Commencement Address Speaker Bios
Commencement Address Speaker Bios
Commencement Address Speakers
Mansoor Ahsan
P.E. Chief Executive Officer, Bridgefarmer & Associates, Inc.
Master's Commencement Ceremony Honoring: NCE and MTSM
Asha Saxena
CEO & Founder WLDA Tech
Master's Commencement Ceremony Honoring: HCAD, CSLA, and YWCC
Vincent L. DeCaprio
Ph.D. '72, '20 HON, Board Emeritus Trustee
Ph.D. Commencement Ceremony
Kim Hanemann
President, PSE&G
Undergraduate Commencement Ceremony
Mansoor Ahsan was named the Chief Executive Officer of Bridgefarmer & Associates, Inc. in 2002. He has decades of award-winning structural design and construction experience in transportation industry. He has become a leading voice for the alternate delivery of the projects. Mansoor has held several executive positions at ENR Top 100 Engineering Firms.
With bridge engineering as his true passion, Mansoor is a well-recognized civil engineer and is a registered professional engineer in over twenty states. He has won numerous national and international awards for his state-of-the-art design, in both the highway and railroad industries. He has earned a reputation as an astute and innovative bridge designer thriving on finding solutions for the most complex challenges. His pioneering design, scheduling, and construction techniques have saved project owners hundreds of millions of dollars. Contractors and agencies alike turn to his expertise, and to Bridgefarmer, for swift and efficient solutions.
At Bridgefarmer, Mansoor has been responsible for the management, design, and delivery of multi-billion-dollar corridors. Under his leadership, the Bridgefarmer team has expanded its footprint both internationally and domestically in the Southwestern Region of the United States. Bridgefarmer credits Mansoor for the Excellence in Engineering Award received for the very first public/private partnership for the construction of the LBJ corridor; a $4 billion project in Dallas, TX. He also led the design quality of the very first design-build project, a $1.2 billion corridor in Austin, TX. Mansoor is the engineer on record for the design of the 16′ tall through-plate girder bridge in Oklahoma City, OK. Furthermore, he has had the privilege of leading the Bridgefarmer engineers in the design of monumental mega-projects such as the DART Light Rail Orange Line Extension from Bachman Station to DFW International Airport and the “Big Rock Interchange” in Little Rock, AR.
Mansoor holds a master’s degree in structural engineering from Bradley University, Peoria, IL, and has completed leadership training by the Harvard Business School of Management and Dale Carnegie Institute of Management.
Asha Saxena is a strategic and innovative leader with a track record of building successful technology companies over the past 30 years. She is the author of the bestselling book “The AI Factor – How to Apply Artificial Intelligence and Use Big Data to Grow Your Business Exponentially” and the Founder and CEO of Women Leaders in Data and AI, a global leadership organization brining senior leaders together to create a fair digital world with parity and equity.
Asha is a partner at CEO Coaching International, a company focused on founding, building, turning around, and selling successful businesses. She is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University, teaching graduate classes on Management Consulting, Entrepreneurship and Big Data Analytics, and served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Columbia Business School.
In the past, Asha served as the CEO of Aculyst, a healthcare data analytics company, built an e-commerce platform for 3,000 dealers nationwide, and was the President and CEO of Future Technologies. This company provided data analytics solutions to Fortune 1000 companies and was recognized at the World Economic Forum as a “Global Growth Company for 2007”.
Asha earned her BS in Computer Science from Bangalore University in India, an MS in Data Science from Southern Methodist University, and underwent management training at MIT and the London Business School.
Vincent DeCaprio, Ph.D. ’72, ’20 HON is an independent consultant in the management of life science businesses and a partner in Proception Medical, LLC, a medical device development company. He also serves as an advisor for product development for Footbridge Medical, LLC, engaged in the development of orthopedic products. He was formerly president, CEO and vice chairman of Vyteris, Inc., a drug delivery technology company. Prior to Vyteris, Dr. De Caprio was a member of the leadership team at BD (Becton, Dickinson and Co.), a global medical technology company, where he served as senior vice president and held several management positions over his 23-year tenure, including chief technology officer, and president of BD’s worldwide vascular access business.
Dr. DeCaprio has been engaged in the development and commercialization of several medical devices including insulin delivery systems, interventional radiology products and vascular access devices. He holds a BSEE degree from Newark College of Engineering and MS and Ph.D. degrees in bioengineering from the Polytechnic Institute of New York.
Dr. DeCaprio has been elected to the College of Fellows of AIMBE (American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering), has served on AIMBE's board of directors as chair of the Industry Council, and has organized and chaired the annual Industry Forum sessions at AIMBE' s annual meetings. He served as a member of NJIT’s Board of Trustees from December 1998 – January 2020, and served on the industrial advisory boards of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering, John Hopkins University’s Bioengineering Department, and the Georgia Institute of Technology's Petit Institute. In the past, he has served as chairman of the Governor's Council on Science and Technology for the State of Utah and has spoken at numerous conferences on topics such as the management of innovation and health care industry and technology trends.
Kim Hanemann was named President and Chief Operating Officer of Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G), effective June 30, 2021. Headquartered in Newark, NJ, PSE&G is one of the largest combined electric and gas companies in the United States and New Jersey’s oldest and largest publicly owned utility, serving approximately 2.6 million customers, nearly three-quarters of the state’s population. PSE&G is a subsidiary of Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG) of which she is a member of the Senior Executive Team.
Previously, Hanemann was PSE&G’s Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. In that role, she was responsible for PSE&G’s electric, gas and customer operations, as well as the company’s asset management and centralized services organization. She also oversaw the on-time, on-scope, and on-budget execution of the company’s large construction projects.
Prior to being named Chief Operating Officer in January 2020, Hanemann held numerous leadership positions in both electric and gas field operations as well as in utility support operations. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Middlesex Water Co., the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, and the New Jersey Utilities Association. Additionally, she is a member of the Board of Trustees of Children’s Specialized Hospital.
Hanemann graduated from Lehigh University with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and received a master’s degree in business administration from the Rutgers Graduate School of Management.