Hardik Bhatt is the President and Chief Growth Officer at SDI Presence. He is a dynamic senior business leader, technology executive, board member who delivers large-scale digital transformation ensuring significant return on investment across the enterprise. Hardik is a collaborative leader who builds short and long-term strategies to enable current and future competitiveness. He is a skilled communicator who translates complex technical challenges into clear business language to drive investment. Recognized as a global leader in IoT and Smart cities and countries who builds innovative new paradigms, Hardik is an execution-focused professional who delivers clear, rapid wins that demonstrate a path forward for investment.

Jordan Burris is the Vice President of Strategy - Public Sector at Socure. In this role, he partners with government leaders to develop and scale Socure’s public sector offerings for identity verification and fraud detection. This includes leading efforts to promote and evangelize industry leading concepts in digital identity inclusion and fairness.
Prior to his role at Socure, Jordan served at the intersection of policy and delivery as the Chief of Staff in the White House Office of the Federal Chief Information Officer. He was responsible for orchestrating the execution of technology and cybersecurity efforts across two Presidential administrations to include the oversight of the Federal Government’s $90 billion+ technology budget. Jordan is a well-regarded strategist and thought leader behind the development of government-wide technology and cybersecurity policy notably in the domain of Identity, Credential, and Access Management (ICAM).

John is a Public Sector technology advocate with Google Cloud. His charter is to educate, inform and help smart government agencies innovate & improve constituent service by using technology the way Google does. With over 20 years of experience working with government agencies, John has unique expertise with the challenges governments face across people, process and technology. Cloud computing and Open Source technology has broken down historical barriers to innovation, especially for the government, allowing agencies to solve problems at the speed of Google.

Jayson is a public sector technology subject matter expert with 20 years of city and county government experience. Prior to joining AWS Jayson served as the Chief Information Officer for the City of Cincinnati where he led the city’s enterprise technology department, chaired the city’s IT Governance Board, and managed the city’s capital budget and project approval processes. Jayson also has a background in public safety technology having served as a county 911 and Emergency Communications Director, as well as experience in the private sector as a Business Analysis Manager responsible for technology contracts and procurements totaling $350 million in annually.

After earning 20 years of technology leadership experience as a member of the C-Suite for several public sector organizations, Greeves now serves as an Industry Advisor for SAP. In his role, he helps state and local governments, school systems and universities modernize complex systems and transform their business operations.

Ron Guerrier serves as the Global Chief Information Officer for HP Inc.
Guerrier has more than 25 years of experience managing technology in the both the public and private sector across various industries. Most recently, he served as the CIO and Secretary of Innovation & Technology for the State of Illinois, held the position of CIO at Express Scripts, the nation's largest pharmacy benefit manager, and functioned in the same role at Farmers Insurance Group from 2015 to 2018. Prior to that, Guerrier spent 19 years at Toyota North America, rising to vice president and chief information officer for the Financial Services division. Guerrier earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a master’s degree in operations management and supervision from North Park University.
Guerrier serves as a Board Director at Equinix, a Fortune500 digital infrastructure company which operates in over 100 countries. Guerrier also is the Chairman Emeritus of the Board for Innovate @UCLA and is the Executive Adviser for STEM Advantage, a non-profit organization that opens doors for young women and underserved communities to pursue their dreams of a career in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Guerrier sits on the Board of Directors of SBP (SBPUSA.org), an organization which assists with the rebuilding of homes and restoring lives after natural disasters.
Throughout his career, Guerrier has earned numerous honors and awards, including the 2019 & 2020 Crane’s Top50 Award, 2019 & 2020 Top Technology Executive to Watch from HMG Strategy, Gartner’s 2018 CIO Breakaway Leader of the Year, 2018 CIO Digital Edge50 Award, LA Business Journal’s CIO Lifetime Achievement Award, 4x CIO100 Award recipient, 2020 Orbie Chicago CIO of the Year, 2020 StateScoop State Executive of the Year, the 2022 ITSMF Global Technology Executive of the Year, was included in the Black Enterprise Most Powerful Executives in Corporate America List in 2018. He has also written numerous articles for publications such as GovCIO, Entrepreneur, CIO Review, and Fortune Magazines. Guerrier was inducted in Foundry’s CIO Hall of Fame Class of 2022.

Dessa Gypalo serves as the Chief Data Officer (CDO) for the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology (DoIT). With over a decade of experience in government, non-profits, and organizing spaces, Dessa was the inaugural CDO for Cook County, Illinois and has led a variety of data analytics teams. At the State of Illinois, she’s focused on building strong data foundations with an eye towards ethics and equity. She is skilled at creating a culture of data and analytics, and building data programs that scale. Dessa holds a BA in History and Business Administration from Roanoke College and an alum of the Civic Leadership Academy through University of Chicago.

Brian Hagan currently works in the public sector promoting Cloudera as an integral component of overall data management and strategy, including the processes of data engineering and data analytics. With 20 years of experience in the software industry, Brian collaborates with his customers, defining software architectures to achieve measurable outcomes using Cloudera. His current customers include those in healthcare, education, transportation, and law enforcement.

Terance Henry currently serves as the IT Director for the City of Marion. He has been credited with suppling the City of Marion will the technology advancement that they have today. Developing, planning, along with protecting the integrity of the network for all of the different City Owned departments which includes Police, Fire and public library is just one of his many assignments.
Before coming to City of Marion, Terance was an entrepreneur for more than 13 yrs. Computer instructor for John A Logan Continuing Education Department for 12 years
Terance currently serves on several different boards which includes, Police and Fire Pension board, Board Chair of Southern Illinois Workforce development, Past President of John A Logan Foundation Board, Membership Committee for GMIS of Illinois, Chairman of ManTraCon Local Workforce Area 25. Washington University STL Thinktank committee.
Terance has won numerous awards which includes The Southern Business Journal 2010 Leaders Among Us, ACEC 2015 Engineering excellence award, 2018 GMIS International Government to Citizens award. 2016 NAGW Pinnacle Finalist, Marion Main Street Downtown Business Award, and countless others. In his spare time, he loves mentoring to young adults on how to start their own business while encouraging them to be productive citizens.

Kenny Holmes became the leader of go-to-market strategy for Public Sector at Fortinet in March 2019. He was selected due to extensive industry experience, expertise in a wide range of technologies, and his proven sales execution and analytics background. An advocate and speaker for the Public Sector, he has been in Information Technology for more than twenty years and held more than ten technology certifications and positions spanning from Engineering to Sales Executive. He is an expert in cybersecurity with a background in cryptography. He has worked in the Federal Government, State Governments, Research Institutions, and Universities on some of the largest security projects in the world. Kenny currently resides in the Chicagoland area with his amazing wife and ten-year old daughter. He spends as much time as possible with them including taking them along whenever possible on his business travels.

Mr. Montgomery is a strategist and executive advisor at VMware. Chris helps public sector organizations align their mission objectives with a supporting IT Strategy that enables digital transformation. He is recognized in the industry as a cyber security expert and thought leader for organizational change management associated with technology modernization.

Beth Pruitt serves as the Chief Customer Officer at the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) developing, planning, and, managing the customer service experience for the over 65 Agencies, Boards, and Commission client agencies receiving IT services and support from DoIT. This includes Tier 1 & Tier 2 helpdesk and incident response, the ordering and deliver of IT equipment and services, end user desk side support for both basic computer function and software usage. Managing the ITSM tool and catalog of goods and service and the workflows to streamline delivery as well as developing both enterprise and agency level reporting to visualize the data surrounding service requests and incident response.
Coming to DoIT in 2015, Beth became the manager of Cyber Resiliency and Disaster Recovery team in the Information Security Division and is a Certified Business Continuity Planner through DRI International with over 25 years of IT experience, while focusing heavily on disaster recovery and incident response management with the last 4 years dedicated primarily to this effort. In this role she has been awarded the 2019 State Scoop 50 Up and Comer and the Business Impact Analysis Program lead by her team won a 2020 State Scoop 50 State IT Innovation of the Year award.
Beth started in State Government in 1996 as an intern with the Il Attorney General (AG). In that role her primary functions were to change the Mainframe (MF)reel to reel backup tapes, schedule and purge MF jobs, while also taking care of customer service requests (a.k.a. helpdesk and IT service technician). She also developed and conducted training classes for the AG user community on the basic functions of using their computers as well as the applications utilized to perform the missions of the various areas within the agency. She has been a part of and overseen several major projects from those MF days, including business analyst work, server builds/installs, and even the migration of the MF data to an Oracle database on a Novell networked client/server solution resulting in the retirement of that HP mainframe. Beth also played a major role in the migration from Novell & GroupWise to Microsoft and Exchange. She was a part of a team who was the recipient of the 2011 Laserfiche Run Smarter Award.

Mary Reynolds serves as the Education Group Chief Information Officer for the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology. In this role she facilitates services and communication with education agencies, and advocates on behalf of innovative STEAM initiatives that improve outcomes for students. For over 38 years, Mary has served in a variety of policy development roles in and around state government focused on issues related to youth, education, juvenile justice, and technology. Previously, Mary served for 12 years as an elected school board member of a small unit school district, and has been an active community volunteer. Her three adult children are all engaged in STEAM careers.

Hello, I am a 29+ year veteran IT guy at the State of Illinois Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT). Currently my role as Chief of Enterprise Infrastructure finds me working to support administrative oversight of the State's enterprise IT infrastructure services. I have served in several roles throughout my career with the State, much of that time in End User Computing and have a very strong background in Windows OS, SCCM, Active Directory and Group Policy Management. Recent years (about the last 24+ actually) have moved me away from the technical side of IT and into management and administration, procurement and personnel management, but I still like to dive in and stay abreast of current technology as much as time allows me to!

Omar Sandoval is the Director of Government Programs for the Center for Digital Government, a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. Prior to joining the Center, Omar was the Director of Information Technology for the Naperville Park District.
Omar has won numerous awards which include a Distinguished Services Award, by the Naperville Jaycees; Four Under 40 Achievement Award, presented by the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce which recognizes young who demonstrate excellence based on leadership in the community, business leadership, and career and life balance. Government Technology magazine honored Omar with awards for Technology Innovations in the Park District Operations and Citizens categories; Top 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers and a Leadership Innovation Award for his efforts in assisting his own organization and others to start eSports leagues during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Omar earned his Master of Science degree in Business Analytics with a concentration in Business Administration from Benedictine University. He currently serves as an adjunct professor at the College of DuPage in the Computer and Information Technology department.

Mike Scott is the State of Illinois’ inaugural Chief Information Accessibility Officer. Prior to taking on this new role, Mike had been promoting accessibility for Illinoisans with disabilities for more than twenty years. Mike started as a Rehabilitation Engineer, designing custom workplace accommodations, and, as the importance of information technology in the workplace grew, shifted his focus to information accessibility. Mike led some of Illinois’ key IT accessibility initiatives, including the development of the Illinois Web Accessibility Standards and the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA), and is looking forward to helping the State further improve the accessibility of its information for people with disabilities.

David Shames is a Virginia native, and current resident of Charlottesville. He works with public sector clients across the Commonwealth as a Senior Account Executive of the Data & Insights Division of Tyler Technologies. For the past 5 years David has worked with strategic State, City, and County IT teams throughout the East Coast (and the downstream agencies and departments they serve) to better manage, share, and gain insights from their data. While David's only experience working directly within the public sector was spent as a Peace Corps Volunteer after graduating from the University of Richmond, he has a deep respect for the responsibilities of the clients he serves. In his spare time David is an active member of the civic tech organization Code for Charlottesville which serves the central Virginia region in supporting the data and technology projects of area non-profits.

Lori Sorenson serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the Illinois Department of Innovation & Technology. In this role, she is responsible for delivering reliable, secure, customer centric IT solutions and serves as a policy advisor for broadband issues. Lori has more than 25 years of experience in IT. She earned her Master of Business Administration at the University of Illinois Springfield and a Bachelor of Science degree at Illinois State University.

Robert has over 30 years of experience covering a variety of disciplines within the cybersecurity field. His work has included security policy, information security program development, security project planning, information systems security administration, information systems response, systems resource and capacity planning, and data center security. Robert has served as an executive and a variety of leadership roles for domestic and global security operations across several business verticals. He has also engaged in domestic and international project management efforts, network architecture design, digital transformation and migration projects. Robert has assessed, organized and built cybersecurity programs and has significant consulting experience with insurance providers, banking, software development, high technology manufacturing, retail, and utilities. Robert’s experience also includes military service supporting critical missions as a leader in positions of national trust within the cybersecurity field. He holds a MS degree in Information Assurance from Norwich University.