WP-ORG is governed by a Board of Advisors. The current slate of advisors brings a variety of perspectives and experiences to our governance. A short bio of each is included below.
WARREN HEARNES ’89
Warren Hearnes ’89 currently serves as CIO of WP-ORG and is one of the four original “founding advisors” of WP-ORG. He lives in Lilburn, GA. After serving in the field artillery as a FSO, FDO, and Platoon Leader, Warren resigned from the Army and entered graduate school. He completed his M.S. in Operations Research and Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research focused on reinforcement learning for robotic control, funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA.
Dr. Warren Hearnes has held numerous roles in optimization, machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI), with over 30 years of experience applying these technologies to solve complex business challenges. He currently consults with OptiML AI, applying his expertise to address problems in industry and educate executives on optimization, ML, and AI. He previously served as Chief Data Scientist at Best Buy, where he led a large team of data scientists and spearheaded the development of the company’s AI strategy. At Cardlytics, he developed AI/ML platforms that enhanced revenue-generating algorithms, propelling it from start-up through IPO. Prior to that, he held roles at The Home Depot, UPS, and Lucent Technologies.
Warren and his wife, Dominique, have two sons — Luke and Michael. Warren actively volunteers with INFORMS, serving as VP of Technology Strategy on the Board of Directors and chairing the Technology Strategy and AI Integration Committees. He previously chaired the Career Center Committee for six years. While at Best Buy, he was a member of the National Retail Federation’s AI Working Group and has also served on analytics advisory boards for graduate programs at Georgia Tech and Emory University in Atlanta. He also enjoys golf and traveling in their RV.
As a volunteer for West-Point.ORG, Warren programs many of the applications and services that WP-ORG provides.
MEGAN HOSTLER
Megan Hostler resides in Ridgefield, Connecticut – a location which has been very enjoyable over the years as it’s allowed the Hostlers to enjoy frequent trips to West Point….. initially as visits to husband, Dutch’s (USMA 1968) alma mater, and later as opportunities to visit with sons, David (USMA 2004) and Christopher (USMA 2007). While the “boodle and laundry runs” are a thing of the past, Megan and Dutch’ volunteer activities still have them heading over to West Point frequently.
After several years practicing law for the Department of Justice, Megan turned her attention to volunteer activities, and enjoys her work with USMA Admissions, the Blue Star Mothers of Northern Fairfield County and Help Our Military Heroes, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non profit corporation whose mission is to help our deployed and wounded soldiers.
As a volunteer for West Point.Org, Megan currently serves as a co-moderator of Parent Forum and Plebe Net. She is also a relief moderator for Prospective-Net and Gray-Net.
CAMERON PRICE ’96
Bio pending…
DIAN WELLE
Dian Welle, a retired RN, MICN, has the unique position of being an Advisor and one of our two paid employees. She tends to the day-to-day needs of our community through our feedback ( feedback@west-point.org ) address.
She and her Husband Dan are the parents of a West Point graduate, class of 2002. Debbi, their youngest child, has been deployed five times. She is currently a Physician’s Assistant , stationed at Guantanamo Bay Cuba.
Dian started her association with WP-ORG after building a site for her family, who had never seen the Academy. The “2002 Memory Page” gained popularity with the parents of the class, within 2 months had over 10,000 visits, and many of the parents were contributing to it. That page began a trend for each class of parents to start their own sites. Dian has worked in collaboration with other parents and grads to create the WP-ORG Bicentennial site. http://www.west-point.org/family/bicent/. The Bicentennial site brought Dian and Dick Breakiron (USMA ’51) together to build the tradition pages within that site. Quickly realizing the value of the stories they were receiving from Grads, the idea to put these into a book was formed. The book Memories and Traditions, The Real West Point Story was published in 2002.
Dian and Dan have four children and eight grandchildren. They have a home in Priest River, Idaho. Dian, having worked in major trauma centers, and critical emergency rooms for 23 years, is enjoying her more relaxing job with WP-ORG. Her off-time love is devoted to the training, showing and and breeding of Labrador Retrievers . With her new found interest in computer work, she is lucky to have Dan, who tends to the kennel work, while she fiddles with the computer.