The newly formed SCORE Western Connecticut announced Monday it has rounded out its new leadership team after three chapters were consolidated in October.
Co-Chair David Rich announced the new chapter has appointed Matthew Krieger as co-chair, who replaces Ashwini “Ash” Bhaskar, who becomes the chapter’s fundraising chair.
In addition to managing SCORE’s support of local small businesses in Fairfield and Litchfield counties, the chapter also guides the non-profit organization’s presence in nine towns from the western portion of New Haven County including Beacon Falls, Cheshire, Middlebury, Naugatuck, Oxford, Prospect, Southbury, Waterbury and Wolcott.
SCORE Western Connecticut is powered by the business acumen of nearly 200 business mentor volunteers, professionals spanning a diverse scope of business experiences and industries. In addition to overseeing the mentoring volunteers, the leadership team will be responsible for all educational activities including in-person workshops and webinars, business events co-produced with local partners, as SCORE’s overall support for the local communities served by small businesses across western Connecticut.
Following is an overview of the new chapter leadership team:
David Rich – Co-Chair
Rich is a seasoned business and technology executive with more than three decades of experience helping organizations grow, strengthen operations, and navigate financial and digital transformation. His career includes executive responsibility at Mastercard, where he oversaw global portfolios in analytics, cybersecurity, risk management, and product commercialization, as well as leadership roles at Citi in commercial and small-business banking. In addition to his corporate leadership experience, he founded, built, and successfully sold an internet services business and has also led his own advisory firm and managed a family-owned import/export company.
Matthew Krieger – Co-Chair
Krieger – a technologist and executive with experience in IT, manufacturing and nonprofit –is heavily involved in AI initiatives and leads the SCORE AI Community of Practice. He is President of Cober, Inc., an industrial heating equipment manufacturer that provides large scale oven systems to companies such as Proctor and Gamble, Corning and GE. Previously. He has also held senior IT leadership positions at Time and the Reader’s Digest Association in the roles of division CTO, global data center management, strategy and governance.
He is also board chair of the Reader’s Digest Partners for Sight Foundation, a non-profit funder of direct service providers for blind and visually impaired individuals.
Ashwini “Ash” Bhaskar – Fundraising Chair
Previously Co-Chair of SCORE Western Connecticut and its predecessor Chapter, SCORE Fairfield County, Bhaskar takes over all chapter fundraising activities from John Harmon. After 25 years in management consulting working for companies like E&Y, Accenture, IBM. He then became a small business owner. Since stepping back from his business, he has been focused on mentoring and coaching small businesses and individual senior executives as a way to give back to the community.
Nadia Salgado Ariola – Treasurer
During her career, Ariola has specialized in accounting, tax, finance, construction, real estate, payroll, and business planning support, particularly in the states of Connecticut and New York. She has brought more than 30 years of accounting, tax, and finance experience across construction, telecommunications, technology, manufacturing, and real estate. Her career has included senior accounting roles in construction, financial analysis roles at IBM.
Katherine Skinner – Marketing Chair
Skinner, a global consumer industry executive and board director, elevates performance through business strategy development, branding and marketing, innovation, customer engagement, and go-to-market commercial strategy. She has driven growth or accelerated the trajectory of growth for leading companies including PepsiCo, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kimberly-Clark, Wendy’s, Ferrero, and Walgreens.
Kathryn Hebert – Community Engagement & Development Chair
Hebert is the founder and CEO of TPMConnect, a women-owned consulting firm dedicated to helping municipalities, nonprofits, and businesses bring visionary ideas to life through sustainable, high-impact projects. She has spent more than 40 years transforming communities across Connecticut and beyond working for small and large municipalities.
As a SCORE mentor and workshop presenter, Hebert helps entrepreneurs navigate local and state government processes, build strategic partnerships and collaborative business relationships and strengthen business plans.
Kishore Ramchandani – Education Chair
Ramchandani, following a diverse career spanning 40+ years working at EDS, Price Waterhouse, and IBM, in various leadership positions, retired from the corporate universe. Today he spends time collaborating with entrepreneurs and small businesses and guiding them as they transform their visions into reality.
Ramchandani is focused on helping SCORE clients modernize their business processes by taking advantage of newer technologies that include Cloud, AI, and Automation.
Allen Rosenberg – Volunteer Coordinator
Rosenberg’s leadership skills encompass direct marketing, catalog development, strategic planning, advertising, promotional strategies, team building, as well as multi-channel marketing. He co-founded Marke Communications in 1979 and today continues to provide integrated marketing strategies for the internet, retail, direct marketing catalog businesses, and major corporations. In 2013, he launched the Allen Rosenberg Group, which provides marketing strategies and collateral advertising materials.
Susan Abrams – Client Coordinator
Abrams career spanned 43 years with Pitney Bowes. The latter part of her career was business planning and project management as the intermediary between IT and the business. Included was process documentation, process improvement (6 sigma lean and other training), test cases and testing. Previously, her roles were financial in areas of budgeting and forecasting as well as extensive training experience.
She has been volunteering with SCORE for nine years and serves on the SCORE Western Connecticut’s Education and On-Boarding committees.
