Jon Stahl

Jon co-founded LeanDog Software Studio in 2008 after 18 years of experience providing IT leadership in both Fortune 500 and start up organizations. His passion is eliminating waste, optimizing the performance of IT teams and helping organizations become lean and agile. Lean Dog Software is a way to showcase how these ideas make a significant difference in the software development marketplace.

Jon provides extensive hands on experience in organizational transformations to Agile and Lean software methods. He has practiced agile for over 5 years, created 3 agile teams and helped large enterprises develop transformation plans.

He is an active thought leader in the Agile, Tech and Entrepreneurial Community. In addition to hosting many tech user group meetings at the LeanDog Studio, he has co-organizes events such as Ignite Cleveland, Cleveland Startup Weekend, Code Retreat and the Cleveland Give Camp for IT Cleveland Philanthropy.

He received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and a minor in Economics from the Ohio State University. He is currently authoring a book on Lean and Agile Software development practices. He is married with two children.

Jeff "Cheezy" Morgan

Jeff Morgan has spent 23 years in the corporate IT, holding various roles including Senior Developer, Manager of Application and Enterprise Architect, Director of Technology and most recently Chief Technology Officer.

He has been an evangelist for the Agile Software Development movement since 2003 and has spoken at several organizations, conferences, and technical events. He has taught numerous courses on technical practices designed to enable software developers to produce higher quality applications. He has also spoken internationally at conferences on topics related to open source software development.

He is passionate about the Cleveland IT community and his company, LeanDog Software Studio, currently sponsors and hosts 6 technology group meetings each month in downtown Cleveland. His company also plans to sponsor GiveCamps to build and donate software to local non-profit organizations.

Matt Snyder

Matt’s passion for agile began in 2002 after his team introduced Extreme Programming methodologies to their delivery approach. Since then Matt has presented at local colleges and user groups on agile methodologies and taken lead on teams migrating to Agile. Matt has over 10 years of experience as a developer working primarily with .Net and J2EE technologies, but his real language of choice is Ruby. Matt has fallen in love with the numerous feedback loops, power of delivery and testability that Ruby and Rails has to offer and is active within the Cleveland Ruby community as an organizer of CleRB.

When Matt isn’t working on becoming a better software artisan, he is in the gym training hard, playing sports, or spending quality time with his 2 kids.

Gregg Bobinski

Gregg Bobinski has spent over 30 years in business development to corporate IT companies, holding various roles including Director of Business Development at LeanDog Software Studio, Business Development Manager at ThoughtWorks Inc, Business Development Executive at Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Sales Training Manager at Cap Gemini and Sales Executive at Systemation.

As the Director of Business Development for LeanDog Software Studio, he is responsible for overseeing on all Agile software development, training and coaching business opportunities, including partnerships, proposals and contracts.

He is passionate about Agile business development in the Ohio Region. He has a degree from Chandler Institute. He is married with four children and seven grandchildren.

Amy Koran

Amy is a veteran of Jon Stahl’s Army with a 10 year tour under her belt. She walks tall and carries a big stick having to keep all of the ADD and Bi-Polar Lean Dog employees (and Owners) in line. She has cracker jack QA skills, even though she still believes herself to be a Sr. Business Analyst. She may tell you like it is, but she firmly believes the customer is always right. She is a huge fan of Mixed Martial Arts and is a Level 1 Reiki Practioner, so she can put you to sleep in a variety of ways. She is an iphone addict and a mother of 4 . Amy has very strong opinions about QTP. We recommend you do not ask her. Seriously, We beg you, just don’t do it...

Amy has filled many roles from Quality Assurance Analyst, Business Analyst and Project Management. Her speciality is insurance having more than 15 years of experience in that field.

Otis "LeanDog" Stahl

Otis has been the LeanDog Software Studio mascot since the company was formed. He brings an interesting skill set to the team. His snoring during work hours, not only improves moral, it helps filter the air in the office. That is, at least, until he passes gas. Otis' charm and charisma are infectious and he is an integral part of the work environment. His duties included: making sure all dropped food is cleaned up, sleeping, watering the grass, and begging. He has a human mom and dad, and 2 human sisters. He is unmarried, and sorry girls...he's fixed!

Joel Helbling

A fanatic about business intelligence, data integration and information integrity, Joel has over 15 years experience in using, supporting and developing enterprise data systems, and the hardware and software systems upon which they are built. With deep roots in North East Ohio, Joel has worn many hats: project manager, software architect, team leader, process analyst, data architecture aficionado, troubleshooter, trainer, technical writer, public speaker, startup entrepreneur and last but most fundamentally, Dad.

As a longtime fan of Leandog's leadership in the Cleveland agile software scene, Joel is excited about pushing the envelope with the Leandog team: he's thoroughly convinced that Agile will change the way Cleveland delivers software, and he's thoroughly convinced that Leandog will remain in the vanguard of that revolution.

For kicks Joel enjoys playing violin, mandolin and acoustic bass. He also enjoys speaking: he is a two-time veteran at Ignite Cleveland http://ignitecle.com, and has a five year plan to dominate that venue. Joel believes in the inter-connectedness of everything, and thus loves to talk about software development and technology in business with anybody anywhere. He spends the rest of his copious free time working with his son Isaac warning the world of the impending robot uprising http://robotslol.com.

Jim Gorjup

Jim Gorjup has spent 20+ years in the Information Technology field at Fortune 500 and start-up companies. His prior roles include application developer, architect, manager and senior manager. His expertise is in the Insurance industry, specifically Property and Casualty Insurance, having spent over 20 years of his career. Most recently he has focused his attention with Executive Information Technology Recruiting and Consulting.

He has spent over 3 years practicing Agile concepts and leading an extremely large Agile development team and program transformation. He is passionate about Agile principles and concepts and raising awareness across the Cleveland IT community.

He received his Bachelors of Science degree in Computer and Information Science from Cleveland State University. He is married and has three children.

Stephan Schwab

Stephan Schwab got into programming before PCs existed. While his mother - a financial auditor - looked the other way he wrote his first program in BASIC on a Philips P2000. After learning Pascal and Modula-2 by himself he published his first article in a German computer magazine at the age of 16. Unwilling to take over his father's specialty workwear business he started selling a Modula-2 compiler and a GEM/3 interface library written by himself from his room in his parent's house.

After serving mandatory military duty he formed a new software company with two friends which evolved in 1994 into one of the first Internet access providers in Germany. VentureNET served customers in industries from Automotive to Publishing. Besides being the company's network security consultant Stephan programmed the first German commercial website directory in Perl which was widely linked to and mentioned in several seminar and research papers.

Long before the term Agile was coined many of the Agile values and passion for software were part of all development efforts. Stephan participated in or led development efforts leading to commerical products written in about eight different programming languages. After moving from Germany to the U.S. he started public speaking about Agile practices. With his relocation to Panama he got involved with the local community and provides lectures about Agile in Spanish. While in Panama he designed and led the development of a distributed Agile tool called Caimito One Team.

Stephan is fluent in German, English, and Spanish. He is married and has a daughter. While away from the computer screen he enjoys offroad driving, horseback riding and cattle farming.

Natalie Dolson

Natalie Dolson has been in the insurance business for 17 years. She began her career at Progressive Insurance as a customer service representative and has grown her knowledge in the insurance industry by holding various roles. After beginning her career as a customer service rep, she also has been a Technical Trainer, Lead QA Analyst, Senior BA Analyst and is currently an Iteration Manager. She utilizes Agile methods to break large, complex projects into effective story card backlogs with her experience in underwriting, claims and agent point of sale systems. Her biggest projects and accomplishments have been designing and building a Claims and Point of Sale Policy processing system.

Natalie is married with 3 children and 2 step-children. So in her free time...... Take that back.... Not really a whole lot of free time with 5 children but does enjoy playing volleyball, taking long walks and going to her boys athletic events. Graduated from Cleveland State University on a volleyball scholarship with a Bachelors degree in Psychology.

Jim Koran

Former Life Guard/Water Safety Instructor/Swim Team Coach/Sanitation Engineer (Yes a real-life garbage man!)/ Multiplex Theatre Manager (You should see his poster collection), Jim began his career in the Insurance Industry in the Mail Room of a start-up company some 15 years ago (Yes, they had to fold policies and stuff the envelopes by hand, a skill that requires much more finesse than one would think).

Jim found his way thru Underwriting, Customer Service, and a stint in the Special Investigations Unit (Traveling around the country with a ex Desert Storm Marine as your body guard while leveling accusations of Insurance Fraud is tougher than it sounds!).

After many happy years as a Technical Trainer, Agile found Jim, and a BA/QA was born. Jim has worked the last 4 years on Point of Sale and Claims Applications. Agile is the only Kool-Aid Jim has ever drank. He likes to think this makes him Pure (and agrees with Amy that the customer is always right).

Jim is the proud owner of a little Chow dog that possesses the power to hypnotize others at will but refuses to listen to any other command.