Board of Advisors

The TNS Value Proposition   |       Management   |       Mission

TNS has supplemented its own internal knowledge and experience with a powerful Board of Advisors. The Board of Advisors is a key resource for the success of TNS. The board consists of owners, managers, and academics from the technical industry and other markets. Their knowledge will assist TNS in finding the most efficient ways to service clients. The following is an alphabetical list of four of the TNS Board members.

Robert D. Allen, Ph.D., CPA, Professor, Fellow
Robert D. Allen is a Professor and David Eccles Faculty Scholar at the University of Utah. Bob's interest in auditing research began during his professional experience with Deloitte, Haskins & Sells in Los Angeles. His research has focused on auditor risk assessments, auditor error projection decisions, and auditor analytical procedures. His research is published in various journals including The Accounting Review, Auditing: A Journal of Practice & Theory, Accounting Horizons, and Issues in Accounting Education. Bob is the recipient of the 2008 American Accounting Association/Deloitte Wildman Medal. The Wildman Medal is awarded to the authors of the publication that makes the greatest contribution to the practice of Public Accounting.

Bob earned undergraduate and Master's degrees in Accounting at Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. at Michigan State University. He joined the University of Utah faculty in 1991. He is the recipient of multiple teaching awards including the University of Utah Distinguished Teaching Award, the University of Utah Student's Choice Award for Teaching, and the Brady Superior Teaching Award. In 2005, he received the Utah Outstanding Educator Award presented by the Utah Association of CPAs.

Bob is a member of the Board of Directors for CIT Bank, where he also serves as a member of the Audit Committee. He regularly delivers customized executive education programs to a variety of corporate clients and has experience as an expert witness. He served as Director of the School of Accounting at the University of Utah from 2005 to 2009.

Thomas Eldredge, CPA, MPrA, Professor, Firm Partner
Thomas Eldredge is an assistant professor and professional lecturer at the University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business in the graduate and undergraduate accounting and information systems programs. Thomas has instructed students at the university since autumn of 1998 primarily in intermediate accounting and audit. He has developed the computer security and information systems courses. In 2004, he received the Teacher of the Year award in the Master's program at the David Eccles School of Business.

Thomas is a partner at a national public accounting firm in the audit department and leads the consulting practice. Thomas has been Chief Financial Officer of a public technology company in Salt Lake City, Utah. His responsibilities included accounting, information systems, and other business risk assessment, Securities Exchange Commission filings, Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 compliance, as well as all additional areas of accounting and finance management and control.

Thomas graduated from the University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business with both a Bachelor of Science Degree in accounting and a Master of Professional Accountancy Degree. He is also a graduate of the Dale Carnegie Institute.

Thomas was previously employed with large retail grocery chains in operations, accounting and internal audit. He is a Certified Public Accountant, and is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and has written and reviewed questions for the Uniform CPA exam. He is also a member of the Utah Association of Certified Public Accountants and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Tony Lockridge, Lockridge Outdoor Advertising, Owner
Tony Lockridge is a young, successful entrepreneur with multiple start- ups. After forming Lockridge Outdoor Advertising, LLC in 2003, he has created several large outdoor advertising plants throughout the U.S. Recently his company was the first outdoor development company to develop over 110 billboard properties from initial site locating, permit processing and finishing all installations in less than 8 months. His company has created over twenty million dollars of new inventory to the outdoor industry. He has extensive experience working with local, state and federal agencies, legal issues within business contractual law, land acquisition, and sales.

His company created a unique process for managing large amounts of data for use in land use development while using advanced methodologies to reduce the complexity in outdoor development and was able to successfully integrate its use through multiple U.S. markets.

He holds a B.S. in Business and Management from the University of Maryland. Tony also graduated from the The George Washington University with a degree in Health Science Laboratory Technology.

While assigned to the Hanua Health Clinic, in Hanau, Germany while active with the U.S. Army, Tony served as the Local System Administrator of over 100 computers as the Information Systems Security Officer.

Tony was recently published in “How to Make More Money in Self- Storage” contributing information for owner-operators of self-storage properties, helping them increase revenues through Outdoor Advertising leasing.

Tony is also co-owner of Aspen Leasing and Development. Aspen specializes in land acquisition serving both the solar and wind renewable energy markets. Started in 2008, Aspen has began work locating wind project sites in Texas and Oklahoma.

Jim Rolfsmeyer, Northwestern Mutual, Director IT Strategy and Architecture
Jim Rolfsmeyer is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee with a BBA in Management Information Science. He began his professional career in 1974 working at Johnson Controls as a software developer for Building Automation Systems. In 1978 he joined Northwestern Mutual, where he has worked since that time.

Jim was attracted to Northwestern Mutual to participate in a project launching a nationwide network of mini-computers in field offices linked to the Home Office in a distributed processing architecture. As part of the development effort, Northwestern Mutual partnered with Texas Instruments to develop a 4th generation language marketed as Terminal Application Generator. Jim continued to work on deploying industry leading distributed computing solutions as Northwestern Mutual upgraded from TI to Wang systems and later Hewlett Packard Unix machines. By 1991, he was managing the Team responsible for data networking and distributed systems.

Jim's responsibilities have continued to grow along with Northwestern Mutual. In 2008 NM had $22 billion in revenue and $155 billion in assets, placing them 110th in the Fortune 500 rankings. Jim has led the teams responsible for all networking services for Northwestern Mutual, LAN and WAN, data and voice. He has also been responsible for desktop infrastructure, web services, and application security. Innovative solutions continue to be the hallmark of his leadership, having deployed in 2004 a dual-campus distributed data center utilizing state-of-the-art Dense Wave Division Multiplexing optical switches over a 12 strand loop of private metropolitan fiber.

In 2007 Northwestern Mutual decided to centralize the Information Technology strategy and architecture functions in a new division. Jim accepted a position as the Director of both Technical and Application Architecture. In this role he has defined and staffed new job families of IT Architects, who are creating and maintaining the processes and artifacts needed to guide infrastructure and application directions and decisions.

A long time supporter of the performing arts, Jim has served as an executive on loan for local non-profits. He and his wife, Annette, continue to enjoy the season tickets to the Milwaukee Repertory Theater that they have held since 1978. Jim is a Fellow of the Life Management Institute. For 3 years he served on the Sprint Guidance Board for Financial Services, and is currently a member of the AT&T Business Advisory Council on Mobility.

Lee Wells, MarketStar, Vice President of Business-to-Business Client Services
Lee Wells, Vice President of Business-to-Business Client Services, is responsible for exceeding Service Level Agreement expectations of MarketStar's Business-to-Business clients. Lee, a 12-year veteran of MarketStar, has exceeded SLA expectations for clients in areas such as sales quota, reseller recruitment, and program participation by resellers.

Prior to joining MarketStar, Lee held positions at Novell in International Marcom, Field Marketing, Latin American Sales, and Product Marketing.

Lee received a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Brigham Young University and an M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix.