I.R.I.S. - The Strategic Committee

The first line of management of I.R.I.S. is the Strategic Committee.

The members of the Strategic Committee are high-level skilled professional who have accumulated an important international experience in the fields of imaging, Intelligent Document Recognition, Document Management and implementation of large scale systems.

The Strategic committee is composed of 4 members:

	Pierre De Muelenaere President & CEO Pierre was born on October 25, 1958 in Brussels, Belgium (Belgian citizen). In 1981, he graduated Civil engineer in Microelectronics from the “Université Catholique de Louvain” (La plus grande distinction) and received its PhD in 1987. During its PhD, he designed and manufactured a complete prototype of a revolutionary OCR machine based on a new full-custom programmable Integrated Circuit for Image Recognition and the associated software. He founded I.R.I.S. in 1987, to commercialize the results of his PhD thesis, with the help of Jean-Didier Legat a fellow Phd (who went back at the UCL in 1989, as a professor) and Ackermans & van Haaren, a Belgian financial holding. In the first years of I.R.I.S., Pierre was Vice-President of R&D. He has been acting as CEO of the company since 1991. Pierre is the Chairman of the board, President of the Strategic Committee of I.R.I.S. and a major shareholder of I.R.I.S. since the MBO of I.R.I.S. by Pierre Rion and Pierre De Muelenaere in 1992. Pierre has more than 20 years of experience in the imaging field and has accumulated a very solid experience in setting up international partnerships with US and Asian companies (HP, Kodak, Adobe, Fujitsu,..), company management and R&D management. Pierre received the “2001 Manager of the Year” award, which is the most respected management award in Belgium. The company I.R.I.S. received the "2002 Entrepreneur of the year" award.
	Etienne Van De Kerckhove co-CEO Etienne was born on December 23, 1963 in Belgium (Belgian citizen). In 1987, He received a degree of Management Engineer (Ingénieur commercial, Cum maxima laude) from the Ecole de Commerce Solvay (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and a in 1996 a Master in Tax Management (Cum magna laude) from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. In 1989, Etienne founded Stratefi, a tax, accounting and financial consultancy company for small and medium-size businesses. He joined I.R.I.S. board as a director in 1992, and in 1999 he joined I.R.I.S. on a full time basis after the IPO. Etienne is co-CEO of I.R.I.S. Group since 2000. He is more specially in charge of the daily management of the Professional Solutions. Etienne has played a major role in the IPO in 1999, the set-up of the development strategy of the company and the management of the Merger and Acquisitions processes since then.
	Denis Hermesse Chief Financial Officer Denis Hermesse is born on August 11, 1969 (Belgian citizen). He graduated in applied economics as « Ingénieur Commercial » (Ecole des Hautes Etude Commerciales – HEC – Liège) in 1992. He started his career as Auditor with Coopers & Lybrand. In 1995, Denis joined the Walibi Group as assistant controller. He was appointed Finance Director of the European division in 1998 and became Vice-President of Finance in 2001. Denis joined I.R.I.S. in 2006. As CFO, Denis is in charge of the group finance, administration and reporting ; he has been part of all acquisition processes since 2006
	Gamal Khaldi General Manager of I.R.I.S. ICT, Gamal Khaldi was born March 15th, 1972 (Belgian Citizen). After his graduation in Telecommunication and Applied Electronics (1991) he started his career in ICT. Building up experience in both technical and commercial functions in the Mainframe / Enterprise Systems world he joined IBM Ireland in 1999. After a short mission with IBM Belgium, he joined I.R.I.S. in 2000. In 2005 he actively participated in the takeover of Jeeves NV and became General Manager of I.R.I.S. ICT. In 2009, he drove the acquisition and integration of Corismo.