Who We Are

Joelle Carmichael is a successful business woman with more than 12 years overseeing the establishment and growth of SaQus. Joelle is responsible for all business operations, business development, corporate strategy, recruiting, partnerships and business alliances. Her experience in leadership, human resource management, marketing, business development and organizational restructuring has led to SaQus’s exponential growth achieved as a result of successfully helping organizations increase efficiency, market share and customer service through business applications as well as the development of several complex customized systems for government agencies. Successful recent applications developed under Joelle’s leadership include the award winning Open Book New York (contracts) and the VendRep application developed for the Office of the New York State Comptroller.

Joelle is a graduate of the University at Buffalo, where she received a Bachelor of Science in Business Management. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Healthcare Administration from Utica College.

Matthew Carmichael has authored over 300 custom applications, and specializes in creating custom applications for organizations that have unique processes that cannot be fulfilled by off-the-shelf software. He has created business critical applications for Saint Gobain Performance Plastics, SI Group, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), New York State Education Department, and Office of the New York State Comptroller.

Matt has over 20,000 hours of Agile project experience serving in various roles including: project team member, scrum master, project manager, and product owner; in addition to providing Agile training to project teams and managers. Matt specializes in presenting software development techniques to those without technical backgrounds. His “easy to understand” approach provides an effective software development overview to executive management.

Matt lives in Altamont, New York with his wife and two dogs.

Gerard Uffelman is SaQus’s Senior Java \ Solution Architect. He is the team technical lead for many business critical applications that SaQus builds and supports for the Office of New York State Comptroller (OSC). Gerard leads several OSC applications including the Online VendRep System , the State Authority Contracts Submission System (CSS) for New York State Public Authorities, and the Ecteronic Document Submission System (EDSS). Gerard is responsible for the overall design, development, and implementation of these critical applications.

Gerard has successfully completed many mission critical assignments at the State Comptroller Office, and has been the technical team leader and architect for the NYS Comptroller’s IBM WebSphere application Server Conversion and the eDocs for Contracts project that interfaces with the Grant Gateway application and Statewide Financial System (SFS). His responsibilities include continuous application support and upgrades, formulating test plans, improving application security standards, setting up development environments, designing and coding web-based applications, creating external interfaces, and designing application graphics. Additionally, Gerard provides instruction and mentors technical staff in software standards. He has created and designed numerous organizations’ websites and has written several applications for online programming resources. As a software Architect, Gerard uses Agile/Scrum methodology to deliver on-time working software products.

Gerard is an alum of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, where he majored in Computer Sciences.

Holding a degree in Business Administration with concentrations in Management Information Systems and Computer Science, Melissa Stark has special expertise in spearheading larger software projects. Melissa has extensive public and private sector experience gathering requirements and managing projects. Her strong technical skills enhance her communications between stakeholders and technical teams.

Additional SaQus responsibilities include requirements analysis, software architecture, development, testing, training curriculum development and product delivery for both public and private sector clients.

Kat has extensive project experience in implementing critical software and technology solutions for private and public sector organizations. Since 2004, Kat has worked with many New York Capital Region staples including: CAPTAIN Youth & Family Services, Media Logic, MVP Health Care, New York State Office of General Services (OGS), Saint Gobain, and SI Group. Kat has an incredible IT strategy mindset and a passion to ensure customers are happy with theology solutions.

Kat graduated from SUNY Potsdam in 2004 with a BS degree in Business Administration and a minor in Information Technology.