Tod Johnson is the executive chairman of The NPD Group. Since 1971, he has grown the company from a small U.S. market research provider to a leader in marketing information and advisory services, serving more than 20 industries, with operations spanning the Americas, Europe and APAC. With innovative leadership, he has seized on emerging trends, new technologies and the power of big data long before others saw the opportunity, pioneering point-of-sales tracking and receipt harvesting.

An expert in his field for more than 40 years, Tod is a frequent speaker at marketing research and management conferences and has been widely published in research publications in the areas of brand loyalty and equity.

He has been a chairman, vice chairman, secretary and director of the Advertising Research Foundation. Tod was a founding chairman and director of the Council for Marketing and Opinion Research. He was elected to the Market Research Council Hall of Fame in 2011.

Vice chair of the Carnegie Mellon University Board of Trustees, Tod also chaired CMU’s Centennial Campaign. Tod has applied his enthusiastic, focused and thoughtful leadership across Carnegie Mellon, including acting as a Tepper class agent, serving on the Andrew Carnegie Society Board, chairing the recent presidential search committee, serving on numerous advisory boards at the department and college level, working on his reunion committee and many more. By proving good counsel and mentoring to faculty, administrators, staff and students and generously giving to support the university’s priorities, he has quietly and surely helped to make the university and its people a force for good in the world.

He is a managing director of the Metropolitan Opera and a director of CivicScience, a new survey technology startup. He was CEO and founder of Media Metrix from 1995 to 2001 and is a past member of the JPMorgan Chase Regional Advisory Board.

Sheldon Epps was artistic director of the renowned Pasadena Playhouse for two decades, and still acts as artistic director emeritus for the playhouse. He also recently served as artistic advisor for Theatre Under the Stars in Houston, Texas.

Previously, he was associate artistic director of the Old Globe Theatre. Sheldon directed numerous plays and musicals at many of the country’s major theatres, including the Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club, the Guthrie, Playwrights Horizons, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Arena Stage, Ford’s Theatre and the Goodman Theatre. He conceived and directed the highly acclaimed Broadway musicals “Play On!” and “Blues In the Night,” which both received Tony Award nominations. “Blues in the Night” also was nominated as Best Musical for the prestigious Olivier Award in London. He co-directed the Tony-nominated production of “Baby It's You!”

Sheldon has had a busy career as a television director, helming episodes of shows such as “Frasier,” “Friends,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Girlfriends” and many others. He is a longtime board member of the Society of Directors and Choreographers and is the chair of the SDC Foundation Board of Trustees.

Patricia McBride is a distinguished scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and deputy spokesperson for the CMS collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Previously, she served as head of Fermilab’s Particle Physics Division and its scientific computing programs.  

Patricia has been a member of the CMS collaboration for more than a decade, serving as the head of Fermilab’s CMS efforts and managing the U.S. CMS Operations Program, which oversees U.S. contributions to CMS experiment operations. During CMS’s commissioning phase, she served as deputy computing coordinator, working with scientists and computing specialists from around the globe to establish the high-throughput computing resources needed for analysis of the large volume of CMS data.

She has served on many national and international committees, and was the chair of the Division of Particles and Fields of the American Physical Society (APS), the U.S. Liaison Committee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the IUPAP C11 Commission for Particles and Fields. She is currently a member of the AURA NCOA Management Oversight Council, J-PARC International Advisory Committee and AUI Visiting Committee for NRAO. She was elected an APS and an AAAS Fellow in 2009.

Rana Sen is a managing director with Deloitte US and has 20 years of experience in implementing and leading major government transformation initiatives in public health, human services, finance and administration, and transportation.

He leads the Deloitte’s U.S. smart city initiative and the U.S. state/local transportation practice, in addition to supporting Deloitte’s smart city work globally. His work includes design and implementation of smart transportation solutions, automation of long-term care case management, and disease surveillance and outbreak prevention system, and “smart city” strategy. He is a frequent speaker on disruptive innovation and smart city topics at conferences, and publishes on the subject.

Rana leads Deloitte’s relationship with CMU’s Heinz College, working with faculty and students on areas of mutual interest and spearheading Deloitte’s recruiting strategy for Heinz. He has been active on campus for many years, visiting CMU regularly as a mentor, recruiter, advocate and advisor. He was instrumental in securing a recent Deloitte Foundation grant that funded fellowships for Heinz and Architecture graduate students, in addition to supporting faculty research.

Paul L. Wellener IV is vice chair for U.S. industrial products sector for Deloitte, the world’s largest professional services firm, where he leads the Deloitte professionals who specialize in aerospace and defense, industrial products, heavy equipment, engineering and construction industries.

Paul comes from a long line of CMU grads, stretching back to his great grandfather (Carnegie Tech 1908) and including 14 Welleners in all. Nicknamed “Coach” by classmates, Paul was ever the coordinator of intramural teams, trips to Pittsburgh sporting events and various extracurricular activities while at CMU. These skills continue to serve him well as he gathers alumni from the Class of 1986 for reunions and encourages fellow Deloitte CMU alums to support important causes — most recently the Deloitte Foundation Innovation Hub in the new Tepper Quad. Paul has been an active recruiter for the firm at CMU for more than 20 years, connecting hundreds of CMU alums with positions at Deloitte. He was instrumental in launching the Northeast Ohio Alumni Network and served on the Tepper School’s Alumni Board for several years, including two as president.

In Cleveland, Paul gives of his time to the United Way of Greater Cleveland, Greater Cleveland Partnership, Great Lakes Theater, Cleveland Leadership Center, and Bike MS: Buckeye Breakaway.

Eric W. Grotzinger is professor emeritus in biological sciences at Mellon College of Science. From the classroom to advisee meetings to committee work to serving as a mentor and friend to generations of alumni, Eric developed deep relationships with individual students — maintaining contact and friendships with them decades later — making an impact on their lives and keeping them connected to CMU by putting them at the center of MCS’s educational mission.

He joined CMU’s faculty in 1979, first as assistant and then associate department head of biological sciences, overseeing graduate and undergraduate programs for 11 years. For 24 years, Eric was associate dean of MCS, working to increase the number of women and underrepresented students, to raise the retention rate of first-year students in science and to develop the Science and Humanities Scholars and Bachelor of Science and Arts Programs. From 2010 to 2015, he chaired or co-chaired committees that created and implemented an outcome-based MCS Core Education. He currently serves as senior advisor of the University Student Success Collaborative in the Office of the Vice Provost of Education.

CMU has recognized Eric with the Robert E. Doherty Award for Sustained Excellence in Education and the Undergraduate Advising Award and Innovation Teaching Award, as a member of the MCS First-Year Seminar Committee.