Dan A. Cunningham, the former U.S. chief of the Gemplus smart card organization, has joined Phoenix Planning and Evaluation Ltd.
Mr. Cunningham is senior vice president of business development for Phoenix, a six-year-old consulting firm that has played prominent roles in several government programs that use advanced card functions and technologies.
Its clients include the Southern Alliance of States, the Western Governors Association, and individual states in various stages of launching electronic benefits transfer systems. These use plastic cards and electronic terminals to automate welfare checks and food stamps.
Phoenix has also done some private-sector work, notably for the Food Marketing Institute and Electronic Funds Transfer Association, and the company expects Mr. Cunningham to help it grow and diversify.
"Dan's extensive experience and knowledge in the smart card industry enhances our ability to provide superior service to existing clients and opens new opportunities in the commercial sector," said Phoenix president Gary Glickman.
The company is based in Rockville, Md., and has a full-time staff of 12.
Mr. Cunningham, 53, said he will contribute to the firm's system design, implementation, and evaluation activities in health care, electronic benefits transfer, and transportation. He said he would also help transfer those skills into banking and other fields.
He has built commercial-sector contacts over a career that is long by the standards of the card technology industry. In the mid-1980s, after working at NCR Corp. and Recognition Equipment Inc., he joined Micro Card Technologies Inc., the company that the Bull Group of France set up to make and market smart cards in the United States.
After being close to some of the pioneering introductions of smart cards, Mr. Cunningham moved in 1992 to Gemplus Card International Corp., the U.S. outpost of the French company that has become the world's biggest producer of cards with embedded computer chips. Mr. Cunningham was president and chief executive from mid-1993 until March 1996, when Gemplus reorganized in the United States around manufacturing facilities it had acquired from DataCard Corp.
Mr. Cunningham has been a board member of the Smart Card Forum, Smart Card Industry Association, and Electronic Funds Transfer Association.
