Phil Bertolini is co-director 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 one of 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 for 2012.

Teri Takai is executive director 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. She is a member of several industry advisory boards.
Teri 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.

Elatia Abate is an entrepreneur, educator and future-forward strategist. She partners with organizations that range in size from Fortune 500 to early-stage start-ups to help leaders make sense of the ever-growing disruption in our world and channel that disruption into tangible results. Her client and partner roster includes the likes of PricewaterhouseCoopers, UniGroup, Verizon, University of Arizona and University of Cincinnati.
Elatia is a sought-after speaker and facilitator with a dynamic and engaging style. She has led from the front of the room at NY Life, Deloitte, VRBO, SHRM, Stanford and The University of Chicago, among other places. She has a TEDx talk entitled, “Pioneering the Future of Work.” In a former life, she served as global director, Talent Acquisition with Anheuser-Busch InBev, and vice president of Human Resources at Dow Jones & Company.
She has been featured in work with Tony Robbins and Trevor Noah and has been named a leading female futurist by Forbes. She is an instructor in the Continuing Studies Departments of both Stanford University and University of Toronto. She received both her BA and MBA from the University of Chicago.

Tracy Barnes serves as Indiana’s CIO, appointed by Governor Eric J. Holcomb in March 2020. In this role, he sits on the Governor’s Cabinet, overseeing the Indiana Office of Technology and providing strategic oversight of the state’s technology portfolio and leadership on technology and cybersecurity policy. Tracy also serves as the co-chair of the Indiana Executive Council on Cybersecurity.
Tracy brings significant business leadership and technology experience to his role, having previously served as chief of staff for the Lieutenant Governor and as deputy auditor/IT director for the Indiana Auditor of State. Before joining the public sector, Tracy served as president and CEO for ENTAP, Inc., an IT consulting services firm that designed and delivered enterprise focused IT solutions to organizations across the globe.
Tracy holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Butler University and is completing an M.S. in Cybersecurity Law from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Amanda Crawford is executive director of the Texas Department of Information Resources. In this role, she is responsible for the overall leadership, direction and daily operations of DIR, an agency with an annual fiscal profile of more than $4 billion per year. DIR’s responsibilities include protecting the state’s data and critical technology infrastructure, managing a multi-billion-dollar cooperative contracts program and providing strategic technology leadership, solutions and innovation to all levels of Texas government. She also serves as CIO for Texas state government.
Prior to leading the team at DIR, Mandy served at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas for more than 17 years. She held various positions at the OAG, including ultimately serving for two and a half years as the deputy attorney general for administration and general counsel, overseeing the Administrative and General Counsel divisions of the office.

As CIO for the State of Tennessee, Stephanie Dedmon is responsible for all operational areas of the state’s central IT organization, Strategic Technology Solutions. This includes managing the team’s IT service delivery, technical infrastructure development and support, customer service management and a workforce of almost 1,300 IT professionals.
As deputy CIO, Stephanie was responsible for the Enterprise IT Transformation initiative that transitioned over 800 Executive Branch Department IT employees to STS. Prior to joining the State of Tennessee in 2005, she was an associate partner with Accenture in Nashville and served as project director on many public sector software implementations.
Stephanie serves on the NASCIO Executive Committee and as co-chair of the Innovation Forum. She is a board member of the Nashville Technology Council and a member of Women in IT Tennessee.

As CIO for the City and County of Denver, CO, beginning June 2018, David Edinger leads Technology Services, Denver’s 325-person IT Department that includes Denver Marketing and Media Services and the 311 Customer Care Center.
As chief performance officer for the City and County of Denver (prior to his appointment as CIO), David launched Mayor Michael Hancock’s Peak Performance initiative in July 2011. A combination of strategic planning, performance review, continuous improvement, analytics and resource alignment enables Denver employees to innovate in their areas of subject matter expertise.
Before the public sector, David spent several years consulting in the pharmaceutical industry and a decade running warehouse and logistics operations in Boulder and Denver. He received an MBA from the University of Virginia and an AB in Economics from the University of Michigan.

David Elges was appointed in 2018 by Mayor Martin J. Walsh as the City of Boston, MA’s, new CIO. In this new appointment, David leads the city’s efforts to enhance online service delivery, empower city employees with effective digital tools, use data to focus resources where they are most needed and improve access to technology and broadband across all Boston neighborhoods. He oversees a multimillion dollar information technology portfolio and serves as a principal advisor to the mayor with respect to the astute use of IT to exceed the expectations of the residents of the City of Boston. David serves as the day-to-day lead for coordinating and managing the various functions within the Office of the CIO and coordinates with and provides advice to Mayor Walsh’s executive cabinet regarding IT, information management, information assurance and website activities management and operations.
Prior to his selection as CIO, David served as the CIO at the government of the District of Columbia, as well as the executive director of information technology strategy and operations for SEI Inc., wherein the role he provided executive leadership on IT policy and oversight for information governance, compliance, security, GIS and departmental policy and managed a multimillion dollar IT portfolio spanning across 136 locations across the United States.

Chief Information Officer and Executive Director, Department of Technology, City and County of San Francisco, CA

Linda Gerull’s 25 years in technology include a wide range of experience serving local government while working in private companies and government agencies. She is passionate about building technologies that improve public service, enable business efficiencies and lower cost. Linda serves as the City and County of San Francisco’s CIO and executive director of the Department of Technology. The San Francisco Department of Technology is a services organization supporting approximately 35,000 employees and 56 departments with a mission for delivering excellent customer service. With an operating budget of $140 million, the department’s portfolio includes the operations of essential IT services and enterprise applications from management of city data centers, telecommunications, SFGovTV, cybersecurity, public safety radio systems, data and applications platforms and innovation programs.

Alan Greenblatt has been covering politics and government for more than two decades. He is a senior staff writer for Governing, where he covers many aspects of state and local government, including elections, redistricting, education policy and legislative behavior. He is also a coauthor of Governing States and Localities, a textbook on state and local government that has been adopted in more than 300 colleges and universities and is now in its sixth edition.
Alan is a former reporter with NPR, where he contributed coverage on elections, international news and a broad range of feature topics. He has also been a reporter for Congressional Quarterly, where he won a National Press Club award for political journalism.
A native of San Francisco, Alan was educated at San Francisco State and the University of Virginia. He lives with his family in St. Louis, MO.

Dustin Haisler is chief innovation officer for e.Republic. As chief innovation officer, Dustin has a strategic role to help shape the company’s products, services and future direction. Primarily, he leads e.Republic Labs, a market connector created as an ecosystem to educate, accelerate and, ultimately, scale technology innovation within the public sector.
Previously, as the finance director and later CIO for Manor, TX, a small city outside Austin, Dustin quickly built a track record and reputation as an early innovator in civic tech. A member of Code for America’s original steering committee, he pioneered government use of commercial technologies not before used in the public sector – including Quick-Response (QR) barcodes, crowdsourcing and gamification. In 2010, Dustin launched Manor Labs, a website that let residents submit their own ideas and vote other peoples’ ideas up or down. The most popular suggestions went to city officials for review and possible implementation. He looked to the private sector to help broaden the adoption of these and other civic innovations, joining California-based Spigit as director of government innovation. While at Spigit, a company that makes crowd-sourcing and innovation management software, Dustin helped design and deploy innovation programs for New York City; Bogota, Columbia; and even part of the space program (through NASA’s Langley Research Center).

Tanya Hannah believes in using technology in new, surprising and smart ways to make life better and more effective for King County’s 2.2 million residents. As CIO for the largest county in Washington, she oversees the technical team that supports all lines of business within King County Government. This includes everything from emergency services to the county health inspectors to water taxi pilots on the Puget Sound. She’s passionate about ensuring King County residents have equitable access to information technology so they enjoy full participation in our society, democracy and economy.
Under her leadership, the Center for Digital Government has for the past two years recognized the King County Department of Information Technology (KCIT) as one of the top digital counties in the nation.
Tanya previously served as both deputy and interim director of KCIT. She earlier held posts as a senior executive at Amazon and Computer Sciences Corporation, with a focus on cybersecurity, service delivery and customer service. She received her BA from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Bill Kehoe has been a public-sector CIO since 2002 serving as a state agency CIO at the State of Washington Department of Licensing from 2002 to 2010; at King County, WA from 2010 to 2017; and as Los Angeles County CIO from November 2017 to the present. Bill has provided strategic and operational leadership for key organizational and technology transformations as a CIO including three mainframe migrations, two IT organization and technology consolidations, multiple data center consolidations, development of multiple online services for state and local government residents, hybrid cloud strategy and deployment, application rationalization and modernization, IT governance, innovation, IT strategic planning, enterprise architecture, information management and unified communication services.
As the CIO for Los Angeles County, Bill and the Office of the CIO have responsibility for enterprise technology strategy, governance and policy. He and the Office of the CIO are also responsible for the enterprise information management, security and providing technology advisory services to all 37 departments.

Bijay Kumar has been the CIO and chief digital officer for the State of Rhode Island since July 2017. Under his leadership, Rhode Island has been the state with the most progress in digitalization (2018 to 2020).
Prior to his current role, Bijay served from 2011 to 2017 as a vice president of IT at Hasbro Inc., in their corporate headquarters at Pawtucket, RI. He led the Office of the CIO, leading IT strategy, IT finance, strategic sourcing and contracts with extended responsibilities in application development, infrastructure and operations and enterprise architecture. Bijay established a structured procurement, vendor management and strategic sourcing competency and achieved cost savings/reduction of $200+ million. He was instrumental in the success of the rollout of a single instance of ERP globally, and programs including implementation of a transportation management system, product life cycle management system, enterprise performance management system, ecommerce systems, global ecommerce strategy and the selection and rollout of a central planning system.

Rob Lloyd is CIO for the City of San José, CA, directing the diverse civic technology portfolio for the nation’s tenth largest municipality. The city organization consists of 6,500 employees and carries a $4.5 billion total budget, all serving over 1 million residents in the heart of Silicon Valley. The city’s quest: To be as innovative as the community we serve.
Over two decades, Rob has held C-level roles in the technology, government and utilities sectors in California, Arizona, Oregon and Colorado. His teams have earned over 30 national awards for customer engagement, attaining operational excellence through technology and for innovative programs. San José’s latest award is being named the #1 Digital City for 2020 by the Center for Digital Government.

Rafael Mena was appointed CIO by the Orange County, FL, Mayor in 2002. For almost two decades since, he has led a talented team of IT professionals who maintain the technology needs for more than 8,000 Orange County employees, operating within the $4.4 billion Orange County budget. His primary goal is to support the Mayor’s vision to make Orange County the “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” by creating a community culture of innovation, collaboration and inclusiveness.

The role of CIO is a multifaceted one, requiring strong leadership skills and the ability to direct, plan and organize information technology solutions for all Orange County Government entities. This includes all constitutional offices such as the Clerk of Courts, Court Administration, Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Supervisor of Elections and the Board of County Commissioners. The CIO also manages the Information Systems & Services Division, 911 Administration, 311 Citizen Call Center, Convention Center and Radio Services.

Vice President of Research, e.Republic

Joe Morris is vice president of Research at e.Republic 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.

Glenn Poplawski has more than 25 years of business experience, including 5 years in systems engineering and technical analysis for the federal government and 15 years working in the private IT sector.
Prior to coming to work for the state of North Carolina, Glenn worked for various private companies, including IBM, a systems integration firm, an internet startup bought by CMGI, the former Anderson Consulting and as a consultant to various private companies and public agencies. This work included managing client relationships and engagements, managing the operations of critical business systems, guiding the implementation of large-scale system development projects and contributing with the senior team to develop the local business strategy and operational model.
Currently, Glenn heads the NC Department of Information Technology's Solutions Delivery Division, which includes the Enterprise Project Management Office, the Project Management Office, Business Analysis Services, Solutions Architecture Services, Software Quality Assurance Services, Digital Commons Services and several general government CIOs.

Cathilea Robinett is Chief Executive Officer of e.Republic, where she oversees operations for the company’s award-winning media platforms: Governing, Government Technology and Emergency Management. She also oversees e.Republic’s websites, conferences and events and its national research and advisory groups: the Center for Digital Government, the Center for Digital Education and the Governing Institute. In 2014, Cathilea directed the launch of the Governing Institute’s Women in Government Leadership Program, an innovative initiative that encourages future generations of women to participate in public service.
Cathilea is a frequent speaker for government and education organizations worldwide, including the United Nations, Harvard University, the State Legislative Leaders' Foundation, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the Council of State Governments and the World Congress on Information Technology. She has been quoted frequently in publications including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Forbes and others.
Cathilea is a recipient of NASCIO’s National Technology Champion Award for her outstanding contributions to advance public sector information technology innovation. She is also the winner of an Outstanding Women Leadership Award from the Sacramento Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners and is a Greater Sacramento Business Hall of Fame Laureate.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine appointed Ervan Rodgers State of Ohio CIO in January 2019. He is responsible for the strategic direction and efficient use of information technology across state government, which entails 50,000 employees at state agencies, boards and commissions with an annual IT budget of $1 billion.
Ervan serves a dual role as assistant director of the Ohio Department of Administrative Services, which houses the state’s Office of Information Technology and works behind the scenes to deliver innovative services and solutions that support the operations of state government.
Ervan is a seasoned executive with more than 25 years of experience and expertise in IT disciplines, as well as business process, project and operations management. Prior to his appointment, he was CIO of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office where he managed a budget of $50 million and a staff of 100 who support 30 legal sections, collections enforcement, operational groups and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations.
Ervan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in management and organizational development from Spring Arbor University in Michigan and a master’s degree in computer science from Muskingum University.

Chris Seidt is a veteran city government leader and trusted advisor having worked for the pre-merger City of Louisville, KY, and the combined Louisville-Jefferson County Metro government for a combined 15 years. Most recently, Chris has led initiatives to drive city innovation through use of technology by leading efforts to deploy unmanned aerial systems to respond to gunshot detection system activations. He also worked to have Louisville named as a 2018 Smart Cities Council Readiness Challenge Winner and the 2018 Bloomberg Mayor’s Challenge Champion City.
Chris has served under three different Mayors in his time with the city, and has served in three different departments, including the Louisville Metro Police, MetroSafe/EMA and Information Technology. He has represented Louisville Metro on several Smart City working groups, including the Harvard Smart Cities Accelerator, the Edison Electric Institute/Smart Cities Council collaboration and the IEEE Smart Cities Standards Working Group.

Tarek Tomes serves as the commissioner of Minnesota IT Services (MNIT) and the State of Minnesota’s CIO, leading state efforts to provide the best possible IT solutions and customer service to the people of Minnesota and its business partners.
As a recognized industry leader, Tarek brings over 25 years of experience in managing technology innovation across diverse industries, both in national, international and public and private sector operations. Throughout his career, he has facilitated data-driven decision making, implemented many critical enterprise projects and improved workforce diversity and inclusion.
Before becoming commissioner, Tarek served as the chief innovation officer and former CIO at the City of St. Paul, MN, where he was responsible for managing ongoing process improvements, supporting human-centered design and increasing the overall effectiveness of city services and resources. While in St. Paul, he facilitated a digital transformation at the city level, pioneering the use of mobile applications to improve resident opportunities. This work allowed the city to leverage deep data insights while promoting and supporting equitable service delivery. During his time as St. Paul’s CIO, Tarek oversaw the launch of St. Paul’s Open Information Portal, which serves to promote and encourage innovative uses of data and transparency in government services.

Curt Wood serves as the Cabinet Secretary and Commonwealth’s CIO, overseeing the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS), whose mission is to provide leadership, innovation and oversight to state agencies in the secure delivery and management of quality digital services to the residents, businesses and visitors to the Commonwealth.
Prior to leading EOTSS, Curt served in a senior executive role with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS) as the Undersecretary for Forensic Science and Technology and CIO. He oversaw the business operations of key service public safety agencies, including the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services, the State 911 Department, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the State Police Crime Laboratory/Forensic Services Group.
Curt began his government career as a correction officer in 1975 with the Massachusetts Department of Correction.