ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Two veterans of the convenience and fuel retailing industry were recently inducted into the Conexxus Hall of Fame during the Conexxus Annual Meeting: Sharon Scace, the ISpec technical solutions manager for WEX, and David Ezell, principal software architect for Verifone.
Sharon Scace
Scace has been in the petroleum industry for 27 years, beginning her career at Amoco supporting the Amoco Pipeline Co. and later moving to retail point-of-sale (POS) support where she wrote her first specification for the consumer experience at pay-at-the-pump interfaces. She joined South Portland, Maine-based WEX, a provider of corporate payment solutions, in 2011.
Actively involved in payment and retail fueling industry and international standards organizations for more than 13 years, she has participated in the International Standards Organization (ISO) and International Forecourt Standards Forum (IFSF) activities. Scace is chair of the Conexxus Retail Financial Transaction Committee, having previously served as chair of the EPS Working Group, the Retailer Business Requirements Committee and the Point-to-Point Encryption Working Group.
“The thing that really got me started in the standards industry was the Electronic Payment Server (EPS) POS interface,” said Scace when asked what work sparked her path toward involvement with Conexxus. “That kicked off really looking at standards in the payment space outside of ISO.”
David Ezell
Ezell, a music major in college, discovered computer programming in the early 1980s and went on to work at Bennett Pump Co. and subsequently one of the company’s customers, SuperAmerica.
He joined San Jose, Calif.-based Verifone, a POS terminal vendor and a leading provider of payment and commerce solutions, in 1998 and worked as a software design architect on petroleum products. Within one month of starting at Verifone, he attended a NACS Technology Initiative meeting and has been involved with industry standards since. Ezell also advocates on behalf of the industry at the World Wide Web Consortium, where he is chairman of the XML Schema Working Group and the Web Payments Interest Group, and more recently at the X9/International Organization for Standardization on card technology.
“I’ve always felt like being a music major is what prepared me for everything else, because you can’t fake it,” Ezell said. “I think it actually prepared me for programming.”
Induction into the Conexxus Hall of Fame is awarded to industry leaders who have influenced the improvement of retail systems through the development and use of technology standards. Established in 2011, previous inductees include:
- The late Teri Richman (NACS)
- The late John Hervey (PCATS)
- Greg Gilkerson (PDI)
- Bob Johnson (Pinnacle)
- Brad McGuinness (Verifone)
- Scott Hartman (Rutter's Farm Stores)
- Gene Gerke (Gerke & Associates)
- Henry Armour (NACS)
- Jenny Bullard (Flash Foods/CST Brands)
- Loring Perez (Chattahoochee Oil Co.)
- Ann Dozier (Southern Wine & Spirits of America)
- Ann Zeki (Chevron)
The 2017 Conexxus Annual Conference was held April 23-27 in Annapolis, Md. The conference agenda included face-to-face meetings of all Conexxus committees and work groups to further data exchange standards in device integration, payments, enterprise integration, mobile commerce, supply chain and data security. Conexxus is a nonprofit tech organization dedicated to the development and implementation of standards, technologies innovation and advocacy for the convenience store and petroleum market.
“Sharon and David exemplify the dedication and expertise exhibited within the Conexxus membership,” said Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus. “Both have been highly engaged since the early days of the NACS Technology Initiative, which over the course of two decades helped advance and establish Conexxus as we know it today. Conexxus could not achieve its goals without Sharon and David’s steadfast leadership and support.”
Both recipients thanked their fellow Conexxus members and urged them to continue to pour enthusiasm and energy into their work with the organization. Ezell ended his acceptance speech with an anecdote about the rambling principal at the public high school where his father taught. Ezell said that after spending an inordinate amount of time each staff meeting explaining the “scourge” of students sticking gum on the bottom of chairs, he would end the meeting with the phrase, “And so, ladies and gentlemen, we must stay everlastingly at it.”
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