Zarina has 25 years of IT leadership experience that spans across both private and public sectors. She has been with Minnesota IT Services partnering with MMB since June 2018 where she led implementations of SWIFT (the state’s finance and procurement system) and portal system upgrades. Zarina Baber will join the MNIT leadership team as the Assistant Commissioner of Project Portfolio Management, in addition to serving as CBTO for the Governor's Office. Baber previously served a dual role as the Deputy CBTO for Minnesota Management and Budget and CBTO for the Governor’s Office.
Prior to MNIT, Zarina’s experience included major program execution, establishing and leading Project Management Offices (PMO), and implementing portfolio management practices. As the Director of the Enterprise PMO at Ameriprise Financial Services, Zarina led the transformation of technology’s annual planning process to a rolling monthly portfolio management process. She has extensive experience implementing a $175 million electronic health record initiative at Fairview Health Services, and stood up the PMO at Target Corporation. Zarina’s public sector experience includes several years at Hennepin County Medical Center, where among other things she developed and introduced the Information Management Life Cycle. She also led the implementation of a service integration initiative across nine divisions—the data sharing project included business process redesign and cross-divisional systems integration.
Outside of work, Zarina is a recognized leader in the state for some of her ground-breaking work for multiple causes. She was a recipient of the Annual Asian Pacific Leadership Award in 2001, and the recipient of AARP and Pollen’s 2017 50 Over 50 leadership award in the Disruptors category, an annual award that highlights the 50 most inspiring and accomplished leaders across Minnesota. Zarina has served on several boards including Advocates for Human Rights, an internationally renowned human rights organization.
Zarina holds a BS in MIS from Carlson School of Management, U of M; MS in Technology Management from the School of Engineering, University of St. Thomas and a Master Certificate in Healthcare Leadership with Focus on Organizational Change Management from Cornell University. In addition, Zarina is a certified Project Management Professional and a Certified Scrum Master.

Phil Bertolini 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. 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.

As the Minneapolis CIO for seven-plus years, Otto Doll was responsible for all city IT services. He also served as South Dakota’s CIO for 15 years with responsibility for all state government computing, telecommunications, radio and public broadcasting. While with IT research firms, Otto has advised Fortune 1000, federal, state and local government CIOs on information technology assessment and alignment to business needs. He has served as a director with the United States General Services Administration, developing information technology strategic plans and oversight policy.
Otto received his computer science degree from Virginia Tech and is a senior executive fellow of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is a past president of NASCIO – a national organization of state CIOs. He also is a past president of the Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) – a national organization of city and county CIOs. Otto was named to Government Technology's 2004 Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers.

Jon Eichten serves as MNIT’s Deputy Commissioner. In his role, Jon oversees state agency business partner and governmental relations and ensures overall operational alignment with MNIT’s mission, vision, and values.
Jon previously held the position of Legislative Director, where he oversaw MNIT policy and budget proposal development, legislative affairs, and special projects.
Prior to joining MNIT, Eichten worked for the Minnesota Senate. He received his degree in Political Science from Carleton College.

Tommy Gardner is HP’s Chief Technology Officer for HP Federal, spanning the US Federal Agencies, Higher Education, K-12 Education, State and Local government customer segments, as well as Federal Systems Integrators. His current responsibilities include technology leadership, strategic technology plans, product and technology strategies, sales force technical support, and customer and partner relationships.
Previously, Tommy has served as the Chief Technology Officer for Jacobs Engineering, Scitor, and ManTech. Earlier in his career he was a senior technical executive at Raytheon. In the U.S. Navy he served as the Deputy for Science and Technology for the Chief of Naval Research. He oversaw the Navy’s Deep Submergence Program as well as its Advanced Technology Program. He also commanded the nuclear submarine, USS San Juan (SSN 751).
Tommy’s educational background covers multiple disciplines and fields of interest including: cybersecurity, data science, blockchain, quantum information science, artificial intelligence, high performance computing and systems integration.
Tommy holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, an M.S. in Management of Technology from MIT and a Ph. D. in Energy Economics from George Washington University. He is a Professional Engineer, an ASME Fellow, and serves on the ASME Board of Governors, the ANSI Board of Directors and the U. S. Council on Competitiveness as the Co-chair of the Advanced Computer Roundtable.

Maryam has been an IBM Consultant for over 8 years with extensive experience in developing strategic plans for US state and local public health agencies. She is deeply committed to achieving and evolving the vision of social service programs as well as as other government programs through the use of AI and automation technologies and services. Maryam has extensive experience in developing policy, process, and methods for public health initiatives including epidemiological responses and Medicaid claims and implementations. Her unwavering passion stems from a belief of equity, including the right of every individual to adequate health care and quality education.

Keith Glose is an Account Director at Ciena covering the Western US. In his role, Keith is focused on supporting our State Government customers, helping them achieve their business objectives and improving their networks and communities. Keith has been a sales leader for over 30 years dedicated to maintaining strong relationships and customer satisfaction.

Lamarr Justice recently joined Automation Anywhere after spending several years managing strategy and execution for SAP Procurement in North America and helping Amazon Business build out their pre-sales organization. Lamarr has been in the technology industry for 25 years, with strategic roles in management, sales, and organizational strategy. His passion is helping organizations solve critical challenges by leveraging cloud/service-based solutions. Lamarr is a self-proclaimed “Jock-Nerd” because he has always loved both technology and sports. He played Division 1 basketball and ran track while attending the University of Notre Dame – Go Irish! Lamar still volunteers as a coach and lives in the west suburbs of Chicago with his wife and their 2 children.

Sharon R. Martin is a Systems Engineering Director for Public Sector West business. With 18 years of engineering experience at Cisco, a foundation in software development from Oracle, and IT operations experience from San Jose State IT dept, Sharon brings a unique and deep working knowledge of reimagining applications, empowering teams, transforming infrastructure, and securing the enterprise. She is known for her optimistic, innovative leadership style, ability to accelerate strategy from concept to execution, success at building highly motivated diverse teams, and commitment to excellence. Sharon also remains active in her community, serving as a leader for the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation, Larkin Street Homeless Youth foundation of San Francisco, The Homeless Prenatal program of San Francisco and Tutormate, an online corporate volunteer program that helps thousands of young people learn how to read

David McCurdy is an Executive Government Advisor at Amazon Web Services (AWS) guiding state and local government executives through strategy, policy and governance challenges to help accelerate their cloud journey. David brings 20 years of experience transforming technology across government, healthcare and telecommunications industries. Previously, David spent five years as CTO at the State of Colorado leading digital transformation and 10 years at Catholic Health Initiatives leading technology transformation.

Matt is the Director of Information Technology Solutions at Olmsted County. His work includes growing leaders in the department, helping county departments modernize their services, and connecting citizens to county services through technology.

Bryan Schneider is a Director in the Fortinet Capture Team. His expertise includes 20+ years of experience in Public Sector advanced solutions business development for a range of Wireless carriers, including leading strategic initiatives such as Mobile Security, Endpoint protection, Digital Transformation, Mobile Forms, LBS, Interoperability, IOT and OT, covering SLED, K12 and Federal Agencies. Bryan also brings domain expertise into Public Safety, Next Generation 911, FirstNet, Telco/ISP, CJIS, Remote WFH solutions, and Federal ZTA initiatives.

Sarjoo is a business and information technology (IT) leader with many 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 Oklahoma, to Deloitte and most recently as Program Managing Director at SAIC. 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 holds the position of Industry Executive Director, State and Local Government focusing on developing our strategy for Health and Human Services (HHS) transformation using Oracle Cloud.

Rohit has 15 years of experience in the Information Security industry, He started in the field at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota with a focus on building secure electronic health record systems and championed medical device security.
Before Rohit joined MNIT's efforts as Deputy CISO to protect fellow Minnesotans' data, he served as the Information Security Leader at Strategic Education, Inc. where he assisted in the merger of Capella Education Company and Strayer Education, Inc. His work for the combined post-merger organization included forming the central Information Security department.
Rohit received a Bachelors degree from Winona State University and an MBA from University of Minnesota.
Rohit's vision as Chief Information Security Officer is that Information Security must guide risk decisions in a faster and less burdensome manner. Speed and agility are now expected from MNIT, and our partners expect us to be responsive and nimble. To scale for the size of state government, we must enable decision-makers to move at their own pace without losing sight of cyber risk as they balance trade-offs. Rohit sees this as an opportunity to build relationships that will let us advise and empower decision-makers, and build trust so we are all prepared for the unforeseen cyber challenges of tomorrow.