Phil Bertolini is a senior vice president for Government Technology, the premiere event and thought leadership content provider for state and local government technology professionals. 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.

Chris is currently the Director of Data Protection and Governance for the Office of Data Governance and Analytics, an agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia.  She is responsible for building the agency’s data governance and security program and driving data governance maturity across the Commonwealth.
Prior to working for the Commonwealth, Chris was PRA Group’s Chief Technology Officer and has had multiple roles in IT leadership over the last 25+ years working for major retail, legal, insurance, and financial services firms. Her specialties are data, cloud, security, Devops, IT infrastructure and process improvement.
She has a passion for challenging the status quo, developing people, and leveraging technologies to deliver business value.  For many years she was an adjunct instructor in the VCU Fast Track Masters of Information Systems program, has her CISSP, and recently was a global finalist for the Capital CIO Orbi awards.

Chris Coleman is an eGovernment Services Architect for Chesterfield County, where he plays a key role in shaping the county's digital services. Chris is dedicated to enhancing accessibility, user experience, and public engagement, ensuring that digital interactions are seamless and inclusive for all users. He contributed as a member of Chesterfield's award-winning Information Systems Technology team and served as the project manager for the county's recent website modernization efforts, which were instrumental in securing first place in the 2024 Digital Counties Survey. Chris has spearheaded initiatives that leverage data-driven decisions and analytics to elevate user experiences. His work has earned Chesterfield and other localities over 20 awards, including the Governor's Technology Award for Best Citizen Portal and for Innovation in Data and Analytics. Additionally, Chris instructs an ADA Compliance course for Chesterfield titled "ADA Compliance and Digital Accessibility: Standardizing Digital and Visual Communication for Inclusion," further underscoring his commitment to advancing the future of digital government experiences by leveraging emerging technologies and ensuring compliance with the latest accessibility standards.

Barry has worked in the IT field for over 37 years holding a wide range of technology leadership positions in the public and private sectors and was most recently the CIO for Chesterfield County, Virginia where he pursues initiatives based on digital transformation, open government, and citizen centricity. Under his leadership Chesterfield County Va was four times recognized as the #1 digital county in the USA. Barry holds a masters degree in public leadership with a minor in economics from Virginia State University and a bachelors degree in computer science from DeVry University. He has been adjunct faculty for Virginia Commonwealth University and is currently adjunct faculty for the Public Technology Institute in the certified government CIO program. Barry has been an active NACo contributor, a gubernatorial appointee to the Virginia elections security standards workgroup and a two-time president of the Virginia Local Government IT Executives (VALGITE) organization. He is a certified government CIO (CGCIO), a certified information security manager (CISM) and a national top 25 Doer, Dreamer & Driver. He likes to teach, research technology, write code and blog about technology leadership from his home in Moseley, Virginia.

As an Executive Education Advisor, Jan works with leaders of higher education institutions and higher education professional associations to understand the needs of students, faculty, staff and researchers. Jan’s areas of focus include enterprise technology, cybersecurity, and research computing.
Prior to joining Amazon Web Services (AWS), Jan worked for 25 years in educational technology companies including Blackboard, Pearson, and Parchment. Most recently Jan was the Senior Director of Research and Client Success at Hobsons where she helped higher education institutions use predictive analytics to improve student outcomes.  She has experience in consulting services, business development, mergers and acquisition management, product management, and customer success. Throughout her career, Jan has contributed to higher education technology communities of practice and to higher education technology standards efforts. 
Jan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Geography from the University of Delaware, and a Masters of Arts in Geography from the University of Maryland. 
Jan lives in Washington, DC with her husband Charles, their rescue Airedale terrier Allie, and manages her 25 beehives.

Cameron Groves is a Senior Technology Leader and Director in Google’s Public Sector (GPS) where he leads the Rapid Innovation Team (RIT).
Cameron’s passion lies in advising and leading customers in their cloud adoption journey, and now the AI-driven era. For the last 10+ years, Cameron’s focus has been on delivering the “art of the possible” to customers through building out innovation teams at leading technology companies, including VMware and Amazon Web Services, and now Google Public Sector. Cameron has stood up RIT to partner closely with customers to apply design thinking principles to extract their “minimum lovable product” and deliver what the experience could look like via the application of agile methodologies.
Prior to joining Google, Cameron led the build-out of the “R&D & Innovation” team within AWS’ commercial sector. His team delivered ~200 “cutting-edge” prototypes (6 weeks in duration, all focused on engagements that had never been solved before) that led to cloud “all-in” outcomes for customers such as Bridgestone of America, the PGA Tour, and Viacom CBS. Cameron’s Public Sector experience spans across both the Federal and SLED markets, where he advised customers within the Intelligence Community to the NYC Department of IT and Telecommunications (DoITT) throughout his career prior to AWS with VMware.
Cameron holds a Bachelor of Arts from Gettysburg College in Business Management with a minor in Political Science, an M.S./M.B.A. from American University’s Kogod School of Business, and an Executive Leadership certification from Stanford University’s School of Business.

Early in my career, specialized in melting plastic and debating with ISO auditors. Later, tested software test tools - envision a person measuring rulers in a ruler factory. After a promotion, I managed a team great at breaking software. I was also the test organization's performance expert, assessing application throughput/speed and recommending fixes to make applications go faster. Later on, I worked on gluing non-IBM and IBM software together and showing customers how easy it was to do. As a facilitator to support the CEO's office, I organized studies for our executive leadership by gathering people and steering chats to look at disruptive technologies and see where new money could be made. I was a member of the IBM jStart team. We explored the "art of the possible", had an aversion for saying "it can't be done" and loved learning through direct client engagement. Leveraging Apache Spark, lightning fast cluster computing, for Big Data analytics on both Intel and z/OS® platforms, my exploration has taken me from Jupyter Notebooks in Scala to IPFS decentralized networks. I've been focused on cloud-related technologies facilitated by Kubernetes and Cloud Foundry container-based Platforms (PaaS). I had the privilege of sculpting product and processes as a Senior Offering Manager, alongside an amazing team of IBM talent, to deliver a meaningful client experience for IBM Cloud Private and MultiCloud Management. In my current technology adventure, I like to see myself as bringing the heart of a teacher and the mind of an architect to help clients understand use-cases, industry trends, marketplace motivations and strategies to engage, embrace and exploit a hybrid cloud world.

Alison King is the vice president of government affairs at Forescout Technologies. Alison earned her M.S. in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University and an MBA from Georgetown University. Before joining Forescout, Alison spent over a decade in the federal civil service, working for the Department of the Navy, where she was selected for the Defense Fellowship program in 2019 and was assigned to Congressman Mike Gallagher. Next, Alison served on the United States Cyberspace Solarium Commission as the strategic communications and legislative affairs director. She completed her time in the executive branch as a legislative affairs advisor at the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). 

Jaime Lees (she/her/hers) is the Chief Data Officer in Arlington County, Virginia, serving in this role since 2019. She is responsible for ethically and innovatively leveraging the County’s data assets, with particular focus on data stewardship and constituent and employee re-use of administrative data for the public good. Jaime is responsible for the County’s data analytics, open data and data privacy programs. Jaime has also served in IT leadership roles for non-profit organizations, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Geophysical Union. Jaime is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and graduate of NYU’s GovLab Executive Course on Data Stewardship, and also serves on the governing bodies of the Mid-Atlantic StatNet and DC Evanta CDO Community. Jaime relentlessly pursues business value through the effective harnessing of data to inform and guide decision-making, planning and performance management. She believes in the democratization of data to inform policies and practices that serve all equitably. When not data-ing, Jaime may be found outdoors or with her nose in a book.

Elizabeth Lo is the IT Director for Bedford County, VA. She has worked with and for local and state governments in information technology. She is responsible for the enterprise technology infrastructure, telecommunications, services, and applications.
Building on a successful career in portfolio program management and information technology, she sits on the NACo IT Standing Committee and IT Advisory Council. She is also on the board of the Virginia Local Government IT Executives Association and Fusion Learning Partners, a non-profit organization focused on creating environments that promote learning for the individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve.

Stephen has been a part of Richmond IT since 1999, when CarMax moved him up from Atlanta. He was part of CarMax IT's growth from small start-up to Fortune 500 powerhouse, and was part of their Lean focus and agile transformation. He took over responsibility for application development and support at the Virginia State Police in 2017, and has led the charge for Agility there ever since.
In the last several years, VSP IT has gone from "what is this scrum thing?" to Agile as a way of life. Even so, there are always challenges from those who either don't want to let go of old habits or don't understand the real value that Agile offers.  Stephen's job has changed from "how do we do this?" to "how do we KEEP DOING this?", and that remains his focus.

Sean McSpaden is an executive level information technology professional with over 30 years of experience in the private, non-profit, and public sectors. His background includes the start-up and management of several small businesses and he has served on the Board of Directors or in Executive Director positions for several 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations. Sean’s public service experience includes progressively responsible positions as an IT analyst, and in statewide coordination, management and leadership positions within the Executive and Legislative branches of Oregon state government. From June 2008 to September 2013, served as the state of Oregon’s Deputy State Chief Information Officer.
Throughout his 25-year tenure in Oregon state government, Sean and the teams he has led have received several state, regional and national recognitions and awards. In addition, Sean has represented the state of Oregon on numerous state, regional and national project steering committees, task forces, governing boards, committees, commissions and associations, and has presented on various topics at local, state, regional, national, and international meetings and conferences.
Sean earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree and Certificate of Public Management from the Willamette University, Atkinson Graduate School of Management. Sean is an ISACA Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) and holds a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. Sean also holds a Secret level clearance granted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Manju Naglapur is senior vice president and general manager, Cloud, Applications & Infrastructure Solutions at Unisys. In this role, Manju leads a global business unit focused on cloud and platform transformation, application services, cybersecurity and data and content intelligence.
Manju came to Unisys through leading cloud provider CompuGain™, which Unisys acquired in December 2021 to enhance the delivery of rapid and agile cloud migration, application modernization and data value realization to its clients. Manju joined CompuGain in 2007, and from 2010-2022 he served as vice president, leading strategy, sales, business development, service delivery and portfolio and program management for the company.
Manju earned a M.S. degree in engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and a B.S. degree in engineering from Bangalore University.

Ken is a security and finance industry veteran, formerly serving as VP and Managing Director of Data Protection and Governance at OneMain Financial. Prior to OneMain, he served as Chief Security Officer for TechDemocracy LLC, MFS Investments, and before served as CISO for Pioneer Global Asset Management SpA (Including Pioneer Investments and all operating subsidiaries in 26 countries).
Ken’s Information Technology and Security experience spans over three decades, with strategic, technical, and executive experience at companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Capital IQ, Miradiant Global Network, Avaya, and Merrill Lynch. Ken coauthored Microsoft's “Best Practices for Enterprise Security” white papers and participated on the Information Systems Security Association's International Privacy Advisory Board covering the initial implementation of GLBA. He reported on security risks and performed vulnerability analysis for Windows IT Pro Magazine’s “Security Administrator” publication for four years, and has been a contributing expert for Information Security, CIO and CSO Magazines, and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Institute.

Tim Roesch is at the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) as a Project Manager. He has also been an Agile Coach at the Virginia State Police (VSP). 
He has over 15 years of experience with Agile/Scrum Kanban and has been doing something that looks like scrum since 2001. While working with the US Navey in the late 80’s he was doing something that looked a lot like XP (eXtreme Programming). He has been a scrum team-member, scrum master, product owner, SAFe Release Train Engineer, and an Agile Coach.
Tim has over 30 years’ experience delivery software projects for clients such as the US Navy, US Post Office, US Coast Guard, Capital One, Discover, General Electric, Dell, and Bell Helicopter.

Sarjoo is a business and information technology (IT) leader with over 30 years of experience in Public and Private sector leadership and executive roles. His expertise in building and leading teams with focus on innovation and customer service are proven from his role(s) as the HHS CIO for the State of Oklahoma, Deloitte, SAIC and NTTDATA. Sarjoo specializes in understanding the complex problems that face State and Local entities and providing innovative and transformational solutions to meet and exceed the expectations of business users.   
Sarjoo held various other positions, State CTO, PMO Director and Treasurer within the executive committee of the American Public Human Services Association IT Solutions Management (APHSA-ISM) for several years.
Sarjoo currently holds the position of Industry Executive Director, State and Local Government focusing on developing strategy for Health and Human Services (HHS) transformation using Oracle Cloud.

Edward brings 23 years of IT experience both in public and private sectors leading projects supporting healthcare/IT industries. He joined the city of Virginia Beach IT Department in 2015. Edward is proficient in managing IT enterprise Portfolios, as well as process improvement and innovation projects.
He is leading the IT Project Management Office (PMO) as well as the IT Service Management (ITSM) team for the most populous city of Virginia Beach with over 7,000 employees. He has managed multiple enterprise projects focusing on broadband, software defined data center and infrastructure, demonstrating critical thinking strategies and accompanying IT CIO in regional municipal broadband initiatives to serve the public and address the digital equity.
Edward has a broad international career background. At some point he has worked at the US Consulate in Vienna Austria before moving to the United States in 2000. Employing strong interpersonal skills, he strives to maintain high customer satisfaction and meet project milestones.
He has an associate degree in computer science from ECPI University and holds a bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University in Music Performance and cluster studies in Administrative Leadership. Edward holds PMP and ITIL certifications.
Edward enjoys spending time with family and friends and his corgi. Travelling and exploring the world and other cultures are his passions.

Suresh Soundararajan is a Transformation Strategist that leverages technology with a passion for Strategic Transformation initiatives that aligns with the Organization Objectives effectively with focus on process, business model and cultural transformation.
Suresh specializes in Public Sector Innovation, Journey Orchestration through human centered experience and digital transformation and has 28 years of experience leading and managing multiple programs including extensive public health experience.
As the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Suresh provides Strategic Vision, planning and guidance to the agency leadership and ensures the Technology, Data and Security delivers outcomes that support VDH goals.
Suresh has been the CIO of VDH since 2019 and in the public health space for over 15 years and acted in different roles. He has won Agency Star awards in 2010 and 2017 and was recognized as a VDH Public Health Hero in 2011. For 13 prior years, he has consulted for both Government and Private Sector clients. He is described in general as an innovative and inspirational leader maximizing team’s performance through empowering and supporting inventive ideas from conception to implementation, focusing on service delivery using strategic and cost-effective technology and data solutions goals.
Suresh led efforts to implement a variety of innovative and collaborative solutions to address COVID-19 pandemic containment and vaccination efforts and was awarded Govtech’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2022, and his teams won Government Project Experience award for 2022. He was also a recipient of other Governor’s Technology Awards through the years. He is also a frequent speaker and strategic advisor on Public Sector/Government Innovations and on CIO Forums. He has been coaching youth baseball for 15 years and also a Henrico County Appointed Board of Directors for the Economic Development Authority.

Melinda has 24 years of progressive experience in IT; including recent roles as Acting Chief Operating Officer, Executive Director of IT at VITA and Office of the Governor, Digital Innovation & Technology Director. Private and public experience in IT including roles at VITA with previous state IT roles at the Department of Motor Vehicles and the State Corporation Commission. Extensive background in project management, website and application development as well as enterprise solutions. Melinda is an enthusiastic leader who strongly believes in building “positive” success orientated teams. Melinda has a Master of Science, Management of Information Technology from the University of Virginia, as well has attended the Virginia Executive Institute (VEI) and is a VITA Executive Leadership Development Program Graduate. In her down time, Melinda enjoys traveling with her husband, helping rescue animals and loves a good mystery novel.

Marcus Thornton serves as the Deputy Chief Data Officer (CDO) for the Commonwealth and is from Danville, Virginia. He has worked in software engineering for the last 20 years. Before becoming the Deputy CDO, he worked for a data company that specializes in the collection of retail pricing data across all of North America. As the Deputy CDO, he serves as the Chief Operating Officer to the Chief Data Officer and the CDO’s technical adviser. He creates new partnerships between the Office of Data Governance and Analytics and Commonwealth agencies and shows them how sharing data across the Commonwealth can be leveraged to make more informed decisions and increase their own efficiencies.

Michael Vizdos is an entrepreneur and consultant with decades of industry experience in software and product development.
He is a Certified Scrum Trainer with the Scrum Alliance and creator of ImplementingScrum.com (home of the original ”Scrum Chicken and Pig” Cartoons).
Referred by Ken Schwaber as an early agile pioneer, Michael is your trusted curator of the Scrum Guide Audio Book, the Scrum Guide YouTube Video Playlist, and the official online Interactive Scrum Guide.
Michael co-authored a book with Scott Ambler and collaborated with Ron Jeffries on an online agile mentoring community.
In addition to working with clients around the world, he is the “Scrum Master in Residence” at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) and works part time as a Strategic Advisor for the Blueprint Education School District.

Michael Watson is the Chief Information Security Officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia at the Virginia Information Technologies Agency (VITA). With over 15 years of experience working in the information security field, he leads the Commonwealth Security and Risk Management team which provides security governance, oversight, and risk management for the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government in Virginia.
Michael holds a graduate degree in telecommunications with a focus on security and management from the University of Pennsylvania and earned his undergraduate degree from James Madison University. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), incident handler, intrusion analyst, penetration tester, and information systems auditor.

Johnny Wong is the Sr. Director of Pre-sales Veracode. He oversees the Solutions Architecture teams for Public Sector, Enterprise, and Channel as well as the SA Operations team. Johnny has been in security his entire career. The first part of his career, he was focused on identity and access management.  Johnny started his career as a software developer and after nearly five years of creating insecure code, he was offered an opportunity to not be a software developer and to join the world of pre-sales. He has been with Veracode for over eight years.
Johnny received a BS in Computer Engineering from Tufts University. He and his family reside in Boston and he has no plans to ever leave because of the Boston Celtics! He loves to travel specifically to find and eat at the best restaurants across the world. At this point, the only animal he hasn’t eaten are the endangered or extinct ones.