STAR
Executive Director
How do you move from a real business problem to an industry-wide approach to interoperability?
Ford and STAR will take attendees inside their Service Appointment API project, exploring the business need, how the two organizations worked together, and what they learned from developing a common approach to service appointment data. The session will also introduce STAR and its Automotive Retail Domain Model, providing context for why common data structures and standards matter as the service ecosystem becomes increasingly connected.
Steve Zadoorian is a seasoned technology and operations executive with more than three decades of experience in the automotive retail, SaaS, and enterprise software industries.
Steve spent more than 25 years at Auto/Mate Dealership Systems, serving as Chief Information Officer for 17 years and leading the company’s technology strategy, platform architecture, infrastructure, security, and product development initiatives. He also served as Chief Customer Officer for eight years, overseeing customer experience, support operations, implementations, training, and long-term customer success.
Following the acquisition of Auto/Mate by DealerSocket, Steve became Senior Vice President at DealerSocket, where he helped guide the integration of the Auto/Mate platform, teams, and customers into a larger enterprise SaaS organization. His work focused on operational scalability, product alignment, and customer retention during a period of significant organizational change.
Steve currently serves as Executive Director of the Standards for Technology in Automotive Retail (STAR), where he works with OEMs, dealers, and technology providers to improve interoperability across the automotive ecosystem. His work with STAR includes the development of industry domain models and APIs designed around real-world automotive business processes, with a particular focus on creating common approaches that allow systems and organizations to work together more effectively.
With extensive experience in dealership technology and a strong background in service and repair operations, Steve brings a practical perspective to the challenges facing automotive retailers and technology providers. He is particularly interested in how standards, interoperability, and emerging technologies can help simplify workflows, improve communication between systems, and create better outcomes for dealerships, OEMs, and their technology partners.
