Derek Beck has been the chief data officer for the Arizona Department of Revenue since 202. Prior to that, he served in executive roles over operations and process improvement since 2014. Derek is currently leading efforts to increase agency data maturity and implement an enterprise-wide business intelligence solution.

Phil Bertolini is vice president of the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. Previously, he served as deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland County, Michigan. During his 31-year tenure, Phil built a world-class IT organization in the second-largest county in Michigan, just north of Detroit. As Oakland County CIO, he oversaw more than 150 employees serving over 1.2 million residents. In 2005, he was also promoted to deputy county executive, holding dual positions until his retirement. Phil’s efforts earned the county national attention, winning numerous awards for technology innovation and excellence. He was named Governing Magazine’s Public Official of the Year and Government Technology Magazine’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers. He was also honored by the President Obama White House as a Champion of Change.

Scott Campbell is a certified CISSP who serves as City of Tempe’s CISO. Scott has a track record of supporting and contributing to collaborations in the strategy and tactics associated in growing a cybersecurity program among public sector agency partners that face the same obstacles and threats.

Alan is executive vice president of e.Republic and publisher of Government Technology magazine and Techwire. In this role, Alan is involved in the annual production of dozens of events, as well as the strategic direction for Governing, Government Technology, Emergency Management, the Center for Digital Government and the Center for Digital Education. Alan is also the senior executive that has overall charge of e.Republic’s research organization which includes, custom research, the Digital Government and Digital Education Navigator tool and the Content Studio (webinars and custom content).
Alan has been a guest lecturer at universities and a frequent speaker for key government and industry organizations. For over 35 years, Alan has worked with industry, education and government officials to help them better understand the importance and use of information technology. Alan received his Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration at California State University, Sacramento.

Tim Davis is executive director for IBM’s Data, AI & Cloud Distinguished Engineers worldwide. He leads the team of Distinguished Engineers and Architects who provide clients with industry-specific guidance to help them identify opportunities where they can more effectively use Data, Analytics, AI and Cloud. This work enables clients to generate new intelligence to improve their business performance and drive digital transformation roadmaps. Tim is the creator of IBM’s Data First Garage and spends most of his time with clients collaborating on data, analytics, AI and cloud strategy.

Sandip Dholakia serves the City of Chandler as CIO. With 25+ years of experience, including the Department of Revenue, Maricopa County & Intel Corporation, Sandip focuses on solutions in alignment with strategic goals in rapidly evolving environments. Core areas of experience include organizational leadership, governance, project management and analytics.

Building on his former role as enterprise architect for the state of Iowa, Chris Dilley serves as a trusted advisor to state leaders. He has helped numerous states modernize systems, migrate to the cloud, automate workflows and deliver impactful services. Chris is a proud native Iowan, actively involved in the Boys & Girls Club and coaches youth judo.

As the Minneapolis CIO for seven-plus years, Otto Doll was responsible for all city IT services. He also served as South Dakota’s CIO for 15 years with responsibility for all state government computing, telecommunications, radio and public broadcasting. While with IT research firms, Otto has advised Fortune 1000, federal, state and local government CIOs on information technology assessment and alignment to business needs. He has served as a director with the United States General Services Administration, developing information technology strategic plans and oversight policy.
Otto received his computer science degree from Virginia Tech and is a senior executive fellow of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is a past president of NASCIO – a national organization of state CIOs. He also is a past president of the Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) – a national organization of city and county CIOs. Otto was named to Government Technology's 2004 Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers.

With 10 years of experience at NIC, Tamaa Dukes has performed multiple, senior-level roles across NIC, including general manager of portal operations in Maine, regional manager of portal operations and, now, vice president of Partnership Solutions. In her role, Tamara has been a driving force in the improvement of NIC’s delivery of services and accessibility to next generation services. She is a constant advocate for our partners as NIC develops and executes critical business initiatives, and always strives to maintain close relationships with NIC government partners in order to meet their needs.

Joseph Flynn is the public sector chief technology officer and vice president. He brings years of public sector experience helping organizations and their leaders define unique, business focused solutions to complex technology programs.

AJ Ford graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY. He began his career at Oracle while living in Nashua, NH, and working out of Burlington, MA. The love of his life lured him away from his northeastern home to live in Atlanta where he now lives happily with three (soon to be four!) wonderful children. Now working at Tricentis, the leader in Scriptless Test Automation, he’s enjoyed eight years in the software space. While he focuses his efforts on federal clients like the DoD and NASA, AJ has helped clients like Bank of America, Fannie Mae and PPG transform their business with best-in-class software testing technology.

As a managing director for experience transformation focused on public service and health, Alicia Graham specializes in reimagining service by rewiring organizations to obsess about human needs, innovate experience as an everyday habit and sync technology, data and human agendas. She is focused on delivering sustainable value through personalized experiences, optimized workflows and lifelong relationships that improve how people live, heal, work and play.
With over 20 years of experience, she brings industry-leading know-how spanning clients such as airbnb, Disney, DARPA, Kaiser Permanente, Salesforce and University of Texas. Her education includes a B.A. in Economics from University of California, Berkeley, an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and many years of travel and user research.

Tawnya Lancaster has led cybersecurity research and thought leadership for 10 years. In her role at AT&T, she works across multiple AT&T business units, including AT&T’s Chief Security Office, AT&T Alien Labs™ (the threat intelligence unit of AT&T), Managed Security Services, Professional Services and R&D, to identify trends in cybersecurity and develop thought leadership content on emerging security technologies and strategies for protecting the enterprise. Recent research includes the security implications of 5G, edge computing and IoT; use of machine learning and analytics in threat intelligence; increasing importance of Zero Trust as a strategic approach for security; consolidation of security services in virtualized/cloud environments; and measurement of cybersecurity maturity across industries.

Jiong Liu leads the product marketing team for Okta’s Customer Identity products, working closely with customers to deliver trusted, tailored B2B and B2C experiences. Prior to that, Jiong led the strategy, content and tools for Okta’s Business Value practice. Jiong holds bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School.

Bianca Lochner has spent her career leading digital transformations in education and the public sector. She currently leads enterprise business applications and the project management office as assistant CIO for the City of Phoenix. Bianca is the co-founder and co-chair for the Cybersecurity Council of Arizona, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding Arizona’s cybersecurity workforce. She also serves on the Advisory Council of the CIO/CTO Forum, Girls in Tech, the Arizona Technology Summit and the Arizona Technology Council. Bianca holds a Master of Science in Computer Science, a Ph.D. in Educational Technology, a Postdoctorate in Management of Information Systems and an Executive MBA from ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Daniele Loffreda is marketing lead for Ciena’s Virtualized Edge Solution State/Local Government and Education (SLED) and Healthcare in Ciena’s Solutions Development organization. In this role, he leads Ciena’s initiatives applying next-generation networking technologies to help these sectors deliver higher quality experiences to their constituents through disruptive technologies, optimized cloud strategies, virtualized infrastructure and improved data security.
Daniele has more than 25 years of experience helping customers leverage information, communications and technology solutions to provide greater value, streamline their operations and generate higher returns on network investments. In addition to his role at Ciena, Daniele has worked in pioneering roles at AT&T, Sprint and Fujitsu. He has presented at numerous industry conferences and published articles and posts on next-generation network connectivity as a critical foundation of enterprise transformation.

James McCabe is senior enterprise network architect at the University Technology Office at Arizona State University, where he is pathfinding new and emerging technologies and architecting large-scale next-generation networks for Smart Cities Initiatives, Research Computing and the ASU Enterprise. He is leading the initiative to apply software-defined networking at the regional level to enable science overlay networks and developing a software-defined exchange to orchestrate science instruments, networks and researchers in new modes of science investigation and collaboration. He has published several books on network architecture and design and is a U.S. patent holder on network management techniques. He is a member of Sun Corridor Network, Internet2 Network Architecture, Operations and Policy Advisory Group and Future Wireless Working Group. James is currently working on NSF Grants to deploy Science DMZs at Arizona Community Colleges and at ASU and is leading a team to deploy Digital Equity solutions to students, families and communities in the metropolitan Phoenix area. Before ASU, James was an architect at NASA supercomputing facilities for 30 years.

Richard McHattie is the chief technology and innovation officer for the Maricopa County Clerk of Superior Court. His focus is leveraging technology to improve the customer and employee experience. His driving vision is the bold but calculated adoption of emerging technologies that enable transformational change to improve business outcomes.

Joseph Morris is the deputy chief innovation officer for the Center for Digital Government and a national keynote speaker on issues, trends and drivers impacting state and local government and education. He has authored publications and reports on funding streams, technology investment areas and public-sector priorities, and has led roundtables, projects and initiatives focused on issues within the public sector. Joe has conducted state and local government research with e.Republic since 2007 and knows the ins and outs of government on all levels. He received his Bachelor of Arts in government and international relations from the California State University, Sacramento.

Zach Patton is the chief editor of the Content Studio at e.Republic and Government Technology. He has been covering the public sector for nearly 20 years. Until 2019, he was the executive editor of Governing magazine, where he also had served as a staff writer for more than a decade.

Rebecca Perrera holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Arizona. She serves as a principal fiscal analyst at the Joint Legislative Budget Committee for the Arizona Legislature. Rebecca sits on the state’s Information Technology Authorization Committee (ITAC) as an advisory member and provides budget and policy analysis to legislators on large scale IT projects.

Sean Price joined the Arizona Department of Administration in July 2019, where he was named chief strategist and the leader of the Office of Continuous Improvement. While at ADOA, Sean has focused on revamping the process of strategic planning to align with the Arizona Management System. Sean has implemented an agency-wide Lean Six Sigma certification program, and has certified approximately 500 employees as white belt recipients and 50 employees as yellow belt recipients.
Prior to coming to ADOA, Sean served as the deputy director for the Arizona Department of Economic Security. His previous experience also includes serving as the deputy chief of operations for Governor Doug Ducey.
Sean is a second-generation Arizona native and a Flinn-Brown Fellow. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration Urban Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Arizona State University.

Morgan Reed spent nearly four years as CIO for the State of Arizona, where he led cloud transformations to consolidate 30 different email systems, modernize 15 citizen-facing applications, migrate critical agency workloads off the state-owned mainframe and shut down the state’s largest datacenter after migrating 80 percent to the cloud. He joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an executive government advisor to coach State and Local Government (SLG) executives through strategy, policy and governance challenges to help them accelerate their journey to the cloud – and help governments innovate for their customers.

Much of Chris Richardson’s portfolio’s evolution through digital transformation is radically changing the relationship and experience with various end users in the university ecosystem, one in particular is the ASU Mobile App. Chris joined ASU from Honeywell where he held a number of positions over an 11-year career. He holds degrees from the University of Washington, University of Puget Sound and the University of Arizona. He is also the co-host of The Urban Complex podcast, “Smarter Cities for a Stronger Tomorrow.”

Leveraging his 35 years’ cybersecurity innovation experience, Jim Richberg has served as Fortinet’s Public Sector Field CISO since 2019. Prior to this, he served as the national intelligence manager for cyber, the senior federal executive focused on cyber intelligence in the U.S. intelligence community. Under Presidents Bush and Obama, he implemented the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative.

Paul Robles is the Google Cloud sales executive supporting government clients in Arizona and Colorado. He has spent the past 25 years in the IT and airline industry including Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Avanade/Accenture and American Airlines. Prior to joining Google in 2020, Paul spent six years as a sales executive and director for state, local government and education at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. He was responsible for running a sales organization of 24 people across the Western U.S.
In his current role, Paul works with government clients to help them transform how they deliver digital services to their constituents. He and his team help clients adopt new ways of running government services using cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Paul received a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Brigham Young University and a Masters in Business Administration from Arizona State University.

Cassie Sherwood is DocuSign’s account executive for the State of Arizona. She’s local to Arizona, holds a BS in Engineering and an MBA. Cassie’s 10+ years in public sector have been dedicated to closing the digital divide in the government by leveraging cloud technologies to improve experiences for employees and constituents.

Rob Silverberg is the chief strategy and innovation officer for Dell Technologies and leads the Smart Cities focus for Dell Technologies’ state and local government team. In his role, Rob works with state and local government customers across the nation to help these agencies understand how Dell’s broad portfolio of technologies and solutions can help them achieve their goals.

Deborah is an accomplished C-level influencer, with a broad range of experience in government, policy, cybersecurity, privacy and information technology. She is an experienced and highly respected thought leader who has held executive roles for over two decades. She recently retired from her position as New York state’s chief information security officer (CISO) after over 35 years of public service.
In that role, as part of New York state’s information technology transformation and consolidation initiative, she helped redesign how the state protects its data. As state CISO, she directed the state’s comprehensive cybersecurity governance, risk management and compliance program, providing strategic leadership and vision and assuring business-aligned, risk-based investments that maximized business opportunity and minimized cybersecurity risk. She also directed the NYS Cyber Command Center, hotline, procedures for reporting and response to cyberthreats and digital forensics.

Teri Takai is vice president of the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. She worked for Ford Motor Company for 30 years in global application development and information technology strategic planning. From Ford, she moved to EDS in support of General Motors. A long-time interest in public service led her to the government sector, first as CIO of the State of Michigan, then as CIO of the State of California and, subsequently, the CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense, the first woman appointed to this role. She then served as the CIO for Meridian Health Plan.
Teri is a member of several industry advisory boards. She has won numerous awards including Governing magazine’s Public Official of the Year, CIO Magazine’s CIO Hall of Fame, Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers & Drivers, the Women in Defense Excellence in Leadership Award and the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service.

As executive editor at e.Republic, Steve Towns is responsible for the coordination of editorial strategies and standards across all the firm’s media platforms. He directs the editorial teams that produce Government Technology, Emergency Management and Digital Communities and their respective websites, in addition to developing and maintaining corporate policies and standards for editorial. Steve has over 20 years of writing and editing experience, including more than 17 years covering technology in the state and local government market.
Steve joined e.Republic in 1996. During his tenure, e.Republic’s print and electronic media have received many awards for editorial excellence, including “Magazine of the Year” from ASBPE for Emergency Management in 2013, “Best New Web Site” from ASBPE for emergencymgmt.com in 2009, ”Best Overall Publication” at the Maggie awards for Government Technology in 2008 and “Magazine of the Year” from ASBPE for Public CIO in 2007.

Ed Winfield is the CIO of Maricopa County, AZ, and has responsibility for all aspects of county technology strategy, operations, service and security. Prior to joining Maricopa County, Ed served as the CIO for Wayne County, MI. He has also held executive IT leadership roles in manufacturing, consumer goods, logistics, transportation and consulting. Ed has been recognized for his leadership and achievement via numerous state and national CIO awards.

Jeff Wolkove has led Arizona’s statewide data management program since 2012. Important accomplishments include a statewide data sharing MOU between 29 agencies; 4 annual data conferences; and data stewardship training course, policies and training events to build Arizona’s data management capabilities. Jeff is a certified CMMI/ISACA Enterprise Data Management Expert (EDME).