Justin is a cyber workforce development SME at Focal Point, helping enterprise customers design and deploy world-class workforce development programs. Justin is a prominent thought leader in the field of workforce development and cybersecurity training, and has spent much of his career focused on strategies for developing high-performing technical workforces. Prior to joining Focal Point, Justin was a Director on the Federal System Integrator Team at Global Knowledge, where he led a large sales team focused on IT training.

Brett has expertise to lead public service organizations gracefully through their visions of change, especially technology transformation for connected healthcare. He can provide insight into every part of their journey, from envisioning a solution to implementing and operating it, with a deep understanding of public service and its systems from years working and consulting for local and state government organizations. He spent 10 years serving in municipal and county administration roles, including manager’s office, public works, police, fire, and enterprise technology. He also spent five years working in advisory roles, providing project management, organization change management, and IT guidance for enterprise projects with state and university clients. Most recently, he has spent one year providing strategy and management for technology and networking products.

Joe Byrne is VP of Technology Strategy and Executive CTO at AppDynamics where his focus is product strategy, evangelism, and customer success in terms of Full Stack Observability. Joe works closely with the Sales, Product, Marketing and Engineering teams in order to ensure customers are successful in their strategic approach to performance monitoring and also represent their needs to the AppD team.
Prior to joining Cisco/AppDynamics Joe held leadership positions at companies such as Albertson's, EllieMae, Johnson and Johnson, EA, Williams Sonoma.

Russell has been helping governments innovate and improve their operations through the cutting-edge application of technology for more than 25 years. Working in both the public and private sectors, he has created, implemented and supported advanced applications and technology for local governments serving hundreds of thousands of citizens and customers across the United States.
Most recently, he has concentrated on implementing an aggressive roadmap for digital business improvement as the CTO and Director of Technology and Innovation for the City of Tampa- Florida’s tech capital. With a priority on getting the right tools and technology for expanded service, improved reliability, and open data sharing for the departments he serves, the City has implemented and upgraded more systems in the past five years than the 15 before.
Russell has a bachelor of business administration degree with a major in management from Florida Atlantic University. He trained in performance management with a past Florida Governor’s Sterling Award winner and is a past examiner for Illinois Performance Excellence (ILPEx), an organization that assists governments, hospitals, manufacturers and other businesses to implement the continuous improvement management model using the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. He is also a 2018 honoree of the Tampa Bay Business Journal’s CIO of the Year award and a 2022 Florida CIO of the Year 2022 enterprise finalist.
When he’s not at work, he’s probably out on a long run, training for the next Gasparilla Distance Classic.

Michael is a CyberSecurity Strategist for AT&T and has been with AT&T for Fifteen years, evangelizing needs for better CyberSecurity. His prior experiences include nearly a decade of service with IBM, fifteen years as President and CEO of Carolina Business Systems, five years as President, CallWare Technologies and three as President of AlianzaSur, Inc. working in Central America and Northern South America.
Michael is a Vietnam combat veteran, graduated from The Citadel and resides in Charleston, SC with his wife Yalani.

Joseph was named DBPR’s Chief Information Officer in May of 2016. Prior to his current position, Joseph managed the Enterprise and Business Systems Engineering Services team since he joined DBPR in April of 2011. He is a native Floridian, who was born on Naval Air Station Pensacola and raised in Central Florida before he started working with the State at Florida State University in 1999. Joseph spent 10 years at the Florida Department of Health in roles ranging from Helpdesk and Systems Administration to IT Security and Disaster Preparedness Consulting.

Head of Strategic Partnerships, data.world

Patrick McGarry is currently building the thriving data ecosystem around data.world as the Head of Strategic Partnerships. He has spent the last 20 years helping to build communities and foster Open Source ideals at companies like Sourceforge/Slashdot, Alcatel-Lucent, and Perforce. Most recently Patrick served as the Director of Community for the Ceph open source project at the startup ‘Inktank,’ and later for Red Hat after a successful acquisition. Patrick also serves as the Executive Director of DataPractices.org, a community-led Linux Foundation project to promote data literacy and data best practices. Patrick enthusiastically helps companies to understand and adopt Open Source ideals and continues to be a strong advocate for building data-driven culture across organizations.

Scott McPherson is a fifth-generation native Floridian. An international businessman at age 21, Scott was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1980 from the south Miami-Dade County area at age 25, defeating a two-term incumbent. Scott served in the early 1980s.
In 1999, Governor Jeb Bush asked Scott to return to public service and create Team Florida 2000, Florida’s statewide Y2K preparedness effort. The largest IT project in Florida’s history, TF2K garnered several state and national awards. TF2K’s statewide critical infrastructure and disaster recovery methodology were used extensively in the weeks following 9/11.
In early 2000, Governor Bush asked Scott to repair the ailing state Census partnership. Scott’s redesigned and reenergized effort, Sunshine Count 2000, was a critical and media success, and helped Florida secure a second new Congressional district, which no pundit thought possible. It was also the template for Florida’s successful efforts in the 2010 Census.
In February 2001, Scott created the Office of Information Security within Florida’s State Technology Office. Efforts were accelerated following 9/11, and Scott was awarded a “Best of Breed” award from the Center for Digital Government in 2002.
In March 2001, Scott was appointed Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the Florida Department of Corrections. Under Scott’s tenure, the Department’s Office of Information Technology won seventeen (17) Davis Productivity Awards from Florida TaxWatch for innovation and excellent stewardship of taxpayer dollars.
In 2006, Scott accepted the appointment as CIO for the Florida House of Representatives. Scott guided the development of the legislature’s first “app,” which debuted in March, 2013, and garnered 5-star reviews and more than 3,500 downloads before being decommissioned in 2017.
Scott is recognized internationally as an expert in preparedness for pandemics. For the past fourteen years, Scott has lectured extensively from coast-to-coast
on the topic, and his presentations are referenced by the National Association of County and City Health Officials, the State University System of Florida, the University of Illinois, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the National Institute of Corrections. Scott appeared on Fox News Channel as part of their swine flu coverage in 2009. In September of that same year, Scott was invited to lecture at the CIDRAP conference on preparations for H1N1 “swine flu,” at the request of Dr. Michael D. Osterholm, CIDRAP’s director, and an internationally-recognized expert on infectious diseases. Scott was lecturing on the threat of a coronavirus pandemic as early as mid-February, 2020, at the request of the Multi-State -Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC).
Government Technology Magazine recognized Scott as one of the Top 25 technology “Doers, Dreamers and Drivers” in 2008, along with Scott’s friend and FEMA Director Craig Fugate, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2017, Scott was awarded Public CIO Magazine’s Florida CIO Hall of Fame.
Scott plans to retire from public service in late 2022.

Darrick has over 15 years of Solution Architect Experience both in the cloud and on prem with a specialization in AI. He has been the lead on several large projects that impacted Vaccine distribution at Departments of Health and Departments of Labor. These solutions revolve around Doc AI to assist with document analysis by government agencies and Call Center AI (CCAI) that assists in multiple languages automatic handling of call center calls freeing up agents to perform more complex tasks.

Thomas Nisbet is an Associate Partner with IBM, assisting clients apply cognitive capabilities in their enterprises. Over 10 years of AI and advanced analytics experience across State and Local and Federal government have given Thomas a diverse background and experience with how cognitive capabilities can help deliver on the promise of the digital reinvention of Government. He is currently focused on using AI and automation to transform agencies with goals to increase program satisfaction, lower costs, improve employee efficiency, and overall program outcomes. Thomas lives in Raleigh, NC with his wife and 2 children.

Tony currently serves as a government technology strategist for state and local governments in the south-central region of the U.S for Dell Technologies. Previously, Tony served as a technology leader with the state of Florida with more than 28 years. In the past 15 years, Tony has held the roles of Executive Director of the Southwood Shared Resource Center, Chief Information Officer in both the Florida Department of Health and the Florida Department of Revenue. During Tony’s distinguished career he led large, complex strategic enterprise transformational initiatives to include datacenter consolidation of state IT resources within three state datacenters, $120 million-dollar Child Support Management System, $110 million-dollar Tax and Revenue Management system (SUNTAX) as well as lead the largest Cloud migration initiatives to date in Florida State Government. Tony earned his bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems (MIS) from the University of Maryland (European Division). He served honorably in the United States Air Force and is a veteran of the Persian Gulf War. Tony is married to his high school sweetheart Candace and they have two children, Nicola and Quinton.

Morgan Reed spent nearly 4 years as Chief Information Officer 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% to the cloud. He joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an Executive Government Advisor, to coach State and Local Government Executives through strategy, policy, and governance challenges to help them accelerate their journey to the cloud, and help governments innovate for their customers.

Jeremy Rodgers is the State Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the state of Florida. Serving as part of the State Chief Information Officer’s executive leadership team for the Florida Digital Service (FL[DS]), Jeremy is responsible for leading cybersecurity, cyber planning, incident response, cyber training, and building the Cyber Security Operations Center (CSOC), across the state enterprise.
Prior to joining the state of Florida, Jeremy served more than 20 years in private industry for a Fortune 50 information technology company. He held many roles across the business, including leading cybersecurity solution architecture across federal, defense, and the intelligence community as well as leading a team of analysts and engineers partnering with defense, intelligence, government, and commercial clients in the intelligence analysis and cybersecurity domains. Additional previous assignments include innovations lead for the office of the CISO, enterprise architecture roles in human resources and learning, as well as lead developer and component lead roles in software development.
Jeremy continues to serve his country in the United States Navy. Lieutenant Commander Rodgers currently serves as the executive officer of a Navy Reserve cryptologic unit in Fort Worth, Texas. Previous assignments include an overseas mobilization as Chief of Targets Information Operations, multiple operational cyber leadership roles at US Cyber Command, cyber intel lead for a Navy intel unit at US Southern Command, and department head at a Navy cryptologic unit in Orlando, FL. He has received various individual, unit, and campaign military awards.
In 2015, Jeremy was elected to the non-partisan office of City Council for Boca Raton, FL, where he served six years including several as the city’s Deputy Mayor. He served on multiple boards including the National League of Cities Information Technology and Communications and other regional/transportation boards.
Jeremy completed his MS in Computer Engineering with a minor in Business Administration, as well as his BS in Computer Engineering, both at Florida Atlantic University. He holds a graduate certificate in Bioengineering. He is completing his PhD in Computer Engineering at Florida Atlantic University, with a research focus in security, and an anticipated graduation date of 2022. He has completed the Navy’s Information Warfare Basic Course and the Navy Reserve Commanding Officer Qualification. He is a fully qualified Navy Cryptologic Warfare Officer and Navy Information Warfare Officer.
Jeremy currently resides in Boca Raton, FL with wife Mandy and their four children. They are in the process of relocating to Tallahassee, FL, for Jeremy’s service to the state of Florida.

Michael Rose is a Global Account Sales Manager at Ciena. Currently he supports one of Ciena’s top-tier partners supporting a diverse set of verticals including state and local governments. His time is spent developing the partner eco-system, joint go-to-market strategies, service creation, and executive based solutions. Michael has over 20 years of experience in optical networking, including field services, global product support, sales engineering and partner sales. His background in various areas of the telecommunications market enables him to build relationships with partners and customers while delivering outcomes that have a meaningful and lasting impact.

Terrence Samuel has held several technical and leadership positions within the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV). He has experience in governance, project management, strategic planning, team development, process improvement and enterprise application development.
Mr. Samuel has served in various leadership roles with the American Association of Motor Vehicles Administrators (AAMVA) including the Information Technology representative for the Law Enforcement Committee and chair of the IT Committee. In recent years, he served as chair of the AAMVA National System Modernization Committee.
Terrence brings his experience and leadership to his current position as FLHSMV’s Director of the Office of Motorist Modernization. This office is responsible for modernization of legacy systems and processes for the department.

Roosevelt Sawyer, Jr. is the CIO for the Florida Supreme Court, Office of the State Courts Administrator (OSCA). He is responsible for leading the development and implementation of technology strategies at OSCA as well as managing all aspects of IT operations and customer service. Roosevelt is lead staff to the Florida Courts Technology Commission that governs statewide technology standards for the entire judicial branch. He has extensive information technology experience implementing enterprise solutions across multiple business industries in the private and public sectors. He served in the United Stated Marine Corps and holds a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems from Florida State University.

Teri Takai is Senior 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.

For the past 8 years Jim Taylor has served as CEO for the Florida Technology Council. In this seat, Jim’s voice acts as an unbiased resource for industry leaders, state legislators, state agencies and municipalities working to create a stronger, safer, more efficient Florida.
Jim was appointed as the Florida technology industry representative for the Governor Ron DeSantis Reopen Florida Taskforce; served on the Florida House of Representatives Cybersecurity and EMP Legislative Workgroup, and is an appointed member of the State of Florida Credentials Review Committee, as well as the State-lead for Florida’s Credential-Occupation Correlation & Gap Identification Workgroup. Jim is a recent graduate of the FBI Citizens Academy
In the field of cyber security, as a recent graduate of the FBI Citizens Academy, Jim provides FBI Cybersecurity Symposiums and trainings for education institutions, private and public sector leaders, and students across our state. He and the Florida Technology Council are helping organizations navigate the new cybersecurity challenges of a distributed workforce through their partnership with the Cyber Readiness Institute.
Jim Taylor is one of only four leaders in the state of Florida to receive the “Government Technology National Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers Award” for efforts advancing technology in state government.

Jackson Thomas is the Managing Director for Oracle Government and Education Business Development Organization. He leads a team of cloud Enterprise Architects and Business Value Leaders.
His organization is responsible for helping our customers adopt cloud and secure their platform, facilitating our customers to move thief workload to the cloud with confidence.
Jackson has also held roles at IBM, Mycroft and GE Financial over the course of his 20+ year career in various enterprise roles. Jackson is a Enterprise Architect with management experience, leading large scale transformation programs. He is a trusted advisor to his customers and have helped many customers through their modernization journey.

Mere Work is the Director of State and Local Sales with ID.me, and has been with the company for three and a half years. In the last two years, Mere has jumped headfirst into all things related to unemployment insurance benefits, with fraud, digital equity and security being key among them. Mere helps oversee ID.me’s work with 30 states. Prior to ID.me, Mere was a Naval Flight Officer for the United States Navy. Over nine years of service, Mere held instructor positions with NATO and flew 92 missions in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq. Mere holds a Bachelor’s of Science from the United States Naval Academy.

Morgan is an internationally recognized expert on cybersecurity strategy, cyberterrorism, identity theft and privacy. Morgan's landmark testimony before Congress on Healthcare.gov changed how the government collected personally identifiable information. He is currently a contributor to TheHill.com on matters of cybersecurity, national security and intelligence in addition to his national news appearances. Previously, Morgan was a senior advisor in the U.S. State Department Antiterrorism Assistance Program and senior law enforcement advisor for the 2012 Republican National Convention. In addition to 18 years in state and local law enforcement as a highly decorated state trooper and detective, Morgan has developed solutions in defense, justice and intelligence for the largest technology companies in the world including Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent/Bell Labs, Unisys and SAIC.