Mohammed Al Rawi is the Chief Information Officer for the County of Los Angeles, Department of Parks and Recreation. He is in charge of leading the development, modernization, assessment and ongoing analysis of information technology, information security governance, data management and reporting systems. He provides vision and leadership in the development and the implementation of technology infrastructure supporting the department’s 2700 employee workforce. Prior to joining Parks and Recreation, he served at the Board of Supervisors, Second District, as Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’s Deputy for Technology and Innovation, where for six and a half years he provided oversight and policy analysis for Information Technology projects covering 37 county departments.
At the Board of Supervisors, Mr. Al Rawi established a countywide plan to modernize over one hundred mission-critical application systems that were built on obsolete and outdated platforms, later he led the effort to establish a consolidated, robust and cost efficient countywide data center. Starting in 2017, the new enterprise data center will consolidate most of the County’s current 47 data centers saving the County over $200 million in construction costs only, and much more in hardware, software and energy costs. Mr. Al Rawi, in coordination with the County Chief Information Security Officer, established Countywide IT security standards to protect health and sensitive data throughout county and third-party contractors’ facilities. Thirty-two county departments’ respective 88,392 desktop computers are now protected with the highest data security and encryption methods. Mr. Al Rawi, in coordination with County Chief Data Officer, made county’s wealth of data open to the public through the data.lacounty.gov portal in a historical shift for fostering innovation, transparency and accountability.
Prior to joining the County of Los Angeles, Mr. Al Rawi worked for eight years as the Technical Director for the Los Angeles Times' news bureau in Baghdad. In that capacity, Mr. Al Rawi oversaw Information Technology operations for dozens of journalists covering the Iraq war and its aftermath, under extremely difficult circumstances. In 2006, Mr. Al Rawi was awarded the Best Support Staff - Los Angeles Times Editorial Awards.
In addition to his passion for auto racing, Mr. Al Rawi is a computer scientist who enjoys coding and application development on his spare time.

Rick Bryant is the National Healthcare Architect for VERITAS. In this role, he leads initiatives within VERITAS to serve the healthcare information technology industry through technology excellence and process solutions. Rick brings over 20 years of industry experience, with roles spanning from Infrastructure Management to Chief Information Security Officer, where he was responsible for architecting and implementing EMR systems.
Prior to joining VERITAS, Rick served as the Healthcare Practice Manager and National Healthcare Architect for Symantec Corporation. Past positions include Chief Information Security Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital and Executive Manager of Infrastructure for M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. Rick developed and led the first Shared Services Organization for Hearst and Managed outsourced services for the global IT service provider, WiPro. In addition, he created and managed all client IT services for First Data Corporation.
Rick holds a degree from the University of Texas at Austin and is a certified in both Six Sigma Black Belt and ITIL.

Lauren Burnell serves as Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Engineering for PCM-G, where she is responsible for developing and directing government customer related end-to-end security programs and solutions to ensure that PCM-G addresses its customers’ challenges in a dynamic threat environment. She is a thought leader on IT supply chain security and is committed to enabling government mission through technology.
Prior to joining PCM-G, Ms. Burnell served as a U.S. Navy Cryptologic Warfare Officer specializing in cyberspace operations, signals intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare (EW) and data analytics. Over Ms. Burnell’s six-year commission in the U.S. Navy, she held numerous leadership roles supporting both Navy and National missions related to advanced tactics in cyber security and electromagnetic maneuver warfare (EMW). Ms. Burnell’s tours included time as a Cyber Lead at the National Security Agency, driving the Navy’s tactical response during its first named cyber security operation, and teaching information warfare curriculum to the Fleet.
Ms. Burnell holds a B.S. Political Science from the United States Naval Academy, as well as a M.A. Government in Politics from the University of Maryland.
Ms. Burnell’s certifications and personal decorations include FireEye, Cisco and Splunk engineer certifications, Certified Ethical Hacker, Security+, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (two awards), NSA/CSS Signals Intelligence Directorate Military Performer of the Quarter (Junior Officer category), and various industry technical certifications and military unit

Mark comes to CGI from ECS Team which joined the CGI family in May 2017. AT ECS, Mark created the Cloud Native Solutions team which partnered with Pivotal to deliver over 40 projects for Fortune 500 enterprises to implement Pivotal Cloud Foundry and to develop applications optimized for the PCF platform. At CGI, Mark will help expand this practice in commercial accounts and to help enable other business units pursuing cloud native application.

Jennifer Cheng is the Director of Solutions Marketing at Proofpoint. She is dedicated to helping organizations better safeguard their people and data from advanced attacks and mitigate compliance risks. She has over a decade of experience consulting and educating IT professionals on new technologies and industry trends. Prior to Proofpoint, Jennifer held strategic and technical roles at Cisco, Salesforce, and WatchDox (acquired by BlackBerry). Jennifer has a B.S. degree in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

John D. Conley is a Customer Success Director with Salesforce.com. In this role, he works with public sector enterprises on their business transformation projects and cloud adoption strategies. Prior to his role with Salesforce, John was the Executive Director of the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority (SIPA) where he focused on bringing cloud technologies to state and local government agencies. During his time with SIPA, he increased the number of governments served from 24 to 300 (1,150%) and increased revenue by $9.4 million in 5 years. This growth was possible by following two basic beliefs. One, governments need to modernize the way they operate and two, cloud technologies allow the best possible path forward for modernization. With these beliefs in mind, John negotiated contracts with Salesforce, Google, NIC, Inc, Verizon, Genesys, and others to bring cloud technologies to Colorado. Before joining SIPA, John served as the Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Colorado Governor’s Office. As Deputy CIO, he was responsible for large infrastructure projects, operations and policy, statewide broadband efforts, and the centralization of over 900 IT staff into one organization. John assisted in the re-procurement of the Colorado Multi-Use Network which is a public/private partnership enabling a high-speed fiber optic network across the State of Colorado.

Amanda Daflos serves as the Director of the Innovation Team in the Mayor's Office of Budget and Innovation in the City of Los Angeles. Her team works on key mayoral priorities and collaborates across the City to define pathways to improvement. The first project to be tackled by the Los Angeles i-team will be to explore innovative, collaborative ways to spur neighborhood revitalization to improve the lives of existing residents and minimize displacement of long-time residents and local businesses.
Amanda previously worked as a Senior Manager at Deloitte Consulting, and has spent the last decade leading major federal, state and local government projects in the US and abroad. Her work focused on business process and organizational innovation and redesign, cost savings, change management and IT transformation and resulted in agencies winning awards such as the 2009 Social Innovation Spotlight Award from Governor Schwarzenegger and the 2014 National Association of Counties (NACo) Recognition Award.
Prior to joining Deloitte, Daflos spent over four years working as the Director of Programs for an international non-profit organization where she was responsible for programming and operations in the US, Tanzania, Peru and Nepal. She cofounded an event in Nepal which benefited organizations in Nepal. She also directed the fundraising for and managed the building of a school she founded in Nepal, which was completed in 2013. Daflos presently serves in support of the Los Angeles Honorary Consulate General to Nepal, an advisory role she accepted in the wake of the 2015 earthquake. Daflos holds a Masters of Public Administration from the University of Colorado and a BA from Hamilton College. She is a 2014 graduate of the Leadership Tomorrow program in Seattle and lives in Los Angeles.

Lea Deesing serves as the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Riverside, California where she manages a team of 60 very talented Information Technology Professionals. She also serves as the Executive Director of SmartRiverside, a nonprofit which aims to narrow the digital divide in her region by empowerment through education and technology.
Lea’s professional experience includes 30 years in the Information Technology field with 20 years specific to local government. She holds a Master of Public Administration degree from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems degree from the University of Redlands. Lea also holds a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
Lea belongs to a number of professional organizations and advisory boards and has received national recognition for her articles and speeches on career advice, social media, cybersecurity, project management, and technology use within government.
Prior to moving into her executive leadership role, Lea’s background was in computer programming. Her love for programming originated from her fascination with codes and ciphers, known as cryptology. She cracked the Tiger Beat Magazine’s fan club secret code when she was just nine years old. When she was sixteen, Lea started programming computers. Lea regularly speaks to young students, hoping her story will inspire them to become interested in the computer science field.
(For more information, visit www.linkedin.com/in/leadeesing/.)

Shmel Graham is a native of Los Angeles and a licensed California attorney with extensive experience driving complex infrastructure investments and strategic largescale projects in fastpaced, matrixed environments. Currently, Shmel serves as the Director of Mayor Eric Garcetti's Operations Innovation Team which is charged with leading the citywide effort to drive longterm sustainable reform in procurement, workers compensation and real estate asset management. Prior to joining the Operations Innovation Team, Shmel served in the Mayor's Office of Public Safety implementing regional technology infrastructure projects that support public safety operations.
Shmel has been a featured speaker on driving innovation in operations in local government, best practices for leveraging public-private partnerships as well as optimizing publicly-owned land to support civic and economic development initiatives.
She is an alumna of the University of Michigan, earned her Juris Doctorate from Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis and completed the Los Angeles African American Women’s Public Policy Institute (LAAAWPPI). She serves as a member of the ULI-LA Advisory Board and a board of director for the REAP Program and the Los Angeles County Parks Foundation.

Jan is an IBM Distinguished Engineer and technical director for the State of California. He works with government clients primarily in California but come from a long pedigree of government projects in Northern Europe, particularly the Scandinavian countries. He regularly consults with government agencies around the world within areas such as Government as a Platform, Scaled Agile Orchestration, Cloud and Digitization of Government Services. He is presently working on two IBM Academy of Technology research projects on how public agencies can forge more seamless cooperation under various security controls and forms of governance and how governments can harness the API Economy through "liberated" citizen services.

With over 20 years of Information Technology (IT) experience, Jeramy Gray has served as Chief Information Officer for three Los Angeles County agencies. On February 14th, 2017 Jeramy was appointed by the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors as Assistant Executive Officer of Technology and Planning. In this position Jeramy oversees technology services and project planning for the County’s five elected Board Offices, County Commissions, Advisory Bodies and various administrative operations within the Executive Office. Additionally, Jeramy is responsible for advising the Board on Countywide information technology standards, policy, and processes.

Jeffrey Huang is the Director of the Laserfiche Consulting Services Division at Laserfiche, a global enterprise content management (ECM) software company. Jeff currently leads a team of project managers and engineers across the U.S. that deploys some of the largest and most complex content management solutions. Jeffrey has over 18 years of experience in the ECM industry and has previously held roles as an engineer, project manager and IT manager.

As vice president and chief Information security officer of Xerox Corporation, Dr. Alissa Johnson is responsible for protecting the information assets of the $11 billion technology leader. In her role, she established, and currently leads, a corporate-wide information risk management program. She identifies, evaluates and reports on information security practices, controls, and risks in order to comply with regulatory requirements and to align with the risk posture of the enterprise.
Prior to Xerox, Dr. Johnson served as the first chief information security officer at Stryker Corporation, a multi-billion dollar medical technology company. At Stryker, she oversaw global activities related to information security. She also established the standards and governance around information security issues related to products. She managed all security transformation initiatives and worked closely with business leaders and heads of regional infrastructure to ensure security policy and strategy was implemented consistently.
Dr. Johnson spent three years as deputy chief information officer of the White House. Beginning in March 2012, she helped to modernize the Executive Office of the President's IT systems, with cloud services and virtualization. She employed new cybersecurity strategies, and enhanced technology across the office of the President while serving as chair on multiple boards.
Previously, she served as associate vice president for the Enterprise Solutions Division at Catapult Technology, and as a deputy chief technology officer at Lockheed Martin Corporation. She began her career with the Department of Defense as a cryptologic mathematician.
Dr. Johnson holds a PhD in Information Technology Management from Capella University; a master’s degree in Telecommunications and Computer Networks from The George Washington University; and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Savannah State University.

Mark Kroncke co-founded his third company, Invoke Technologies, an Electronic Payment Systems advisory company 11 years ago. Mark has been a respected consultant and technical advisor in the Fare Collection industry for over 20 years. He was instrumental in the inception and development of an exciting new technology revolution of the existing smart-card TAP program and is currently assisting LA Metro with the implementation. In the Bay Area he works closely with Executive Management in an advisory role providing strategic vision, analysis, and recommendations for their Electronic Payment visions.
In both locales, he provides new technology integration support for today’s buzz-word-tech like “Mobility as a Service”. He sits on the Board of two external companies, has been a speaker at several technology conferences, and is a member of the Smart Technologies Alliance.

Tony is Senior Security Specialist for Akamai Technologies. With over 15 years of Information Security industry experience Tony works with Akamai public sector and federal clients to provide security guidance, architectural analysis and web application security expertise. Tony has worked and consulted in many verticals including finance, medical/healthcare, enterprise, and mobile applications. He is currently responsible for supporting public sector clients as well the training of an Akamai internal group whose focus is on Web Application Security disciplines. Tony’s previous responsibilities include leading the Enterprise Security Architect team at Akamai, managing security operations for a mobile payments company, and overseeing security and compliance responsibilities for a global financial software services organization. When he is not working with Akamai clients or traveling, Tony can be found spending time with his wife and children in Dallas, TX.

Timothy Lee is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at the City of Los Angeles. He is responsible for overall cybersecurity policies and initiatives for America’s second largest city. One of those initiatives is the City’s first Integrated Security Operations Center (ISOC), which won several awards including Center for Digital Government’s Cybersecurity Leadership and Innovation Award. His work affects all 40 City of Los Angeles departments. Prior to his current position, Lee was the CISO at the Port of Los Angeles where he established the Port’s cybersecurity program and was the project manager for the Cyber Security Operations Center (CSOC), which won the American Association of Port Authorities IT Award of Excellence. He has a total of 20 years of experience in information security, network and telecommunication field. Tim is a recipient of the 2016 StateScoop 50 Award in the category of State Leadership and has spoken at several conferences.

Hunter Owens helps facilitate the City’s Data Science Federation, which has worked on such issues as projecting which Angelenos’ are most at risk of homeless, determining which properties are most at risk of Ellis Act removal and displacement, and how to measure the impact of Vision Zero interventions. His prior talk, “Towards a Taxonomy of Government Data”, advances a framework for understand how bias introduces itself into data practice. Prior to joining the City, he oversaw the development of RutgersReady at KIPP NJ, a program that used predictive analytics to help increase college completion among disadvantaged students at New Jersey’s largest charter school operator.

Thomas Phelps is the VP of Corporate Strategy & CIO for Laserfiche, a global enterprise content management (ECM) software company. Thomas leads IT, vertical marketing, analyst relations and major corporate initiatives. He is part of the executive team that launched Laserfiche Cloud in 2015. Previously, Thomas was PwC’s national entertainment and media champion for cybersecurity. He has extensive experience leading complex IT programs for the private and public sector. He is an instructor for the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) course covering IT governance and project delivery.
Along with speaking at the Harvard IT Summit, Thomas has lectured at USC and CSU-Long Beach on security, data analytics and marketing. He is on the Executive Board for UCLA IS Associates and serves as the Co-President of Ascend Los Angeles. He has contributed to five books and been quoted in Business News Daily, CBS Pulse, CIO Review, LA Times, TechTarget and others.

Mr. Swisher is the Global Practice Lead at CenturyLink for the Smart Solutions Portfolio. In this capacity, he drives pre-sales through delivery activities for CenturyLink's SmartCity and SmartVenue projects. Mr. Swisher has extensive knowledge of the technology market for these solutions and consults with customers on topics such as technology and vendor selection, solution architecture and implementation roadmaps.
Prior to joining CenturyLink, Mr. Swisher held several consulting industry leadership positions serving public and private sector clients. The most notable of these positions is was a 17-year tenure with Accenture in their Federal/State Government and Communications practices.

Rachael leads the Cloud Solution Engineering specialist and the Enterprise Cloud Architect groups at Oracle. She is passionate about technology innovations that reshape the government and higher education institutions, and has extensive consulting and solution engineering background in cloud architecture, integration, mobile and IoT technologies. Rachael holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computing Science from University of Central Oklahoma and an Executive MBA from Southern Methodist University.

Allen is a leader within AT&T University’s Leadership Development team.
Formerly of DIRECTV, Allen works and resides in Los Angeles, CA. At DIRECTV, Allen was a Sr. Manager for Leadership Development owning learning and development strategy and technology, overall curriculum design, change leadership, coaching, and organizational development support for Engineering, IT, and Latin America.
Since transitioning to AT&T University, Allen has been driving a human-centered design approach to designing and delivering various employee-focused experiences. He has led project teams for reimagining performance development, executive leadership programs, and university partnerships for transformational learning.
Allen is also a performance coach and design consultant with advanced degrees in Education, Sport Psychology, and Human Performance. Prior to DIRECTV, Allen worked around the globe for Target with HR and LD roles in retail stores, and contact centers.