) technology and telecommunication companies including CFN Services, Teleglobe, Telco Communications and Universal Access. Brad has a broad understanding of technology and telecommunications and is passionate about helping enterprises leverage the opportunities available to them today around network performance and cloud adoption. Brad earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia.

Client success comes from the heart and a passion to serve.  With over 36 years of experience in supporting Fortune 1000 and 500 enterprises, Gwyn has made client success her motto.  Gwyn takes a holistic approach to meeting clients’ needs by developing strong relationships and becoming a trusted advisor.  As a strategic partner with her clients, she ensures that each of their goals and objectives are met with a relentless pursuit of excellence at every touch.  With a combination of sales, consulting and leadership skills, she is able to consistently create solutions that build a foundation guaranteeing lasting success.  Gwyn has been an integral part of the Advocate team for eight years and is a past Founder’s Cup recipient.  Gwyn graduated from University of Florida and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business with a minor in Chemistry and Calculus.

Russell is a South Carolina licensed Certified Public Accountant with more than 13 years of experience in the accounting field, where he has audited small and midsize private companies. Prior to joining Advocate, he worked for a healthcare revenue cycle management company, a publicly traded healthcare performance improvement company, and public accounting firms. His insider knowledge of systems and process improvement is derived from his engineering background. Russ received his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering as well as his International Master of Business Administration from the University of South Carolina.

Jon Stroup is the Vice President of Partners at Advocate with the responsibility for expanding opportunities with strategic partners, major accounts and PE firms. He joined Advocate in 2009 after six previous years on its Advisory Board. Prior to joining Advocate, Jon was an Executive Search Partner with Egon Zehnder International working with a variety of global clients on strategic recruiting and management assessment projects. Previously, he held sales roles with Scientific-Atlanta, the broadband division of Cisco. Jon earned an MSE from MIT and a BS Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University.

Casey Ward is the Regional Vice President – Central Region at Advocate and has over 13 years of expertise in the IT/Telecommunications industry. Casey excels in situations where she can help her clients solve problems and deliver outstanding results. She joined the Advocate team in 2015 and immediately began to make an impact. As a DallasCIO Advisory Board member, Casey interacts with the top CIOs in North Texas. She holds a BA in Social Sciences with a minor in Psychology from Northwest State University in Natchitoches, LA.

As a co-founder of MacBeth Williams TeleConsulting 22 years ago, Steve has extensive experience providing insider knowledge to a broad range of Fortune 1000 enterprises. Serving as President of MacBeth Williams, he helped build a network consulting firm that was known throughout the industry for integrity, transparency and delivering exceptional vendor agnostic solutions to clients. Prior to founding MacBeth Williams, Steve spent eight years with Benchmark Consulting International providing business process, call center and benchmark consulting to financial services firms. Steve holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Georgia.

David is a high-profile technology and business executive who has served in the capacity as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Product Officer for numerous public and private hi-tech and healthcare IT companies over the last 30 years. Currently, as Chief Technology Officer at Guthrie Technology Services, he serves in multiple fractional Technology Officer and Product Officer roles for companies around the country.

To demonstrate his business acumen, strategic planning skills, and fresh thinking, David co-founded Medcast from the ground up, which was sold to WebMD for $215M in a four-way merger with WebMD, Healtheon, Medi-America and Medcast.

He led the development of PGi’s hybrid global VoIP network and SaaS Collaboration services for 50,000 customers globally. After serving as Chief Technology Officer and Advanced Strategy at PGi for 15 yrs. PGi sold to Siris Capital in December 2015 for $1.1B.

David has been selected for the Georgia Chief Information Officer Lifetime Achievement Award and was chosen by ComputerWorld as a Premier 100 Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer. He also holds twenty patents.

Scott Crowder is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for BMC Software, Inc. He is responsible for the company’s Information Services and Technology group, which provides business applications, end user support, production and R&D cloud infrastructure, unified communications, information security and service governance.

The IS&T group serves as “Customer Zero” for BMC’s full line of IT operations management software. As Customer Zero, the IS&T group runs all current versions in production and works closely with the company’s R&D teams to provide feedback on product roadmaps and test new versions in development.

Scott has more than 30 years of experience in product development, service delivery and assurance for information technology organizations. Prior to joining BMC, Scott was vice president of data center operations at Blackbaud where he was responsible for delivering managed services, SaaS CRM, CMS and eCommerce services for approximately 12,000 customers. Previously, he held IT leadership positions in high technology companies that included Sprint, Akamai, Inktomi, MIH (Entriq) and Kintera.

Scott holds two patents related to digital media. He is a veteran of the U.S Air Force.

Anil Cheriyan is chairman of the Technology Business Management Council, which is a nonprofit professional organization dedicated to advancing the discipline of technology business management (TBM). TBM provides technology leaders with standards and validated best practices to communicate the cost, quality, and value of IT investments to their business partners. In turn, IT is able to drive innovation for their organization. The TBM Council and its community focus on collaboration, standardization, and education to advance TBM and the IT profession.  He is also managing partner of Phase IV Ventures

Anil recently served as chief information officer for SunTrust Banks, Inc. where he was responsible for SunTrust's Enterprise Information Services (EIS) division, the organizational unit that provides the company's overall technology, operations and information-related support.

Prior to joining SunTrust in April 2012, Anil was senior partner at IBM Global Business Services, where he has served financial services industry clients and led a variety of business systems transformation, technology and process re-engineering initiatives. Before joining IBM in 2002, he was a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting and served in increasingly responsible leadership roles on a variety of systems, customer information, data warehousing and e-business engagements. Previously he was a senior consultant with Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and information services manager for TVS Clayton, Ltd.

Anil earned Master of Science and Master of Philosophy degrees in management as well as a Bachelor of Science in electronic and electrical engineering from Imperial College in London.

Leveraging his 20 years of experience in providing competitive advantage through front and back office solutions, Todd Lant is Blackbaud’s Chief Information Officer. In this role, he is responsible for all applications and infrastructure supporting global IT operations, including M&A, software development, business intelligence, security, project management, cloud computing, infrastructure, telecommunications and service desk functions. Since joining Blackbaud, he has led the company through significant growth, both organically and through acquisitions, and helped develop subscription and cloud-based solution offerings and supporting platforms. Prior to Blackbaud, Todd held various commercial software and telecommunications IT leadership positions.

As an accomplished leader in technology and business, Todd speaks on technology trends focused on strategic decision making at industry and customer events. He has been a contributing member of regional technology development activities and hosts occasional MBA sessions; as well as an avid support of local non-profits and educational institutions. He currently serves on the board of the Charleston YMCA, The Cathedral Church of St. Luke’s and St. Paul’s, The Citadel’s Department of Engineering Leadership & Program Management program, and Charleston Southern University’s Computer Science department. Todd has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration with an Economic focus from Georgia State University.