About Us

President: Susanna Rodriguez

Susanna has over twenty years in Management and Business Development both nationally and internationally. With extensive experience in Business and Services Delivery, this includes bringing together teams of experts qualified to analyze existing capabilities and requirements and recommending areas for improvement. Her focus has been in planning, analyzing, deploying and integrating advanced systems.

Susanna’s strengths are in areas such as providing advise in developing and integrating process and information models between and across business lines to eliminate information and process redundancies;

Susanna also has the ability to analyze production operations and growth opportunities, defining new requirements and opportunities, then preparing cost/benefit analysis for implementing new processes and solutions.

Chief Executive Officer: John Nicol

John brings over 20 years of progressive management and international business development experience in all phases of the Project Life Cycle to the team. He was the creator of two successful high-tech companies in New Zealand related to Virtual Reality and Internet technology that garnered many awards including a prestigious New Zealand Multimedia Innovation award and named "Coolest Company in New Zealand" in 1994. John moved to Canada in 2000. Before co-founding Acron, John was the VP Engineering of a NASDAQ listed hi-tech firm responsible for staff in Canada, the United States and Australia and then the Canadian General Manager of a US-based Modelling and Simulation company.

He is a seasoned technologist who performs development, project management and technical specialist functions on a wide variety of traditional and cutting edge systems and software. John also has wide experience implementing software development processes and practices. He gained a B.Sc. in Information Technology from Auckland University in New Zealand and an MBA from Trinity University (with a major in Project Management). John is a retired Army Major with operational experience in the Signals and Intelligence fields and served with the United Nations in the Middle East.

Chief Technical Officer: Raul Rodriguez

Raul is an information technology architect with over 10 years of experience in IT in systems analysis, design, development, maintenance, support, validation, and verification. Accompanied by several years of experience in the C4ISR field, specializing in the architectural design and capability engineering, he has contributed to the NATO Interoperability Program with CASE tool modeling and design of operational, policy and metadata repositories, in support of a C4ISR Model-Driven, Policy-Driven Architecture.

His experience consists of the Project Support Environment (PSE), a Collaborative Engineering Environment (CEE) that provided the engineering and management processes and tools to establish the necessary rigueur for effective planning, evolution and support of C4ISR capability to the MOD UK.

Vice President Knowledge Management: Larry Sampson

Larry brings over 30 years of consulting, operations and project management experience to Acron's Knowledge Management division. In addition to running production for one of Canada's largest e-Learning companies, and directing operations for a division of a major U.S. IT Services firm, he has led large-scale IT and Knowledge Management projects in Canada and the United States for clients such as the Canadian Department of National Defence, and Fortune 1000 firms in the finance, telecommunications, aerospace and retail verticals. Larry has also developed and run nationally recognized IT training programs, as well as making recommendations to government on the restructure of post-secondary programs in Computer Science.

He holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Saint Mary's University, is a graduate of Management and Information Technology programs at Babson College and the University of Western Ontario, and is a National past President of the Canadian Information Processing Society.

Vice President Market Development & Sales Management: David Moore

For over 30 years, David has been a leader, a business and technology manager, and change agent in a wide variety of challenging positions where program-development, project-management, leadership ability, and relationship management were critical. David brings extensive, hands-on experience, developing people and managing the resources of large, complex organizations, programs, and projects to the Acron team. David is a retired Canadian Army Lieutenant-Colonel. He commanded a Battle Group in central Bosnia-Herzegovina under the banner of the United Nations (UN) and was received in private audience by His Holiness, Pope Jean-Paul II in recognition of his outstanding humanitarian leadership. Subsequently, as Director of National Defence’s Command Centre, David played a key role in the planning and execution of complex international operations, including humanitarian relief efforts, on five continents.

Prior to joining Acron, David was an Executive Consultant with CGI where he was recognized as a Canadian ‘thought leader’ in the application of internationally recognized best practices for enterprise business and technology architecture, such as the Business Transformation Enablement Program (BTEP), Department of Defence Architecture Framework (DoDAF), and IT Service Management (ITSM) Framework . His strengths revolve around business transformation to drive capability engineering and technology strategy, encompassing program management, planning and operations, problem solving, resource management and development, team building, mentoring, and education and training.

Vice President Product Development: Scott Arbuthnot

Scott brings over 25 years of experience in software design and development to the Acron team. He holds a Bachelor of Mathematics degree from McMaster University and has developed software solutions ranging from database management to current cutting-edge graphics for 3D content development and high-end simulation image generators. Scott also has a great deal of experience working with distributed simulation environments and transforming legacy systems into integrated network architectures.

Scott is a retired Canadian Air Force Major. As a pilot, he served as a tactical flight officer in the scout-reconnaissance role, a qualified flight instructor, standards officer, and instrument check pilot, and has served on international operational deployments. Scott also has broad experience in research and development and modeling and simulation having worked for Director General Intelligence, Operational Research Division and the Canadian Forces Aerospace Warfare Center as Section Head for the Synthetic Environments Coordination Office. In these positions, Scott played a pivotal role in a large number of modeling and simulation efforts for the Canadian Air Force, including Canadian Head of Delegation for the NATO SMART steering group, Canadian Head of Delegation to the NATO Special Air Charts Working Group, and the Chairman of NATO SAS-34 Visual Database Sub-working Group of the Technical Working Group.

:: History

Acron was established in 2004 in Ottawa, Canada and has already established key clients in the Federal Government and industry that recognize the need for Capability Planning and Engineering services.