Our association headquarters at 1 East Greenway Plaza in Houston, Texas, has served us well over the years as the nexus for our international operations. 
The IFMA Foundation's purpose is to provide greater resources and educational opportunities to facility management professionals and those who support the FM industry. 
Bricsnet offers the industry's most powerful and easy-to-use technology solutions for facility management and real estate operations. 
Paul D. Ring
2011-2012 Board of Directors Biographies
International Facility Management Association
Ex-Officio
Tony Keane, CAE President and Chief Executive Officer
International Facility Management Association
Tony Keane, CAE, is president and CEO of the Houston-based International Facility Management Association, (IFMA). In this capacity he also serves as a Board Member of the IFMA Foundation. At IFMA he oversees the global organization from its headquarters in Houston, TX. IFMA is the world's largest and most widely recognized international association for facility management, supporting more than 20,000 members in 78 countries. The association's members, represented in 126 chapters and 16 councils worldwide, manage more than 37 billion square feet of property and annually purchase more than US$100 billion in products and services. Formed in 1980, IFMA certifies facility managers, conducts research, provides educational programs and produces World Workplace, the world's largest facility management conference and exposition.
Keane is a certified association executive with significant experience in the nonprofit sector. Prior to starting at IFMA in 2010 Keane served for approximately five years as executive director of NACE International, the professional association for corrosion prevention. While at NACE he also served as a director on the NACE Foundation Board, chairman of the Four Point Publishing, Inc. board and as a director on the Board of International Registration for Nuclear Coating Specialists (BIRNCS).
Keane previously served as chief operating officer of the Optical Society of America in Washington, D.C.; interim executive director and deputy executive director of the Construction Specifications Institute, located in Alexandria, VA; and the Institute of Industrial Engineers, located in Atlanta, GA.
Keane's past positions have provided him with a broad range of experience, from accounting to business management. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Cincinnati with a business degree in accounting and management. He also attended MBA courses at the University of Dayton and Georgia State University. He is a former Certified Public Accountant.
Additionally, Keane serves on the Board of Directors for GlobalFM, the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, (GHCVB) and on the board of directors for the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives, (CESSE). He is a member of the American Society of Association Executives.
Chair
Kathy O. Roper, CFM, MCR, LEED AP, IFMA Fellow
Associate Professor, School of Building Construction
Georgia Institute of Technology
Kathy O. Roper, CFM, MCR, LEED AP, IFMA Fellow, is an associate professor in the School of Building Construction at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
With more than 20 years in practice, Roper has a broad range of experience in the multi-faceted specialties of facility management and corporate real estate. She has worked for Sprint Communications, Financial Service Corporation, the U.S. General Services Administration and the American Cancer Society — providing her with experiences in corporate, government and non-profit business environments. Roper incorporates her experience and knowledge into her teaching and research at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s integrated facility and property management graduate program.
Roper is a prolific author and contributor to various industry publications and journals, including more than a dozen scholarly publications. Her interest in sustainability led to her LEED Accredited Professional designation and nomination to the U.S. Green Building Council’s formal education committee.
Roper is also a Certified Facility Manager®, an active member of IFMA and an IFMA Fellow. She was awarded the 2005 IFMA Distinguished Educator Award of Excellence and the IFMA Distinguished Author Award of Excellence in 2007.
First Vice Chair
Marc S. Liciardello, CFM, MBA, CM
Vice President of Corporate Services
ARAMARK
Marc S. Liciardello, CFM, MBA, CM, is an accomplished business leader with more than 25 years of experience in the facility management profession. He currently oversees the strategic and tactical facility and real estate programs for ARAMARK's corporate office portfolio. While earning his engineering and MBA degrees in the evening, Liciardello advanced through the ranks of the profession and has experience in a broad range of markets with leadership roles in both the public and private sectors.
Liciardello also has extensive experience in profit and loss management, workplace strategy and portfolio management, operations management, process re-engineering and business process improvement. He is a published author who has given numerous presentations on integrated and intelligent building systems at various venues, including Bell Laboratories.
Liciardello earned his Certified Facility Manager® credential in 2002 and has been an active member of the Philadelphia Chapter of IFMA since 1997, where he continues to serve on the governmental affairs and education committees.
Guided by his passion for advancing the facility management profession and professional worldwide, Liciardello currently serves as an active thought leader and member of the "How-to Guide" advisory board, as well as on IFMA's education, sustainability and finance committees. Liciardello also chairs the international government relations committee, headquarters workplace steering committee and strategic planning committee.
Second Vice Chair
Jon Seller
General Manager
Optegy Group
A veteran of the energy industry, Jon Seller has more than 26 years of experience in energy management and facility management in Asia Pacific. Currently the general manager of Optegy Group — a Hong Kong-based energy services company he co-founded in 2001 — he has developed energy and operations management solutions for nearly every type of facility and in more than 20 countries across Asia and the Middle East.
Prior to Optegy, Seller was the performance contracting business unit leader for Honeywell’s China, Australia and Pacific regions. Throughout his career, he has developed and managed the implementation of individual energy solutions projects of up to US$10 million and managed facility portfolios of up to 3,500 buildings. Seller is a board member of the Hong Kong Building Environmental Assessment Method Society and participates frequently in government consultation and advisory groups on energy and environmental issues relating to facilities.
Seller currently serves as chair of IFMA's finance committee. He is also a member of the IFMA Foundation board of trustees and IFMA's international government relations committee, international development advisory task force and headquarters workplace steering committee. Seller is a past president of the Hong Kong Chapter of IFMA, of which he has been a member since 2001. He participated in the IFMA Facility Management Forecast 2007 as a member of the panel of industry experts.
Board of Directors
Francisco Abrantes, ABA
Brazil CEO
Powertronglobal, Inc.
Francisco Abrantes, ABA, is the IFM director for Jones Lang LaSalle, in São Paolo, Brazil, where he is responsible for client relations as well as overseeing its operations. He has more than 17 years of comprehensive experience in the pharmaceutical, health care, information technology, oil and gas, call center, and broadcast TV and radio industries, where he has worked in the facility and property management, real estate, supply chain, HSSE and construction areas.
Abrantes created an organizational restructuring program in the CSU Card System S/A and Rede Bandeirantes Television and Radio Network’s facility management departments, focusing on both quality and costs. Since 2005, he has served Associação Brasileira de Facilities as financial director, vice chairman and chairman, and is currently serving as the fiscal advisory board chairman. In additon, Abrantes served as president of GRUPAS in 2008.
Abrantes has an MBA with a concentration in financial management the from University of Dallas / IPEP Brazil, a post degree in people management and a bachelor’s degree in business administration.
Isilay Civan, MSc, Ph.D.s, LEED AP
Associate, Senior Consultant
HOK
Isilay Civan, MSc, Ph.D.s, LEED AP, is a senior consultant at HOK in Chicago, Illinois, USA, where she is responsible for sustainability, real estate strategy and facility management consulting, as well as business development and group-wide marketing.
Civan holds a doctorate in real estate development from Texas A&M University and a second doctorate in facility management from Istanbul Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey. She became a registered architect in Turkey in 1998 and in 2008 became a LEED Accredited Professional (U.S. Green Building Council) with an existing building specialty, which in v3 became the operations and maintenance specialty. She is a published author and has more than 10 years of project experience in architectural design, construction project management, facility management and real estate development for corporate, institutional, governmental and public sector clients.
Currently serving on the IFMA sustainability committee, Civan sits on the editorial board for IFMA’s sustainability “how-to guides” and is a subject matter expert for IFMA’s sustainability credential.
She is also a member of the Chicago Chapter of IFMA and the chapter’s sustainability committee. Civan also serves as a USGBC education provider program reviewer and auditor of the Heartland Region.
Michael D. Feldman, FMP, CM
Deputy Executive Director
Los Angeles World Airports
Michael D. Feldman, CM, is the deputy executive director over facility management at Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), USA. He is responsible for the activities of the facilities planning, facilities engineering, environmental services, inspection services, and construction and maintenance divisions.
Feldman has been involved in airport development and management for 30 years. He began his career in the airport industry in June 1980 when he joined LAWA as an assistant city planner in the Environmental Management Bureau. He managed several key environmental programs including the first Part 150 Noise Compatibility Program for LAX, environmental clean-ups throughout the airport system and a variety of development projects.
In 1991 Feldman became the manager of aviation planning for the Aviation Division of the Port of Seattle. Prior to returning to LAWA, he was deputy managing director of aviation facilities and environmental programs for Sea-Tac International Airport. There he built an integrated facility management and maintenance organization and championed a sustainability program that reduced operating costs and environmental implications.
Feldman is a Certified Member of the American Association of Airport Executives and has served two terms as president of the Airport Facilities Council of IFMA.
Lesley Groff, CFM
Facility Manager
The Hershey Company
Lesley Groff, CFM, has more than 15 years of experience in the facility management profession and has successfully managed public and private office space. Currently, she is the facility manager for The Hershey Company and is responsible for more than 600,000 square feet of mixed used office space in historic buildings.
Prior to her position at The Hershey Company, Groff served in the facility areas of the Pennsylvania Supreme Courts and Tyco Electronics.
Groff has been the recipient of the facility manager of the year award from the Central Pennsylvania Chapter of IFMA in both 2003 and 2010, and was professional member of the year in 1999 and 2000. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Indiana State University in 1991. In 2005, she earned her Certified Facility Manager®credential.
Joachim W. Hohmann, MSc, Ph.D., CFM
Managing Partner
Consultants Circle
Joachim W. Hohmann, MSc, Ph.D., CFM, is managing partner of Consultants Circle, where he provides consultancy in facility management technology to major European companies, federal agencies, and state and local governments.
Hohmann is also a professor at the Technical University Kaiserslautern, Germany, teaching on the foundations of facility management and information technology (IT). He is a chartered surveyor of the European Patent Office and author of numerous books and articles on IT in facility and real estate management.
Hohmann is a founding program committee member of the European Facility Management Conference. He is also a founding member of the German Facility Management Association’s special interest group on computer-aided facility management.
He is an active member of the FM Consultants Council of IFMA and serves as its global liaison for Central Europe. In 2002, Hohmann became a Certified Facility Manager®.
William M. O'Neill, CFM
Associate Director, Facilities Management
University of Minnesota
William M. O’Neill, CFM, is operations and maintenance facilities director of one of three University of Minnesota facility management districts that provides maintenance, custodial, construction, energy management and administration services throughout the university.
O’Neill has more than 18 years of experience in facilities, having previously held positions as associate director for facilities management central services as well as construction manager and facilities manager. As associate director, he was responsible for directing the construction; recycling, waste and reuse; and signs and graphics business units across 24 million square feet of facilities.
O’Neill is currently sustainability chair of the Academic Facilities Council of IFMA, where he served as president from 2004 to 2006. In 2008, he earned his Certified Facility Manager® credential. He earned a Bachelor of Arts from William Paterson University and an MBA certificate from the University of Saint Thomas.
James P. Whittaker, P.E.,CFM, EFP, FRICS
President
Facility Engineering Associates, P.C.
James P. Whittaker, CFM, P.E., CEFP, FRICS, is president of FEA and has more than 25 years of experience in the facilities and built environment industry. He has earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in civil engineering. Whittaker has managed hundreds of facility-related projects for government, institutional, health care and corporate clients in the United Kingdom, Central and South America, and throughout the United States.
Whittaker serves on the board of directors for the National Research Council Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment. He also sits on the industry advisory board of Brigham Young University’s Facility and Property Management degree program. Whittaker is a fellow of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors and instructor in the facility management program at George Mason University. He also serves as secretary/treasurer of the APPA Educational Facilities Professionals board of directors.
Whittaker currently serves on IFMA’s international government relations committee. In 2011 he was appointed as the IFMA representative on the U.S. Department of State Overseas Buildings Office Industry Advisory Panel. In this capacity he advises OBO senior leadership on best practices in facility management and high-performance buildings.
Whittaker is a certified IFMA instructor and has taught nearly 100 IFMA and GMU competency courses over the past decade. He has been a subject matter expert in the development of a number of IFMA educational courses including: the Facility Management Professional learning system, Sustainability Facility Professional™ courses, FM core competency courses, the Certified Facility Manager exam review course, the Business of FM course and the new Facility Management: A Practical Introduction course.
Francis J. Kuhn, CFM, CFMJ
Vice President of Facilities and Administration
Western Corporate Federal Credit Union
Francis J. Kuhn, CFM, CFMJ, has been a practicing facility manager for more than 30 years in a variety of industries, managing more than 2,200,000 square feet of commercial and residential property. He is currently responsible for managing WesCorp’s facilities and administration department at WesCorp’s corporate headquarters in San Dimas, Calif.
Kuhn earned his Certified Facility Manager® designation from IFMA in 1996. He is a past president of the Los Angeles Chapter of IFMA and has served as vice president, secretary, and chapter historian. In 2002 and 2006, he was named the Los Angeles Chapter’s professional member of the year. Kuhn has also been a member of the board of trustees of the IFMA Foundation, including serving as secretary, treasurer, first vice chair and chair. He has been an active member of various chapter and association committees, including education programming, emerging leaders, board governance, audit and finance.
Prior to joining WesCorp, Kuhn served as director of facilities for Angeles Corporation and director of facilities and administration for New World Entertainment. He is a 10-year past president of the San Dimas Corporate Park Property Owners Association.
Kuhn earned his bachelor’s degree in 1977 from the University of California, Los Angeles.
