John-Paul E. Besong is a former Senior Vice President of e-Business and Chief Information Officer for Rockwell Collins, which was a Fortune 500 company based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which provided aviation electronics for both commercial and military aircraft, (now operating as Collins Aerospace). He was appointed Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer in 2003. Beginning in 1979, when he joined Rockwell Collins as a chemical engineer, Mr. Besong held management roles having increasingly more responsibility within the company, including Vice President of e-Business and Lean Electronics SM, Head of the SAP initiative and Director of the Printed Circuits and Fabrication businesses. Mr. Besong serves on the boards of directors of United Fire Group, Inc., Mercy Medical Center, Mercy Foundation, and the Technology Association of Iowa (TAI) CIO Advisory Board and is a former director of Lean Aerospace Initiative (LAI), Junior Achievement of East Central Iowa, and Iowa Public Television Foundation. We consider Mr. Besong to be a qualified candidate for service on the Board of Directors and the committees he is a member of due to his business acumen and distinguished management career as an officer and information technology expert of a Fortune 500 company.