Leadership Team

Gary Heinze’s mission is a simple one: leave the world a better place than when he got here. Leading a company that’s dedicated to helping serve the most vulnerable members of society is just one way Gary fulfills that mission.

Gary is the conductor of the orchestra—responsible for keeping everyone at Northwoods in tune and playing at the right tempo. As president and CEO, he provides strategic direction to ensure the various pieces of the business play in harmony, allowing Northwoods to provide technology solutions that empower human services workers to deliver better outcomes to people who need help.

Gary is always looking for ways that Northwoods can do more, give more, and grow more to be not just a software company, but a place that leaves a lasting and meaningful impact on the world.

Always do what’s right to build a better tomorrow for customers and the communities they serve. That’s the philosophy that motivates Chris Carlson every single day.

Chris’s role as chief government affairs officer is a culmination of his history at Northwoods. After more than a decade helping establish the company as an industry leader in human services innovation, Chris now serves as our principal advocate, ambassador, and liaison to local, state, and federal officials and other government leaders. His role is two-fold: provide an industry perspective to help influence policy decisions, while making sure agencies understand how upcoming changes will impact their business.

Northwoods continues to grow and make a larger and more meaningful impact on agencies across the country. As that happens, Chris is the steward who makes sure our uncompromising commitment to elevating human services is seen and heard by those who are shaping the future of it.

Jim Aten has never met a challenge he didn’t love. Overcoming challenges is how you grow, after all, and Jim is always striving to take Northwoods to the next level.

As an inaugural member of Northwoods’ Business Advisory Board in 2013, Jim saw several opportunities for the company to better serve customers. Today, as executive vice president and chief delivery officer, Jim has brought many of those opportunities to life. For example, Jim recently led the establishment of Northwoods’ three practice management groups—a move that positions the company to increase customer satisfaction, while attracting and retaining the best talent, as we grow.

Jim oversees all departments involved in delivering Northwoods’ solutions to our customers, including product management, practice management, complex solutions, marketing, technical communication, and customer success. This position gives him a charter to provide a helping hand to anyone in the company who needs it, and that makes him excited to come to work every day.

The world doesn’t just need companies that build technology; it needs companies that can find a purpose for the technology they build. That’s why Rich Diers comes to work every day.

Rich believes in “falling in love” with customers’ problems—watching what they do, how they do it, and where they struggle—and then using the insights he collects to create software that helps solve those problems in new and unique ways.

After developing and delivering technology services across several industries for the first half of his career, Don Abney was starting to feel like a solution without a meaningful problem to solve.

Northwoods, however, is creating several of the most socially impactful technology solutions Don has ever seen. Being part of an organization that measures success in terms of helping people, and provides the opportunity to bring over 20 years of experience to bear on such meaningful work, fuels his fire.

Don understands that technology problems are people problems, and that if you’re empathetic toward the humans involved in creating and using software, you’re capable of achieving truly amazing things. As chief technology officer, he works to instill this same belief across product delivery and the rest of the company by setting the vision, strategy, and direction of Northwoods’ product offerings.

Don tends the garden, so our product development, product management, and solution engineering teams can focus on growing and nurturing solutions and customer relationships that deliver true business value and improve outcomes.

Cindy Sheets has spent 30 years helping businesses implement technology to transform the way they operate. She puts that experience to work at Northwoods because she truly believes in what our software does to help children and families.

Cindy’s role as chief services officer is to oversee Northwoods’ project implementations nationwide, while enhancing collaboration and cross-delivery between services and support teams. She leads both the Compass® and Traverse® solutions groups, as well as the project management office, practice advisory group, customer success, and technical communication and training. As Northwoods grows, so do the levels of implementations we manage and services we deliver. Cindy is paving the way for a seamless customer experience, regardless of project scope, size, or complexity.

Cindy excels at listening between the lines—not only hearing the words someone says, but also understanding what they’re feeling and how their emotions complete the message they’re trying to convey. This helps her ask the right questions to surface the right information, ensuring every project meets all of an agency’s business requirements and positions them for current and future success.

Not often do you find a company where everyone—from the very top of leadership all the way down—implicitly trusts each other to do their job, and where micromanagement doesn’t exist. Northwoods, however, has a culture built on trust, teamwork, accountability, and other core values. Our culture is incredibly important to the work we do, and it’s something we work very hard to protect … and that’s where Sarah Edwards, general counsel and chief administrative officer, comes in.

As one of Northwoods’ first employees, Chris McConnell has seen first-hand the community’s need for the programs that social services organizations provide. Today, as chief business development officer, Chris ensures that as many state and county agencies as possible use Northwoods' solutions to deliver better services in those communities.

Chris leads Northwoods’ rapidly growing team of business development managers and representatives—setting the bar for sales performance and territory growth, plus mentoring and motivating the team to achieve its goals. He also oversees strategic alliances, revenue strategy, marketing, and engagement with key stakeholders, including lobbyists, legislators, and community partners.  

Chris is ultimately responsible for building a best-in-class business development team, process, and culture. As a result, he has helped Northwoods grow into a company that works on multi-million-dollar, state-wide deals, while never losing focus on the individual workers that rely on our solutions every day.

Every day, every hour, thousands of kids are counting on just one person to give everything they have to make their day a little bit better than the one before. Rich Bowlen’s goal is and always has been to give his very best day in and day out to do the most good for the most kids.

Human services agency leaders need to know the challenges and constraints they’re up against every day are represented in the technology they use. Having walked a mile in their shoes, Steve Kaifas’s goal is to provide that source of comfort and familiarity to Northwoods’ customers across the country.

Steve brings over a decade of agency leadership experience to his role as director of customer success. He uses his intimate knowledge of agencies’ pains and processes to determine the right tools and support to achieve their goals. He and his team focus on listening, being proactive, and building deep relationships to ensure each unique customer always has access to the answers and resources they need.

After all, by helping customers successfully use our software, we help them meet their missions, strengthen families, and improve well-being.

Rupam Chokshi is a firm believer that while technology is constantly evolving, it should always be rooted in one thing: solving problems. All the features and benefits in the world ultimately won’t mean a thing if your product doesn’t truly help someone overcome the hurdles that get in their way every day.

Rupam’s keen eye for detail allows him to see all sides of a problem so he can connect it with the right solution. It is through this lens that Rupam approaches his role as director of portfolio management, where he oversees market analysis and segmentation, product positioning and strategy, messaging and persona development, and competitive intelligence. He works closely with the product management and innovation teams to manage our current portfolio, plus provide clarity around what we should do next.

By ensuring our products solve customers’ most important problems, Rupam helps free up their time to focus on the most important aspect of their jobs: their clients.

Jon Eakins thrives knowing every day he’s counted on to contribute to a company that helps not only the workers who rely on its software, but also the communities in which those workers serve. As part of Northwoods’ practice management leadership team, Jon is able to do just that.

Jon is director of Northwoods’ Complex Solutions Group, where he manages projects that fall under the complex solutions umbrella, as well as all projects implemented in public assistance and child support.

Jon has a knack for looking at a project from all sides to understand the key customers involved—How are they wired? What motivates them? Then, he identifies the right team at Northwoods and what skills, support, and tools they need to implement the project successfully and ensure customers are happy. Jon combines his people skills and business acumen in a way that makes the most impact on both the customer and the community.

It's surprisingly rare that a software company considers both its customers and their customers when developing its products and services. Yet Northwoods puts our customers’ clients—in our case, vulnerable children, adults, and families—at the center of everything we do. This differentiator prompted Chuck Barber to join our team seven years ago and has kept him coming back every day since.

A former Northwoods’ customer, Chuck puts his first-hand experience to work so we can make a meaningful impact on not just everyone we serve, but also everyone they serve.

As director of Traverse solutions, Chuck focuses on creating alignment between internal and external partners. He shares input from current customers with our product development team to help them prioritize new features, while working with business development to anticipate future customers’ needs and convey the value we can provide. He also oversees the team that implements all Traverse projects, while sharing best practices to help customers learn and benefit from each other’s success.

It’s easy to make assumptions and judgments about what social workers and caseworkers do. Movies, newspapers, and other forms of media tend to focus on the negative, fueling misperceptions as a result. Tiffany Himmelreich knows for every negative story or outcome shared, there’s an equally positive one that wasn’t … so it’s her job to help tell those stories.

John Schwingle has spent the past two decades building connections between some of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world. He’s a firm believer in the value of partnerships built on honesty and trust, and wakes up excited to plant seeds and nurture relationships that will help Northwoods grow.

As director of strategic alliances, John focuses on establishing and expanding Northwoods’ partnerships with systems integrators, consulting groups, and advocates who can help spread Northwoods’ mission and expand the company’s footprint in key markets and states.

This gives John a platform to boost the “double bottom line”—growing the company, and, more importantly, helping both agency workers and the clients they serve improve their quality of life.

Mark Washington believes that life is simply an opportunity to help another person. He wants to have as many opportunities—and help as many people—as possible, and that’s why he’s devoted decades to organizations that focus on improving the lives of children, youth, and their families.

What attracted Mark to Northwoods is a combination of two things: unparalleled culture, and a company-wide heartbeat for service. Everyone appreciates the ability to serve other people through what we do, and so they’re truly happy to work here. As director of health and human services strategy, Mark supports internal business units to accelerate growth at the state level so that Northwoods can continue expanding the amount of people we serve.

Mark previously served as assistant commissioner for Georgia’s Division of Family and Children Services and commissioner for Kentucky’s Department for Community Based Services, where he focused on identifying opportunities to streamline processes, expand programs, and improve outcomes.

Mark has also worked with national Medicaid Managed Care organizations to improve how they serve and support child welfare. For example, he initiated Kentucky’s Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Team (START) model and was recognized by Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky for his efforts to transition the state's child welfare system to focus on prevention and early intervention.