Senior Leadership

Lisa Rau, Chief Executive Officer

Lisa is the CEO and co-founder of Confluence. In addition to management of Confluence engagements and business development responsibilities, her direct work includes consulting in the use of software systems to achieve mission; information technology planning; the development of concepts and visions for the strategic use of technology within nonprofits from a holistic, organizational perspective; and planning specific technology projects typically involving complex, distributed information systems. You may even get Lisa when calling our Help Desk!

Lisa is active in the technology-for-nonprofits movement, and is a frequent invited speaker at conferences on nonprofits and technology across the country. She is on the faculty of the Center for Nonprofit Advancement's Learning and Leadership Institute, and serves as a Guest Faculty at Tidewater Community College's Academy for Nonprofit Excellence. See our News Section for upcoming and recent presentations.

From 1993-2001, Lisa was a senior executive at commercial information technology (IT) services firms where she had P&L responsibility for IT services contracts of over $35M in annual revenue. A previous Visiting Professor of Computer Science at the University of Pennsylvania's Computer Science Department, she is on the Board of Directors of the YWCA of the National Capital Area. Lisa earned her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She continued on to earn her M.S. in Computer Science from U.C. Berkeley, with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Exeter. Lisa has two children, and lives in Washington, DC with her husband of over 25 years.

Jeff Sullivan, President and Chief Operating Officer

Jeff has been the Confluence President since co-founding the company with Lisa Rau. Jeff has twenty years in the information technology industry, with special expertise in the organizational issues associated with program creation and growth.

Prior to founding Confluence, Jeff was a Deputy Director at NCI Information Systems where he managed the execution and growth of a portfolio of over 35 million dollars of information technology services projects for the public sector. He also spent eight years at SRA International, managing the growth and operations of many public sector projects, most notably a $20M set of contracts with the National Institutes of Health.

Jeff received a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering, magna cum laude from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He serves on the Board of Directors of the West Springfield Little League where he is the League’s Chief Umpire.

Karin Tracy, VP, Creative Services

Karin leads our creative services department, crafting identity and print design, web strategy and design and social media marketing solutions. Karin’s responsibilities also include sales, marketing and creative strategy for Confluence itself.

Prior to joining Confluence, Karin ran a successful design boutique called little b.  In its ten-year existence, little b performed design work for several hundred companies nationwide, both in the for- and non-profit arenas. Little b was acquired by Confluence in January of 2012.

Karin worked for a handful of design firms in the Baltimore-Washington, DC area prior to forming her own company. Stand out projects include being the lead designer for Al Gore’s 2000 campaign web site and working on early identity design for HonestTea.

Karin received a BFA in Graphic Design, summa cum laude, from the American College in London. She currently lives in a circa 1900 storefront rowhouse in Baltimore city with her husband, three dogs and a cat.

Staff

Confluence employs over twenty-five professional staff covering a diverse range of technical specialities with multiple certifications.

Microsoft, Novell, Macintosh, Unix/Linux, commercial fundraising / donor management systems, ColdFusion, Access, SQLServer, FileMaker, Cisco, Java, VBScript, Lotus Notes -- we could go on and on. If you need an expert in a specific technology area, chances are, we have the right people for the job.

Why do we have such a range of expertise? Because the technologies and needs we serve are as diverse as our customers themselves.

As important as our skills is our expertise in requirements analysis, estimation of projects, project management, quality assurance and customer support. You can rest assured your project will get done, and done right.