The DEAR Group was founded in 1999 by Donald E. Rife, President and CEO, to provide Project Leadership, Quality Assurance, and Software Testing services to organizations in the greater Philadelphia area. The company has since increased its focus to include Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning. Since obtaining his degree in Business Administration from Elizabethtown College in 1976, Mr. Rife has amassed over 32 years of professional experience in the information technology industry.

The 90’s…
As a result of his previous engagements, Mr. Rife was hired by the Medical Center of Delaware (now Christiana Care) to be their Director of Technical Services. While in that role, Mr. Rife implemented, what was at that time, a state-of-art TCP/IP network connecting all desktops and systems in all their locations onto a common network. That network earned the Medical Center national recognition by winning the ENNE (Enterprise Network Excellence) and User Excellence awards.

During his tenure at MCD, Mr. Rife relocated their corporate data center to a new facility, managed the payroll application development staff during the implementation of a new payroll system and represented the IS department on the Total Quality Management Council and on the Human Resource Advisory Committee. Mr. Rife was also elected President of the Pennsylvania-Delaware Chapter of the Data Processing Management Association (DPMA) and served 2 years in that position.

After 5 years at the Medical Center, Mr. Rife left to join Towers Perrin as the Director of Technical Services in their Flexible Benefits area. In this role, Mr. Rife was responsible for the design, development, implementation, and support for a client/server flexible benefits administration system and associated technical platforms.  Mr. Rife was successful in implementing a systems development life cycle, defining and implementing a new technical platform and initiating Total Quality Management metrics and methodologies.

Mr. Rife moved from Towers Perrin to become a Senior Account Manager within the Business Solution Group at Amdahl Corporation. As a Senior Account Manager, Mr. Rife was responsible for all of the Business Solution Group’s project management activity at Amdahl’s largest client, AT&T.

Mr. Rife left Amdahl Corporation to become a Principal and Technical Architect with American Management Systems (AMS) in their Pharmaceutical Industry Practice.  While at AMS, Mr. Rife initiated AMS’s Y2k practice and helped establish Y2k Project Management Offices at several of their largest clients. Additionally, Mr. Rife founded the Delaware Valley Y2k Special Interest Group which grew to several hundred members sharing Y2k best practices and experience.

When the travel took too much time from his family, Mr. Rife left AMS to become the Director of Physician Services and Managed Care at the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS). In that role, Mr. Rife was responsible for desktop and application support for over 350 physicians in 120 locations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and he was responsible for the Health System’s Managed Care data warehouse and associated processing.