James Grant serves as Florida’s Chief Information Officer. A Tampa native, James previously served in the Florida House of Representatives. Prior to being appointed to this role, he was an entrepreneur with a passion for creating technology solutions for the challenges in an ever-evolving and innovating marketplace. Those same principles are applied in his approach to governing, thereby introducing government to efficiencies that result from interoperability, while working toward his concept of Minimal Viable Government.
He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration from Auburn University and a law degree from Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Florida.

Dan Thurmon is the founder and President of Motivation Works, a company that helps leaders and their organizations move confidently through change and transformation so that they achieve and contribute MORE. Dan is an expert speaker and performer. He has delivered thousands of presentations across six continents for audiences including world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, educators, and even troops on the front lines of battle. In 2011, he was inducted into the prestigious Speaker Hall of Fame. Dan recently served as the President of the National Speakers Association. During his tenure, he led the Board of Directors and the 3,000+ member organization through a critical transformation, which included new governance, a new mission, higher member value, and greater financial accountability. He’s authored two books: Success in Action and Off Balance On Purpose. Dan produces an ongoing weekly video coaching series and podcast in which he shares leadership principles and life-enhancement strategies in under three minutes. He is a health and fitness advocate. In his 50s, Dan continues to train and perform advanced acrobatics, and enjoys hobbies such as golf, mountain unicycling and the flying trapeze.

Phil Bertolini is the 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 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.

Kamal brings more than 30 years of global international technology and operating experience with multibillion-dollar enterprises across both the public and private sectors. Most recently, he served as the Chief Technology Officer of Invesrsora Agroindustrial Global, leading technology strategy, architecture, and operations as well as global technology investments. Importantly, he has spent a significant portion of his career in New York City under the administration of multiple Mayors, including as the Chief Information Officer of the City’s Health and Human Services, a domain comprising several agencies focusing on social services, criminal justice and health.

As the Director of Cloud Advocacy & Enablement at IGNW, Casey Bleeker focuses on creating programs and solutions that increase market adoption of cloud native technologies, including hybrid-cloud and multi-cloud sales strategies and best practices. From helping vendors market their latest offerings to educating ecosystem partners on how they can evolve their practices, Casey helps end-customers ramp their adoption velocity of innovative architectures.
Previously, Casey spent over 5 years at Cisco Systems. As a Sr. Business Development Manager, he managed the $150M Cisco Spark Innovation Fund, administering equity & non-equity grants, and working with enterprise customers on innovative ways to integrate collaboration workloads into business relevant workflows. He is perhaps best known for creating the SalesConnect Spark Bot, as well as helping to create Cortex, the AI-ML center of excellence at Cisco. Casey has also been in developer advocacy & direct field sales roles at Cisco.
Prior to joining Cisco, Casey had more than 8 years of experience spanning network architect roles in the customer and partner communities, to consulting roles across many collaboration technologies, including technical marketing for Microsoft. Most recently, Casey received a certificate in Big Data & Social Analytics from MIT. He has a B.S. in Bioinformatics and is a contributor to the EMIRGE genetic analysis project, applying deep learning to genetic populations.

Rich Clayton is Vice President of Product Strategy for Oracle Analytics and is responsible for the global adoption of Oracle’s analytic solutions. He has a passion for helping companies transform their organization with data by researching market and technology trends, and engaging customers and partners. He presents at analytics forums around the world on Oracle’s strategy and the future of analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Prior to joining Oracle, he was vice president of product strategy for Hyperion. Before joining the technology industry, Rich held various corporate finance roles and was a certified public accountant with McGladery in Chicago.
Mr. Clayton currently serves as an officer on the Board of Regents for Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa and led the development of the first Business Analytics MBA program in the state. He teaches analytics at University of Oregon and is the executive sponsor for the annual analytics challenge at CalPoly. Mr. Clayton earned his bachelor's degree in accounting from Loras College.

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.

William Eggers is the Executive Director of Deloitte’s Center for Government Insights where he is responsible for the firm’s public sector thought leadership. He is the author of 9 books including Delivering on Digital: The Innovators and Technologies that are Transforming Government, The Solution Revolution, The Washington Post best seller If We Can Put a Man on the Moon, and Governing by Network. He coined the term Government 2.0 in a book by the same name. His commentary has appeared in dozens of major media outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

David Egts is the Chief Technologist of Red Hat’s North America Public Sector organization where he directs a global team of technical experts and field product management to help government clients improve service delivery the open source way. The Office of Chief Technologist, which he leads, adds value to flagship Red Hat technologies such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, OpenShift, and Linux containers. His team helps Red Hat achieve ideal product-market fit by ensuring current and future government requirements are factored into existing products and R&D efforts with a focus on security, compliance, standards, efficiency, and technological improvements. The government readiness activities performed by his team positively impacts public and private sector organizations in the US and internationally with a particular focus on Australia, Canada, Japan, and the UK.
David’s dynamic outward-facing role as a coalition builder reinforces and expands Red Hat’s relations with key government and open source community stakeholders nationally and internationally. He is a trusted Red Hat media spokesperson whose deep technical dives, C-suite policy discussions, and keynote speaker abilities enhance Red Hat’s technical reputation and positioning.
David received industry-wide recognition as a FedScoop 50 Industry Leadership awardee and a finalist for WashingtonExec’s Chief Officer Awards. He is a Red Hat Chairman's Award recipient and has won multiple highest employee honors from previous employers Silicon Graphics and Concurrent Technologies Corporation. He is a past Co-Chair on the Board of Directors for the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Software & Services Division (SSD) and is an active member of the Agile Government Leadership Association and the AFCEA DC Emerging Technologies Working Group. David is a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) and a three-time graduate from the University of Pittsburgh with a BS and MS in Computer Science and an Executive MBA (Katz Graduate School of Business). LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidegts/

Tom Gill is a Principal Architect with AT&T serving the State, Local Government, and Education organization in AT&T's Public Sector. Tom primarily supports customers in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. As a Principal Architect, he is involved with innovation strategy and technical architecture for AT&T. Tom works with customers to align technology roadmaps with their business objectives. Tom began his career as a DSL installation technician and has grown in the industry for over 20 years into areas of security, mobility, voice transformation, as well as automation. Tom enjoys fishing, football, racing, and has recently discovered cycling.

Dustin Haisler is the Chief Innovation Officer for e.Republic. As Chief Innovation Officer, he 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. Dustin began he career at a very young age as the finance director and later CIO for Manor, TX, a small city outside Austin. He quickly built a track record and national reputation as an early innovator in civic tech, for which he was named a Government Technology Top 25 Doer, Dreamer and Driver in 2009. A member of Code for America’s original steering committee, Dustin pioneered government use of commercial technologies not before used in the public sector – including Quick-Response (QR) barcodes, crowdsourcing, and gamification. Dustin went on to the private sector to help broaden the adoption of these and other civic innovations. His work has been featured in Wired, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, Inc., and the Today Show on NBC. An in-demand speaker, he has given two TEDx speeches – one on Disrupting Government (TEDxAustin) and the other on Disrupting Education (TEDxLivermore).

Anthony Huey is a highly popular international speaker and communications consultant who offers session attendees pragmatic communications tools, tips and techniques they can use immediately in their professional and personal lives. His career includes tenures as a news reporter, magazine senior editor, crisis management specialist, media relations consultant and executive speech coach. Anthony heads Reputation Management, LLC, one of the nation’s leading communications training and crisis consulting companies. He has presented nearly 2,700 keynote speeches, workshops and seminars. His direct client work includes a wide variety of advertising, public relations and communications initiatives for hundreds of trade associations, municipalities and companies.

Dan Johnson heads State and Local Government customer engineering for Google, a position he has held since January of 2020. Dan and his team are responsible for working with a range of government customers to apply advances in big data and machine learning to their business problems. Prior to his current role, Dan led Financial Services customer engineering for Google working in Global Banking and Financial Markets.
Dan started his career 19 years ago at NLV Financial Corporation as a Systems Programmer. His path leading to Google in 2013 includes leadership and engineering roles at Cisco Systems, ATT and the University of Oregon.
"Through ML and AI, cloud computing will provide both the data storage and the processing power necessary to train new models tackling new problems that were previously incalculable."
Mr. Johnson holds a BA in Economics from the University of Washington and a MS in Organizational Leadership from Colorado State University.

Michael Johnson is the Deputy CTO for the Enterprise West sales at NetApp. His focus is to match NetApp’s vision and products to the business directions of his customers. He works with the largest customers in the region to help customer with their Digital Transformation journey, AI/DL, DevOps and Cloud. Michael has spent over 25 years managing both HW and SW development teams with a specialty in DevOps and EDA/Semiconductor development automation space. He’s been with NetApp for 6 years.

Dr. Kevin Mahoney is a 20-year veteran of the IT industry. He currently runs the Advanced Threat Protection Practice for a leading cybersecurity vendor. Kevin holds a PhD in IT Management from Capella University and a JD in Technology Law from Purdue University.

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.

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.
Scott has been a technology, political and communications consultant for the past thirty-one years, and a CIO for twenty-three of those years. His weekly technology column for Knight/Ridder Newspapers, “The Help Screen,” ran coast-to-coast in such newspapers as the Boston Globe, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Tallahassee Democrat, and the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.
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).
As a result of his pandemic efforts and overall body of work, 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.
As a sidebar: Scott appeared as a “walker” in the first episode of AMC’s monster hit “The Walking Dead”, and his likeness was used as the villain James Coyle in the comic book “Enormous,” whose film and television rights have just been purchased.

Jim Meehan is the Global Investigation Manager for Global Security Services where he coordinates the forensic investigations conducted by the investigative response unit worldwide. Prior to working at Verizon, Jim worked with the United States Secret Service. With 27+ years of law enforcement experience, his career spanned numerous disciplines within the United States Secret Service to include supervising technical security countermeasures and tactics. He served in a supervisory capacity on the Presidents Protective Detail during which he advanced to the principal assignment on the President’s Counter Assault Team. In his last assignment with the agency he was the Deputy Special Agent in Charge of Cyber Operations. In that position he supervised and engaged in historical transnational cybercrime investigations, oversaw the Critical Systems Protection Program and all of the Secret Service network intrusion and forensic examination programs.
He has a Master’s Degree in Strategic Studies (Counter Terrorism) from the National Defense University and has graduated from the Chief Information Security Officer Program at Carnegie Mellon University.

Joseph Morris is vice president of Research 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.

Marcelo Oliveira graduated with a business degree from AEUDF University in Brazil and obtained his MBA in Finance MBA from California State University, Hayward. For over 20 years, Marcelo has been focused on developing cloud managed solutions that contribute to business continuity and disaster recover applications. During his time in Brazil, Marcelo industrialized Brasil Telecom datacenter solutions before moving to Canada to help drive commercial hosting solutions for Bell Canada. He then developed cloud solutions from scratch for Cable and Wireless in the Caribbean and Latin America and is currently transforming Frontier Business into a Cloud Managed Solutions provider.

With over 30 years of experience in the IT industry, Kevin Patten worked for 4 years as a Principal Engagement Manager for SAS focusing on sales of large multi-year big data, A.I. and M.L. projects for state and local government. Mr. Paten has served as the Chief Operations Officer for the State of Florida. Previously, Kevin worked for the State of Florida serving as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and other positions at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Florida Association of Court Clerks, and the Florida Supreme Court.
Kevin has served as the board chair for the Southwood Shared Resource Center Executive Board of Directors and served an 18 month term as Chairman of the Florida CIO Council. He has taught network security as an adjunct professor at Tallahassee Community Kevin holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of West Florida.

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.

Tony currently serves as a government technology strategist for state and local governments in the south central region of the U.S. Previously, Tony served as a technology leader with the state of Florida with more than 28 years, with experience leading large, complex, multidisciplinary teams delivering strategic IT solutions that provide clear business value. Key successful enterprise transformational accomplishments include several leadership roles facilitating 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. 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. He has a B.A. 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.

President, e.Republic

Cathilea is president of e.Republic, where she oversees operations for the company’s award-winning media platforms: Governing, Government Technology and Emergency Management. Cathilea 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.

Roosevelt Sawyer, Jr. is the CIO for the Florida Supreme Court, Office of the State Courts Administrator (OSCA). He is responsible for leading the OSCA’s technology strategy and managing overall IT operations and customer service. He is lead staff to the Florida Courts Technology Commission that governs statewide technology standards for the judicial branch. Roosevelt served in the United States Marine Corps and has experience in information technology with both the private and public sectors implementing enterprise solutions across multiple business industries. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems from Florida State University.

Shamlan Siddiqi is CTO of NTT DATA’s public sector where he leads the group’s technology, advisory and innovation vision and strategy, supporting efforts to improve agency outcomes through pragmatic innovations and focused services.
Siddiqi has more than 20 years in IT services, most recently serving as NTT DATA’s vice president for digital and cloud services practices, leading a team of consulting, solutions and service delivery professionals. Siddiqi also served as vice president of North America architecture and application development, establishing practices -- mobile, interactive web, user experience, architecture modernization and integration – to solve customers’ business problems through innovative, repeatable business-driven, technology-enabled solutions.
Siddiqi is a recipient of the CIO Certificate in Federal Executive Competencies awarded by CIO University and George Washington University. He holds a master’s degree in Information Systems Technology from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems from George Mason University.

Greg Smiley is the Chief Information Officer for the Florida Department of Transportation and is a technology leader in Florida’s public sector. Leveraging 300 staff members and a $60 million annual budget, he is responsible for the strategic direction and execution of the agency’s Information Technology initiatives.
Greg’s career with the State of Florida began in 2006 where he was first hired by the Florida Department of Transportation as an entry level software developer. After multiple promotions and several years later, he moved on to the private sector to deliver solutions in digital media, finance, health care, and transportation. He then returned to the Florida Department of Transportation for a few more years and was named Chief Information Officer in January 2017.
Greg holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Information Technology from Florida State University. He has been spotlighted in various publications and his articles have been published in magazines such as Gov CIO Outlook and Logistics Tech Outlook. He is married to his college sweetheart and together they have two daughters.

Teri Takai is the 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. 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.

Stephanie Tanner is the Information Security Manager at the Florida Department of Transportation. She has 25 years’ experience with the Department, starting with Tech Support and including Technical Writing, IT Training and Education, implementation of the FDOT Project Development methodology, and Enterprise Project Management. Stephanie became a telecommuter before it was cool, when a move to Georgia in 1999, in combination with an open-minded manager, allowed her to keep her position at FDOT and work from home. She has been involved in projects statewide in the financial, administrative and operational arenas, and is fascinated by the variety of technology utilized by the Department. As the ISM, she is focused on expanding the workforce allocated to Information Security, working with the Department’s traffic and transportation related teams to better secure the Department’s operational technology, implementing Enterprise-Level projects that further protect the Department and educating the workforce to make intelligent risk-based decisions for themselves and their offices.

Michelle Taylor is the CIO for Leon County Government and a 30-year IT veteran. She holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science from Florida State University. Michelle started at Leon County in 1997, following appointments at Florida State University in the College of Education, Biology, and College of Law. In January of this year, Michelle became the County’s CIO following Pat Curtis’ retirement. Formerly from Thomasville, GA, Michelle and her husband, Mark, of 38 years have called Tallahassee home since 1986 and her superpower is raising two well-adjusted young adults, Zac (26) and Nic (18).