Leadership Team

Gary Heinze’s mission is a simple one: leave the world a better place than when he got here. Leading a company that’s dedicated to helping serve the most vulnerable members of society is just one way Gary fulfills that mission.

Gary is the conductor of the orchestra—responsible for keeping everyone at Northwoods in tune and playing at the right tempo. As president and CEO, he provides strategic direction to ensure the various pieces of the business play in harmony, allowing Northwoods to provide technology solutions that empower human services workers to deliver better outcomes to people who need help.

Gary is always looking for ways that Northwoods can do more, give more, and grow more to be not just a software company, but a place that leaves a lasting and meaningful impact on the world.

Not often do you find a company where everyone—from the very top of leadership all the way down—implicitly trusts each other to do their job. Northwoods, however, has a culture built on trust, teamwork, accountability, and other core values. Our culture is incredibly important to the work we do, and it’s something we work very hard to protect. That’s where Sarah Edwards, general counsel and chief administrative officer, comes in.

The world doesn’t just need companies that build technology; it needs companies that can find a purpose for the technology they build. That’s why Rich Diers comes to work every day.

Rich believes in “falling in love” with customers’ problems—watching what they do, how they do it, and where they struggle—and then using the insights he collects to create software that helps solve those problems in new and unique ways.

Brian LaMee loves technology almost as much as he enjoys showing people how it can change their lives for the better. He works at Northwoods because he can see the impact our solutions have on social services agencies and knows that their clients can get the care they need faster because of what we do.

Brian is constantly learning, asking questions, and finding new ways to solve problems. He thrives on understanding how people communicate, learn, and research so he can break down complex topics in a way that makes them make sense to anyone. This all comes in handy in the technology world, which can be intimidating and hard to understand (often when it doesn’t have to be).

Bringing together his passion and prowess as Northwoods’ Chief Revenue and Marketing Officer, Brian oversees the overall marketing and sales strategy, brand development, messaging, and positioning of our solutions. His goal is to continuously adapt our channels and messages to help organizations find us, learn about our solutions, and understand how we can help them realize the benefits of our technology.

Nick Patel has spent the past 17 years helping large and small businesses make informed, smart financial decisions. What attracted him to Northwoods is our commitment to collaboration and working together toward a common, meaningful mission. More importantly, working here gives Nick the ability to combine his business and technically savvy with his own personal goal of making sure all children are healthy, cared for, and safe.

As chief financial officer, Nick is responsible for overseeing Northwoods’ financial health to ensure the business is in a position for continued growth, while investing in our people, products, and mission. He focuses on providing Northwoods’ leadership team with the insights and information they need to make data-driven decisions that help to push the company forward.

Success at Northwoods isn't about the software we sell, it's about the people whose lives we impact by selling it. Michael Drabek thrives on knowing we offer solutions that empower the human services workforce to provide holistic benefits, treatment, and services to the vulnerable people they help.

As vice president of sales for local government, Michael coaches and mentors Northwoods' business development representatives so they can grow and nurture business at the county level.

One of the original members of our sales team, Michael knows the challenges of government buying better than anybody in the business. He uses this insight to lead his team in developing more structured and proactive approaches to selling, while providing agencies with the information they need to make technology decisions that support their mission and position them to achieve long-term success.

Jon Eakins thrives knowing every day he’s counted on to contribute to a company that helps not only the workers who rely on its software, but also the communities in which those workers serve. As part of Northwoods’ services delivery leadership team, Jon is able to do just that.

Jon is director of Compass solutions, where he oversees the planning, staffing, and execution of Compass product implementations, with a focus on economic assistance and child support. He draws on over a decade of experience integrating the Compass suite with agencies’ business processes to provide a complete and comprehensive solution.

Jon has a knack for looking at a project from all sides to understand the key customers involved—How are they wired? What motivates them? Then, he identifies the right team at Northwoods and what skills, support, and tools they need to implement the project successfully and ensure customers are happy. Jon combines his people skills and business acumen in a way that makes the most impact on both the customer and the community.

It's surprisingly rare that a software company considers both its customers and their customers when developing its products and services. Yet Northwoods puts our customers’ clients—in our case, vulnerable children, adults, and families—at the center of everything we do. This differentiator prompted Chuck Barber to join our team seven years ago and has kept him coming back every day since.

A former Northwoods’ customer, Chuck puts his first-hand experience to work so we can make a meaningful impact on not just everyone we serve, but also everyone they serve.

As director of Traverse solutions, Chuck focuses on creating alignment between internal and external partners. He shares input from current customers with our product development team to help them prioritize new features, while working with business development to anticipate future customers’ needs and convey the value we can provide. He also oversees the team that implements all Traverse projects, while sharing best practices to help customers learn and benefit from each other’s success.

It’s easy to make assumptions and judgments about what social workers and caseworkers do. Movies, newspapers, and other forms of media tend to focus on the negative, fueling misperceptions as a result. Tiffany Himmelreich knows for every negative story or outcome shared, there’s an equally positive one that wasn’t … so it’s her job to help tell those stories.

Jason Wintersteller loves to ask questions. His penchant for probing deeper into problems led him down the path to become a product designer and, as the problems he encountered became more complicated and multi-faceted, he found himself more interested in a more holistic product approach.

Social workers and caseworkers have difficult jobs and having inadequate tools makes it just a little harder. Jason believes in making things better by continuing to ask questions to truly understand the problem, helping to envision solutions and design products that address that problem instead of treating the symptoms.

As director of product, Jason oversees the two groups within Northwoods who envision and coordinate not only what products we create, but the strategy and design behind each. His product-centric thinking helps bring focus to product strategy and design, ensuring Northwoods helps position our customers for long-term success.