Dr. Cedric Alexander has spent nearly four decades in search of a better way to police our nation. He’s the author of The New Guardians, and he has served as a law enforcement analyst on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN. In 2015 he was appointed to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. He has served at every level of government: as a Federal Security Director in the US Department of Homeland Security, as a Deputy Commissioner for Criminal Justice in New York State, as Public Safety Director in a major county, and as a City Chief of Police and Deputy Mayor.

Christian Barnes is a Kansas City resident and seven-year veteran of Fortinet. He has over 20 years of experience in the networking and information security space and works with C levels and strategists to apply integrated security to infrastructure and processes.

Taylor Bowen graduated with a degree in Geographic Information Science (GIS) from the University of North Alabama in the spring of 2013. Taylor has worked for the City of Columbia, MO, for the past five and a half years and has been the GIS manager since January 2018. This position is tasked with ensuring GIS-centric processes are implemented and GIS data is accurate and accessible to city staff. A major area of development in the past year is the push for transparency and open data for citizens, providing easy-to-use web maps and apps to access and download information.
Outside of work, Taylor enjoys kayaking, hiking and geocaching.

Mike Cheles is the State of Missouri CIO. An effective IT leader and innovator, Mike took on the state’s top IT role in October 2018. He leads a team of nearly 1,000 IT professionals in the Missouri Office of Administration’s award-winning Information Technology Services Division (ITSD). ITSD is the state’s consolidated IT organization, supporting the IT systems and services used by 14 executive departments and three statewide-elected officials in their daily operations.
An innovative and strategic IT leader, Mike comes to the State of Missouri with global experience delivering technology solutions as both a CIO and consultant. He has previously fulfilled major IT roles at companies with regional, national and global impact. In his decades of experience, he has worked extensively on IT challenges in which application portfolios had become dated, unsupportable or excessively redundant and required optimization. He also has experience quickly turning around IT organizations that were underperforming and experiencing structural issues affecting business operations.
Mike previously served in the CIO role for Gibson Guitar Corp., Hussmann Corp. in Bridgeton, MO, and MEMC Electronic Materials in St. Peters, MO. He was also the director of quality and enterprise projects at Centene Corporation, a St. Louis-based healthcare company serving millions of people across the U.S. and internationally.
Mike earned his bachelor’s degree in supply chain management from Michigan State University. He also earned his master’s degree in business administration with honors from Washington University in St. Louis.

Scott DeClue-Stewart is a native of St. Louis, MO, and chief information security officer of the Regional Justice Information Service (REJIS Commission). He has dedicated 20+ years to the offensive/defensive information security and governance space. He has assisted enterprise organizations and government entities with strategic advisory to build, develop, mature and optimize their InfoSec programs.

Jeff Elliott is the senior manager of enterprise data warehouse and reporting for the University of Missouri System. He is responsible for data warehousing, enterprise reporting and the enterprise budget and planning software, Hyperion. His teams support the UM System and four universities across the state of Missouri. He has been involved in the application of data for decisions for 25 years and involved in data management, data governance, electronic messaging and data exchange – first in public health and now in higher education – for over 18 years.
Prior to his IT roles in public health and higher education, he served in functional and leadership roles in public health communicable disease surveillance. He serves as the past chair for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) Standardization of Post-secondary Education Electronic Data Exchange (SPEEDE) Committee and represents AACRAO on the Post-secondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC) Change Control Board.

Aaron Erickson is responsible for State and Local Sales for Oracle’s North America Applications business. Prior to joining Oracle, Aaron Erickson was the director of the Ohio Shared Services Center where he led the start-up and rollout of the new operation. Prior to launching the Shared Services Center, Aaron served as deputy director for the State of Ohio’s Office of Budget and Management where he was a primary business owner for the State of Ohio’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project. Previously, Aaron held executive positions with Accenture and Deloitte, working on large transformational projects.

Gonz Roman is an IT business manager with many years of experience in IT, encompassing applications development, desktop management, network and server infrastructure management, BCP/DRP, IT security and IT personnel management. He hase worked in complex IT environments that included Windows Active Directory, Novell NDS and UNIX, with MS-SQL, Oracle, Informix and Sybase databases. More recent responsibilities have included IT management, LAN-WAN architecture and engineering, regulatory compliance, vulnerability management and information security governance.
Gonz received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Texas at Dallas with a major in Computer Science. He has taught several classes in Computer Networking and Information Systems Security at the Bachelors level. He is an active member of the St. Louis, MO, chapter of the Society for Information Management and a member of the planning committee for the Gateway to Innovation conference in St. Louis, MO.
In his free time, Gonz enjoys watching amateur/college soccer, promoting STEM among the youth and mentoring up and coming and transitioning IT professionals.

Mike Hoffey is a marketing leader, citizen services specialist and process improvement strategist. His private sector experience includes telecommunications, banking and automotive. In his current role at St. Louis County, Mike leads Gateway 311, an innovative new solution to improve county government. Gateway 311 supports the growing needs and demands of one million county citizens with a new inbound contact center, advanced technologies and better self-service options.

Mary-Sara Jones is a business development executive supporting Health and Human Services for IBM U.S. State and Local. Mary-Sara brings more than 20 years’ experience in Health and Human Services, transforming service delivery through the use of technology and providing direction to navigate policy and business challenges. Working across the U.S. and globally, she has assisted agencies to move beyond the boundaries of their organizations to provide a more holistic, person-centered approach to care while reducing costs and improving operations. Today, Mary-Sara focuses on leveraging integrated data and cross program collaboration to expand preventive approaches and address some of today’s most critical social challenges such as homelessness, substance use disorder, recidivism and child safety.

Daniele Loffreda is Senior Advisor, Healthcare State/Local Government and Education (SLED) in Ciena’s Market Development organization. In this role he leads Ciena’s initiatives to apply next generation hardware, software and services networking technologies to help these sectors deliver better services to their constituents through digital transformation, optimized cloud strategies, virtualized infrastructure and improved data security.
Daniele has more than 20 years of experience helping customers leverage Information, Communications and Technology solutions provide greater value, improve their operations and generate higher returns on network investments. He has been involved in smart city projects since 2014, he has been a speaker at smart city events, and has published a number of articles and blog posts on network connectivity as a critical foundation of smart cities.

Paula Peters came to work for the State of Missouri in 1995 and has devoted the past 23 years to excellence in information technology for the State of Missouri. She has a diverse background in project management, contract negotiation, technology planning, system procurements, legacy system modernization, business process re-design and program leadership. She has mainly worked in the areas of public health, mental health and social services leading large scale system modernizations and implementations. Paula was also instrumental in establishing and setting up the PMO for the State of Missouri. She has been the project director for the Missouri Eligibility Determination Enrollment System (MEDES) for the past three years, but has most recently accepted the position of director of the Enterprise Project Management Office for the State of Missouri.

Joey Plaggenberg currently oversees the day-to-day operations of the Motor Vehicle and Driver License Division with Department of Revenue. He previously served as administrator of the Driver License Bureau, and prior to that as general counsel and legislative coordinator for the division. Joey has been with the department for four and a half years and holds a juris doctorate and bachelor’s degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Missouri.

Gonz Roman is an IT business manager with many years of experience in IT, encompassing applications development, desktop management, network and server infrastructure management, BCP/DRP, IT security and IT personnel management. He hase worked in complex IT environments that included Windows Active Directory, Novell NDS and UNIX, with MS-SQL, Oracle, Informix and Sybase databases. More recent responsibilities have included IT management, LAN-WAN architecture and engineering, regulatory compliance, vulnerability management and information security governance.
Gonz received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Texas at Dallas with a major in Computer Science. He has taught several classes in Computer Networking and Information Systems Security at the Bachelors level. He is an active member of the St. Louis, MO, chapter of the Society for Information Management and a member of the planning committee for the Gateway to Innovation conference in St. Louis, MO.
In his free time, Gonz enjoys watching amateur/college soccer, promoting STEM among the youth and mentoring up and coming and transitioning IT professionals.

Dan Rose has worked for 20 years in the field of GIS, mostly in the realms of local government and utilities. He is currently the geospatial services supervisor at the City of Columbia, MO. Dan served on the Kansas Association of Mappers’ (KAM) Executive Board from 2008 to 2010, and as the organization-elected KAM president in 2011. He served as KAM’s Publication Committee chair from 2007 to 2013 and received KAM’s “Outstanding Kansas Mapping Project” award in 2008 and again in 2010, both for his work in utility GIS. He routinely presents at KAM’s annual conference and at the bi-annual Mid-America GIS Consortium Conferences. He also proudly taught GEOG 358 in the Fall of 2018 at KU, and currently serves as the chair of KU Geography and Atmospheric Science Alumni Board.
In addition to his regular career, Dan owns and operates his own GIS company, 360° GIS Consultants. In 2015, field and office data collection began with the City of Erie, KS, building their water, sewer and electric utility database, in addition to their cemetery records. The knowledge gained throughout the GPS collection and GIS editing processes has enabled him to expand into fiber-optic data applications and more. Since 2004, Dan has traveled to his high school in Erie, presenting on GIS Day to students and faculty, sometimes as many as four per day.
Dan, a native of Colorado, lives in Lawrence, KS with his wife Chelsea and their two children. As if there isn’t enough going on in their lives, they have Lawrence’s only local-owned, locally-operated mobile instructor-led painting studio, named “Painted Kanvas,” specializing in fundraisers and corporate/team building events.

As an application development supervisor, Kim Russell supports the Department of Revenue’s, Motor Vehicle and Driver’s License IT needs. She manages a high-performing team of developers that maintain more than 50 applications utilized by DOR and Missouri citizens. Responsibilities include project oversight, resource management, and delivery of IT solutions for DOR. Kim has a master’s degree in Business Administration, Bachelors in Computer Information Systems and Business Administration, is Missouri Project Management certified, Project Management Professional (PMP) certified and has been with the State of Missouri for 17 years.