Board of Directors

2025-2026 IIUG Board of Directors

The operation of the International Informix Users Group (IIUG) is managed and directed by a President and Board of Directors. The current members of the IIUG Board of Directors are:

 

 

Thomas Beebe (President)
Woodbridge, VA, USA
President – IIUG Board of Directors
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Tom has been working with Informix for over 20 years. As a consultant with a wide variety of clients he actively supports and works with everything from SE up through 15.  He brings a good deal of energy and lots of enthusiasm to the IIUG community and will continue to work constantly to help the Informix community as well as to promote Informix anywhere he can get someone to stop and listen.

 

Gary Ben-Israel
Jerusalem, Israel
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Since he joined the board in 2004 Gary is speaking without fear for the IIUG members, dedicating many hours to the IIUG board and providing help, guidance and Information to the Informix user community.

Gary is currently the editor of the IIUG Insider and the coordinator for EMEA and APAC Local User Groups.

Gary works as an Informix consultant.

Gary is a certified Informix DBA and is leading a project converting all in-house applications to Java.

Gary volunteered to the Informix IDS 10, 11.10, 11.5, 11.7 12.10 and 14.10 EVP programs and helped writing the IDS 11 DBA test.

Gary is an IBM Champion for Analytics for the last 11 years.

 

Thomas Girsch
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
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Tom Girsch has been using Informix products for more than two decades, with versions ranging from SE 2.1 to IDS 12.10. When not using Informix, he enjoys cooking, traveling, and rooting for terrible sports franchises like the Milwaukee Brewers and the Toronto Maple Leafs, as well as awesome ones like the four-time Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers.

 

Rhonda Hackenburg
Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, USA
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Rhonda is the Research and Development Manager for the Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board and was instrumental in influencing her organization to continue supporting Informix for their programming goals after the IBM acquisition and again after the IBM/HCL partnership. She will extend this commitment to current and future clients supported by her organization.

Rhonda has served on IIUG Board of Directors for a combined ten years and has been a member of the IIUG Conference Planning Committee since 2010. She is the current Vice-president for the Washington Area Informix Users Group (WAIUG). Rhonda is IBM Certified and has been an IBM Champion since 2013, an honor awarded to IT professionals who are leaders and supporters of IBM software and solutions. She has been working with Informix products since 1987.

She will apply her enthusiasm and commitment to represent the entire Informix community to ensure Informix remains a viable product of the IBM portfolio.

 

Art Kagel
East Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
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Art Kagel has been working with Informix database and development products almost since the beginning. He is a frequent contributor to the IBM Community Forums and a popular presenter at conferences. Art is founder and President of ASK Database Management Corp. working as a Principle Consultant providing services to IBM Informix users, HCL Informix users, and other database users around the world. He is also a former winner of the IIUG Directors Award for his outstanding contributions to the Informix Community and an thirteen time IBM Champion for Information Management.

 

Cindy Lichtenauer
Lenexa, Kansas, USA
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Cindy Lichtenauer has been working with Informix products since 1989. Twelve of those years were spent at the Informix Lenexa Kansas office, as a Systems Engineer.

Cindy continually works to spread the word about the Informix product line, to provide knowledge to Informix users and to influence the future and direction of Informix products.

As a board member since 2004, Cindy has served as Treasurer, Local User Group Advocate and lead the Conference Planning Committee. In March 2019, she was elected President of the IIUG.

Cindy is an IBM Champion since 2010, and in 2019 was awarded the status of Lifetime IBM Champion.

 

Anup Nair
San Francisco, California, USA
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Anup brings over 30 years of technology experience, including 15 years with Informix, where he has enhanced product and client experiences through Advanced Support, Product Management, and Development. More recently, he played a key role in IBM Technology’s technical sales leadership, driving revenue growth and strengthening customer engagement. With his deep expertise and leadership, Anup is eager to make a significant impact on the world of Informix.

 

Karen Qualley
Lenexa, Kansas, USA
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Karen joined Informix Software in 1993 and has since worked with the Informix product set in various roles and responsibilities, currently focusing on Informix Product Management. In this position, she works to gather feedback from diverse sources to help shape the content and future direction of Informix. Throughout her tenure, she has collaborated closely with numerous customers and partners, always driven by a passion for the impact Informix can make. Karen aims to bring that knowledge, insight, and innovative ideas to the IIUG Board position.

 

Vicente Salvador
Barcelona, Spain
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Vicente has been working with Informix since 1988 when he started developing solutions with Informix 4GL.

He is a recognized Informix consultant and specialist in Spain and Latin-America. Currently, he is the president of the Spanish Informix User Group.

He’s a fan of Informix Technology and has a deep experience on IWA, Grid and replication technologies. He has developed a native IWA OLAP engine based on XML/A datamart definition, as well as a Java Framework for Informix Cloud applications.

His current job position, as Software Engineer, Informix Consultant and Project Manager, allows him to have precious knowledge on how Informix brings value to Project managers, technicians and most important, customers.

Also, Vicente is proud of being IBM Champion for the last 12 years.

As an IIUG board director since last 13 years, Vicente has been responsible of infrastructure modernization, web changes and new registration and mailing system.

 

Bruce Simms
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
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Bruce has been working with the Informix products since the mid 80’s, this includes Turbo, Online5, V7, V9, V10, V11, V12 and V14 as well as development tools such as 4GL, ESQL/c, ESLQ/Cobol and other tool sets. He was involved in the St. Louis Informix User Group when it was active as well as member of the Leadership Council in the early years of the IIUG Founding.

Bruce is a recipient if the IIUG Director’s Award and multiple years as member of the IBM Champions group, member of the IIUG Conference Planning Committee for many years as well as the Informix Tech Talks for the last year. Bruce has been on the IIUG Board of Directors multiple times/years and wishes to continue working in this group for the advancement and growth of the Informix Products for the years to come as this is what he feels is one of the best relational databases available on the market today and wants to see it continue to be around and supported as such.

Bruce feels he has time to now to work with IBM and HCL in seeing this product grow and work with younger groups to learn what the products bring to market and to help growing users learn what the products can do for their employers and help employers find employees who know the Informix product line and how to help them fit in.