Team Bios
Terry Wakefield – Chief Executive Officer
Sheila Bernhardt – Managing Director & Chief Process Architect
Sheila has more than 25 years of experience as a leader of process improvement deployment and project management. She is a certified Six Sigma Blackbelt and certified Lean Master. Sheila has held a variety of management positions for companies such as Rockwell International, Honeywell, Textron and Pacific Scientific. During her career, she has demonstrated her outstanding contributions to company growth and profitability in the areas of Supply Chain Management, Operations, Customer Service and Inventory Planning and Control. In addition to leading organizational change and process improvement initiatives, Sheila has trained and mentored Greenbelts, Lean Leaders and Business Leaders in various process improvement methodologies.
Sheila graduated magna cum laude from Marquette University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Organization and Leadership and a Masters of Arts degree in Leadership Studies. While attending Marquette, Sheila received the Alpha Sigma Nu award for Scholarship, Loyalty and Service, the highest honor awarded by Jesuit Universities. She has also received formalized training from such institutions as Six Sigma Academy, John Costanza Institute of Technology, the University of Minnesota and Flow Vision. Sheila joined The Wakefield Company in March 2004.
Michael P. Merrick, Ph.D. – Managing Director & Chief Technology Officer
Mike has extensive experience in helping companies understand and apply technologies for Complex Event Processing, Workflow and Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture and Event Driven Architecture in relation to the integration of disparate systems and applications such as enterprise resource planning, point-of-sale, procurement and existing legacy data stores. Most recently, Mike served as a Staff Solutions Consultant at TIBCO Software where he focused on creating composite applications from existing assets that optimized process efficiency, empowered knowledge workers and created powerful relationship management platforms. Prior to TIBCO, Mike served as a Systems Analyst and Architect at Cable and Wireless USA. Mike has also held research positions at Pacific Sierra Research and the National Institutes of Health.
Mike graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Temple University. He earned a Doctorate of Philosophy in Theoretical Chemistry and a minor in Biochemistry from the University of Cincinnati in 1996. Mike served in the US Navy from 1990 to 1996. He attended the Navy Nuclear Power School and received the Navy Achievement Medal. Mike has published numerous articles on diverse topics including electrostatic computations, density functional theory and computer simulation.
Taylor Wakefield – Managing Director, Capital Markets
Taylor has over 11 years of financial services experience. Most recently, Taylor has advised investment advisors and Fortune 500 companies on leveraging technology to analyze financial and operational data in order to promote operational efficiencies. Prior to that, Taylor was a Managing Director in Bear Stearns' Strategic Financial Products department. At Bear Stearns, he was responsible for originating and structuring various types of complex structured financial products, including Collateralized Debt Obligations backed by Residential Mortgage Backed Securities, Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, Leveraged Loans, High Yield Bonds and Credit Default Swaps. In addition, he structured other esoteric Asset Backed Securities backed by Property Tax Liens and Tobacco Settlement Payments. Prior to his work in the Strategic Financial Products department, Taylor worked as a banker in the Public Finance department where he structured municipal bond offerings for clients such as New York City, Ohio, Indiana and Florida. While at Bear Stearns, Taylor executed over 60 transactions totaling over $30 billion.
Taylor graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Sciences in Finance from Boston College.
Norrie J. Daroga – Managing Director
Norrie is a senior executive and independent consultant with 30 years of diverse industry experience and over 20 years as a practicing attorney. He was formerly executive vice president and Chief Administrative Officer with Metavante Technologies, Inc., a publicly-held technology outsourcing provider. While there, he was responsible for negotiating the commercial terms and conditions for some of the company’s largest outsourcing and services transactions. In this role, he developed a unique perspective into the processes and approaches used by outsourcing providers to price services, establish termination fees and define service levels. Previously, Norrie built a technology law practice as a partner at the law firm of Quarles & Brady, LLP. Norrie is the founder and President of Avatar Ventures Inc., which helps businesses succeed by guiding them through business development and strategy, improving efficiency and accuracy, and customizing strong sustainable processes that support and extend the business goals of the business into its client base. He serves on the Leadership Board of Outsourcing Angels, a group of senior executives who provide deep experience in the outsourcing industry and investment capital to help entrepreneurs develop their companies. Norrie is also the President of Daroga Law Offices, S.C., a firm specializing in providing legal services to companies seeking outsourcing services. His clients include financial institutions, financial services technology providers, real estate brokers, healthcare facility developers, as well as companies which develop and patent technologies.
Norrie has a Bachelors’ in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters’ in Materials Science from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and a Juris Doctorate (cum laude) from Marquette University Law School. He has completed several Executive Management courses at the Kellogg School of Business, Northwestern University.