2011 Technology Hall of Fame Inductees
John Hervey
Inducted - Technology Hall of Fame, 2011
Hervey, a former NACS employee and PCATS executive director, had a long and distinguished career in the convenience and petroleum retailing industry. His 40-year-plus career began at Mobil Oil Corporation, where he served in a variety of capacities for 25 years, including providing retail automation solutions for its 1,000-plus convenience stores. He retired from Mobil in 1992 and began a second career as an industry consultant.
In 1995, he joined Minit Mart Foods in Bowling Green, Kentucky, as its director of IT, where Hervey was an early proponent of data standards. In 1997, he returned to consulting with Gerke and Associates, where he led the industry standards initiative that was to become the Petroleum Convenience Alliance for Technology Standards (PCATS). Hervey also was a retired U.S. Navy Captain, having served more than 35 years both active duty and in the Navy Reserve beginning in 1955 as a seaman recruit.
Hervey’s career at NACS began in 2000 as its chief technology officer, where he took the helm of the NACS Technology Standards Project. In 2003, the NACS Board of Directors agreed that a spinoff of the project into its own organization was appropriate, thus forming PCATS. Hervey was named executive director of the newly formed association and guided its growth and standards adoption work until his retirement in 2009.
During his tenure at PCATS, Hervey’s guidance and expertise helped develop today’s commonplace industry standards — from POS and back office integration, to electronic business-to-business document exchange, payment systems and device integration. After his retirement in 2009, Hervey created his own consulting firm, 1148 Consulting LLC, providing IT and management solutions to convenience and petroleum marketing companies.
Teri Richman
Inducted - Technology Hall of Fame, 2011
Teri Richman joined NACS in 1982 as its first in-house federal lobbyist. At the time, the industry faced intense and quick-moving legislation in California as municipalities began to legislate beer-gas bans and prohibited the concurrent sales of these products at the same location. Richman and NACS were instrumental in the development of a coalition to overcome this legislation, a group known as Food and Fuel Retailers for Economic Equality (FREE).
Teri was an avid student and supporter of technology. She was an integral player in NACS’ technology standards effort, including the POS-Back Office interoperability demonstration at NACStech 2002, where NACS members saw standards in action for the first time. Richman also foresaw the advent of the Internet as a business tool.
As senior vice president of public affairs and research, Teri also led the fight for lower credit card processing costs and fair credit card fees. She was instrumental in founding the Merchants Payments Coalition (MPC) and was elected as its secretary when it was founded in 2005. Today, the coalition’s member associations collectively represent about 2.7 million stores with approximately 50 million employees, and have significantly elevated the issue of outrageous credit card interchange fees before Congress and the general public.
Teri’s desire to tackle big issues continued after she left NACS in 2006 to take on a career in consulting. Before her illness, she was working with a group supporting fair and equitable health-care reform. Teri lost her battle with cancer on December 19, 2009.
Teri was a graduate of Boston University and is survived by her twin adult children, Nathan and Katharine.