John Paul Farmer is the Chief Technology Officer of the City of New York. As NYC CTO, he leads a diverse team in delivering technology policy, programs, and products to better serve New Yorkers and build a more future-ready city. John is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Previously, John was Managing Director of Microsoft Cities, based in New York. There, he led a cross-functional team to build partnerships and co-design technology products that make communities more livable, more vibrant, and more equitable. As the Founder & CEO of The Innovation Project, John spread innovation best practices worldwide. His work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, WIRED, the Washington Post, TechCrunch, and the Harvard Business Review. John served as the Senior Advisor for Innovation at the White House under President Barack Obama, where he co-founded and led the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to attract top private sector change-makers for focused tours of duty in government. Prior to the U.S. government, John built new business units in the private sector. He played professional baseball in the minor league systems of the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles Dodgers. John is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds an M.B.A. with honors from the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University and an A.B. with honors from Harvard University.

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.

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.

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.

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).

Prior to Governor Kelly’s appointment as Secretary of Administration, Dr. DeAngela Burns-Wallace served as the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Studies at the University of Kansas. Dr. Burns-Wallace started her career as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) with the U.S. Department of State. Dr. Burns-Wallace has been selected for various leadership opportunities, awards and honors throughout her higher ed and government career, including the 2018 White House Champions of Change College Opportunity, and earning a Superior Honor and three Meritorious Honor awards from the U.S. State Department. Dr. Burns-Wallace serves as a national trainer and curriculum developer for various national professional development organizations, non-profits, and higher ed institutions on issues ranging including micro-aggressions, multigenerational workplace differences, diversity and inclusion, change management, professional development pathways, and strategic planning. Service is also a cornerstone of her journey. Dr. Burns-Wallace currently serves on Stanford University’s Board of Governors, and has previously held board roles in numerous local, regional, and national organizations, and international selection committees including Gates Millennium Scholars, Dell Foundation Scholars, and Rhodes, Marshall, and Fulbright fellowships. Dr. Burns-Wallace holds a dual bachelor’s degree in International Relations and African American studies from Stanford University, a Master in Public Affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania.

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.

Roger Grimes is a 30-year computer security consultant, instructor, holder of dozens of computer certifications and an award-winning author of 10 books and over 1,000 magazine articles on computer security. He has worked at some of the world’s largest computer security companies, including Foundstone, McAfee and Microsoft. Grimes holds a bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University. He was the weekly security columnist for InfoWorld and CSO magazines from 2005-2019.

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/

Patti Bayross joined NYCHA as Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President in May 2020. Patti comes to NYCHA with more than 27 years of information technology experience in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors.
Most recently, she was Chief Customer Officer/Deputy Commissioner of Customer Experience Management for the City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT). In this role, she helped establish DoITT’s first department dedicated to customer engagement and the customer experience, centralized customer communications, modernized the service desk, and launched new digital tools to enhance the customer experience.
Prior to DoITT, Patti served as the Chief Information Officer/Assistant Commissioner of MIS for the City’s Administration for Children’s Services where she led a department of more than 175 IT professionals and managed the agency’s $45 million IT budget.

Anthony is the Cyber Threat Intelligence Lead for New York City Cyber Command. The Cyber Threat Intelligence team provides valuable, timely, and actionable threat intelligence across New York City's Agencies to further the mission of cyber defense and response.
Anthony brings to this role a wealth of knowledge from his 7+ years of experience defending City infrastructure in various roles prior to the creation of NYC Cyber Command.

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.

Shonte Eldridge currently serves as an Executive Government Advisor with Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this role she is responsible for engaging State and Local Government leaders to build cloud frameworks that reduce cost, improve service delivery, change customer experience and transform the enterprise into a modern, inclusive, equitable and innovative enterprise. Prior to joining AWS, Ms. Eldridge worked in the public sector for over 20 years and held various C-suite positions including the Deputy Chief of Operations for the City of Baltimore, Chief of Policy, Planning and External Affairs for the Office of the States Attorney for Baltimore City and Chief of Policy for Maryland’s Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention. During her time in government she was known for using technology to solve some of the largest operational and social challenges her state and local governments faced, as well as changing the culture to more readily accept and try new technologies. Ms. Eldridge’s work in the industry has appeared in numerous national publications and is often called upon to speak and conduct workshops on the importance of creating holistic digital transformation strategies and how to implement technology that improves operations and delivers a better customer experience.

Jon Goodwin is the Director of US Public Sector & Education at Mimecast. Jon has built a career in the Public Sector, from the early days of US Air Force active duty, to key IT industry leadership roles with RSA and McAfee, and now Mimecast. Jon is peculiarly focused on enabling Public Sector customers to achieve cyber resilience, business continuity and security awareness. Building key relationships across the spectrum of Public Sector industry leaders will play a vital role in Mimecast securing ownership of this critical market space.

Kelly Jin is Chief Analytics Officer for the City of New York and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics. Kelly brings diverse analytics experience in both the public service and the private sector to the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, where she leads a team of data scientists, policy advisors, and program managers to deliver insights for a more equitable and efficient New York City.
Prior to the Chief Analytics Officer role, she served as Director at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, where she scouted data-driven investments to support effective state and local government policy making and operations priorities. Before the Foundation, Kelly worked in White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during President Obama’s Administration as a policy advisor to the U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Chief Data Officer. Kelly also built and co-led the City of Boston’s analytics team. Her earlier career included advisory roles in the White House Domestic Policy Council, U.S. General Services Administration, and as a management consultant assisting governments in strategic planning, process improvement, and change management.
Kelly speaks nationally on using data and technology to responsibly improve governments and organizations. Her teams and projects have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, New York Times, PBS, and Wired. Kelly holds a degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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.

Ryan has 25 Years of IT and Cloud Experience with leading tech companies Cisco, Presidio, IGNW and CDW. He is experienced in leading both regional and national teams. In his current position, Ryan works with Enterprise Clients on the East Coast to successfully adopt modern cloud patterns and practices. Additionally, Ryan and the team are enabling CDW to accelerate Cloud market share through the creation of automation, multi cloud, application modernization and DataOps solutions.

Jeffrey Minnier is the Chief Information Officer of NYC’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) which is responsible for protecting the safety and promoting the well-being of New York City’s children and strengthening their families by providing child welfare, juvenile justice, child care and early education services
Jeffrey has more than 20 years’ experience in Information Technology and Operations. Prior to joining ACS in 2013, Jeffrey was a Program Manager with Science Applications International Corporation, Director of Operations for Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 and 2005, Director of Project Implementation and CIO at NYC’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services, Director of Operation for NYC Host Committee for the 2004 Republican National Convention, Director of Information Systems at NYC’s Office of the Mayor and Manager of Server Systems at Bloomberg LP.

Mr. Montgomery is a Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer at Dell Technologies. Chris helps public sector organizations align their business objectives with a supporting IT Strategy that enables digital transformation.
Chris is a well-respected advisor, having held CIO, CTO and CISO positions within NYC and NJ government. As former CTO, Chris has developed cloud migration strategies and implemented multiple cloud solutions using in public, private, and hybrid architectures. Chris holds multiple security and risk management certifications, and as a former CISO, he built information security and risk management programs from the ground up in highly regulated environments. During his tenure in NYC Government, Chris led multiple smart city and digital transformation projects modernizing legacy technology, having a positive impact with the way that citizens and businesses interact with City government.
He is recognized in the industry as a thought leader for organizational change management associated with technology modernization.

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.

Destah is a technology and innovation enthusiast with a career built around driving business disruption, customer advocacy and connecting good ideas and good people. A veteran of several of the smallest Silicon Valley Startups as well as some of the biggest behemoths, he has picked up enough knowledge and information to be relatively dangerous. From his humble beginnings as an Electrical Engineer he has touched the data networking, wireless data, and machine learning technologies as a customer facing evangelist and problem solver.
When using his powers for good, he is identifying emerging technologies and finding synergistic solutions for customers and professional colleagues. The latest shiny objects to have caught his fancy are XR (mixed reality), Cybersecurity, and IoT/Smart City technologies.

Nitin Patel is the Deputy Commissioner of Information Technology and DCAS’s Chief Information Officer. In that role, he is responsible for providing technological guidance for the agency and for establishing and directing the strategic and tactical goals, policies, and procedures for the information technology department. He collaborates with the agency's Commissioner and consults with all Lines of Services to present new approaches and discuss system changes.
Prior to joining DCAS, Patel worked at New York City’s Financial Information Services Agency (FISA) implementing Citywide Human Resources, payroll, and timekeeping systems. Previously, he worked in the consulting, media, and healthcare industries and has more than 22 years of experience working as an IT executive linking business strategies and technology solutions.
Patel has an electrical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology.

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.

Rahul has worked with organizations around the globe to lead innovations in technology strategy, digital transformation, and product management. He has more than 20 years’ experience spanning the public sector, health care, and media. As the former Chief Software Architect for the City of New York’s Health and Human Services, Puri architected and implemented systems that helped redefine the use of technology and data in health and human services agencies in New York City. During his time in Northrop Grumman as a lead architect, Puri led the effort to build a Fraud Waste and Abuse platform and team to win the FPS 2.0 contract at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. More recently, Puri was responsible for the architecture, buildout, and operations of Magine’s global platform while he was CTO. As Chief Product Officer, Puri is responsible for ensuring that GCOM's product portfolio meets customer and market demands.

Cordell Schachter leads New York City Department of Transportation’s IT & Telecom organization which innovates IT services in mobility, software development, mapping, communications, on-site and cloud infrastructure, project management, public data, and customer support. IT & Telecom has received multiple awards for excellence and has appeared in multiple periodicals including the Drucker Institute’s Monday* e-magazine about taming big data.
NYC DOT embraces technology of all kinds to achieve its goal of Vision Zero: eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries. IT & Telecom partners with all DOT divisions to work Safer, Faster, Smarter, and Cheaper.
Schachter has over 20 years of experience in New York City government and private sector technology management. He is certified as a Project Management Professional-PMP by the Project Management Institute-PMI and is an IBM Senior Certified Professional in project management. He holds an MS in Management from NYU's Wagner School of Public Service and a BA in Economics from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He serves on the board of directors of the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, is an adjunct associate professor at NYU’s Center for Urban Science + Progress, and lectures at Saint Peter's University Master of Public Administration program.

Rick Smith is a 15 year veteran of Hitachi Vantara, currently the CTO for the eastern region of the country. Rick has traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe helping our customers in their Digital Transformation journey. In his tenue at Hitachi, Rick has had a wide variety of both Corporate and customer-facing roles including: Product Management, New Product Introduction & Marketing, Executive Briefing Speaker, National Pre-Sales resource, Business Application Sales Specialist, and A member of our Field CTO office
Rick has provided a critical interface between our development labs, emerging technology, and our customers to help them understand our solutions and better leverage our entire portfolio. He currently divides his time between the teams developing Hitachi Vantara emerging solutions and our customers to help them modernize their environments as they transition from a Mode 1 to Mode 2 landscape. These projects involve a variety of solutions that include flexible hybrid Cloud technologies, Data Lakes, advanced analytics and the incorporation of IOT.
Prior to joining Hitachi Vantara, Rick spent 23 years at Hewlett Packard in a career that included field engineering, sales, pre-sales consultancy, Regional CTO (Americas), various R&D lab director roles and managing the Advanced Storage Technology Group.
Rick holds a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the College of New Jersey. His hobbies include high-tech gadgets, weekends on the bay and enjoying his free time with family and friends. Rick lives in Cream Ridge, NJ with his wife Kathleen and children Molly and Colin.

Jess Ward is the Area Vice President for Mist Systems, a Juniper Networks company. With over 15 years of experience in the Wireless, Security, Cloud, and Networking industries, Jess has a passion for bringing new and innovative technologies to market. Jess currently runs the Mist strategy for the Eastern half of the United Sales, leading a team of 10 regions. His specialties include Cloud Networking, Artificial Intelligence, 802.11 Wireless and Security, BYOD, IoT, Information Security, and has also held CISSP and CIFI certifications. Jess graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology and is based in Atlanta, GA.

Tom Yeatts is an experienced IT executive with a proven track record of delivering results. Before joining ServiceNow as SLED CTO, Tom served as deputy CIO for Howard County, MD. His responsibilities included designing the architecture and delivering IT projects in support of the county’s vision to connect its citizens and workforce on a secure and stable environment. Tom graduated from Virginia Tech and resides in Maryland.