Reply #68: Indira Singh was also Risk software and also 106th floor

[DrDebug]

Wonder whether that was Windows on the World as well, because that is the main occupant on that floor...

Indira Singh Interview, April, 2005, Part One
Submitted by reprehensor on December 12, 05

This is a transcript of Part One of Bonnie Faulkner’s interview with Indira Singh on the Guns and Butter radio program, which aired April 27th, 2005 on KPFA in Berkeley.

Bonnie Faulkner (BF): Today on Guns and Butter, Indira Singh. Indira Singh has been working on Wall Street since 1975. On 9/11 she was working as a senior consultant for JPMorganChase. She was tasked with developing a next-generation, operational, risk-blueprint. Which would proactively identify exposures, including money laundering, rogue trading, and illicit financing patterns.

(...) BF: Now, where were you on that very morning of Sept. 11th? Were you at home? Were you at work?

IS: That morning I was at home, I was late. I was supposed to have attended a risk conference that was being held on the 106th floor of the WTC, at the North Tower, and for some reason, I woke up late and didn’t make it there. So when the first plane hit I was actually on my way out in a business suit and I turned back, changed into my EMT clothes, I was a civilian Emergency Medical Technician in New York State, and the 2nd plane hit and I basically went down to the site from that point on.

BF: So, were your offices actually in the WTC?

IS: No, they weren’t, they were on Wall Street itself, and there were offices that I consulted in all around the WTC, but the only reason I would have been there that morning was the risk-technology seminar. Risk Orders basically invited people from all over the world, all over the country. There were close to a hundred delegates already assembled when the first plane hit, nobody made it off the 106th floor.

BF: And that was a meeting you were scheduled to be in, and you were simply late.

IS: I was late.

(...)

BF: …now, all of this time before 9/11 and subsequently, you were working. Where were you working?

IS: September 11th I was a senior consultant for JPMorganChase and Risk. I had cycled through several of their Risk areas as an enterprise architect, or an information architect, technology architect… which basically means that you take a look at the entire enterprise and come up with a blueprint, make sure that all the systems, not just one system, but all the systems, the blueprints for all the systems that are developed to support the business, are in-line, in tune with the business goals and the business architecture and the business processes and where the business is going.

So it’s pretty high-level, we call it the CXO level, or the Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer levels and there are disciplines and methodologies and very esoteric software that’s used to manage this. I did that at JPMorganChase and I also worked for a small company in Washington, D.C. that was doing some very innovative work regarding technology interoperability, they were developing some inference engines to think about how to put technology architectures together and I wanted to use that for my risk work, basically.

…we were seeking funding from In-Q-tel which was the CIA’s information technology seeking arm, I had been spending pretty much every Friday, Thursday- Friday down in D.C. trying to get that project off the ground, and trying to get it funded.

http://www.nowpublic.com/node/25975