Chair

Linda L. Wawrzyniak

lindaw@higherstandardsacademy.com

Linda Wawrzyniak is a graduate of Purdue University and holds a B.S. in Industrial Technology. She is the founder and president of Higher Standards Academy, LLC of South Bend, IN. This organization provides educational solutions for professional athletes and businesses. Linda created the program and trains her contractors on this proprietary system.

Linda also spent many years working as a quality engineer for a tier one automotive supplier, United Technologies. She was responsible for the implementation of QS 9000 in her facility. She created advanced quality plans for new product launches for Chrysler, Ford, Mercedes and Toyota. Linda also taught SPC to line workers and monitored those systems.

After her work with United Technologies, Linda began consulting for many other organizations (Crowe Horwath, Solvay International, Imagineering, Just Packaging, etc) and helped them with ISO 9000 implementations, new product launch quality, quality manual writing, and FMEA/Control Plan training to name a few.

Linda is a fluent Spanish speaker and coached 6th grade girls volleyball in 2004.

Vice Chair

Mark. R. Haley

mhaley@dbacks.com

Mark Haley graduated from the University of Nebraska and Santa Barbara City College. While attending University of Nebraska he played on the baseball team as a catcher. He started his coaching career at Nebraska, first as a graduate assistant and then as full time assistant (1982-1986). He then became the baseball recruiting coordinator for the University of Tennessee and was the interim head coach in 1987. He remained at Tennessee until 1990 until he signed a minor league contract to coach for the Chicago White Sox. He spent over a decade with the White Sox organization. He was a coach with the South Bend White Sox (1991-1992), Sarasota White Sox (1993), Hickory Crawdads (1994), South Bend Silver Hawks (1995), Prince William Cannons (1996) and Winston-Salem Warthogs in (1997) where he managed 49 games. He then managed the Hickory Crawdads (1998), coached at Winston-Salem (1999), and acted as Player agent for Strategic Sports Marketing (2000), Winston-Salem (2001-2002), Birmingham Barons (2003), and Great Falls White Sox (2004).

Haley has been skipper of the South Bend Silver Hawks since 2005. He was named “Manager of the Year” in the Midwest League and player development “Man of the Year” for the Arizona Diamondbacks (2005). He was named “Manager of the Year” once again in 2009 and received the first annual “Joe Garagiola Jr” award for outstanding achievement in Player Development for the Arizona Diamondbacks (2010).

Mark has owned his own baseball academy (Naples Youth Baseball Academy), where he worked with ages and skill levels in the Florida area.

Secretary

Phil Damico

pdamico@sjchamber.org

Phil Damico is a business management graduate from West Virginia University, where he also played varsity baseball for 4 years. He is currently the Director of Business Growth at the Chamber of Commerce in South Bend, IN.

Phil also earned a masters degree from Temple University in communications. Phil worked as lead sports producer and on air personality for Oxford Valley cable in the Philadelphia, PA suburbs. Phil has held a number of key executive level positions in business and industry, as well as coached athletics on both the high school and college level; where he currently serves as the assistant women's basketball coach for Holy Cross College, in South Bend, Indiana.