As Senior Director of Innovative Technology, Jo Ana Alvarado leverages over 40 years of experience to drive organizational innovation. She manages IT operations, cybersecurity, and project management for 20 departments and 500 employees, while leading Opportunity Home's digital transformation and AI integration.
A digital inclusion advocate, she led her team to a third-place national win in a Mozilla/NSF challenge for a solar-powered Wi-Fi solution for public housing. During the pandemic, she expanded Wi-Fi to 74 communities. Her leadership has earned multiple NAHRO Awards of Merit and two National Awards of Excellence for cybersecurity and AI education. Jo Ana fosters a collaborative culture centered on professional development and high-impact solutions.

Joyce is a problem solver with an innate ability to bring ideas to life with special focus on improving communities and organizations both big and small. Her background in Energy, Smart Cities, Telecommunications, and Internet of Things (IoT) markets coupled with her entrepreneurial spirit and expertise with startups to enterprise-level companies are assets to any project she touches. Joyce thrives when discussing and developing solutions for emerging technologies and studying their impacts on communities and businesses. She currently serves as the Strategic Operations & Development Manager for Team b. Strategy +, a strategic advising and communications firm specializing in Energy, Defense, and Cybersecurity.

Brandon Crawford is a Senior Account Executive at Equinix with over 15 years of experience advising commercial and public sector organizations on IT and infrastructure modernization. He specializes in data center and interconnection strategy, helping agencies build the high-performance, secure, and scalable environments required to support AI workloads.
Brandon partners with executive and technical leaders to address the growing demands of AI infrastructure—including power, proximity to data, latency, and hybrid cloud integration. He focuses on enabling practical AI adoption by aligning existing infrastructure investments with emerging compute and data requirements.
With certifications from Cisco, AWS, and CompTIA, Brandon brings a pragmatic, outcomes-driven perspective on how digital infrastructure underpins successful AI deployment. A graduate of Truman State University, he is based in San Antonio and supports organizations across the SLED landscape.

Brian Dillard is currently the Vice President of Innovation & Technology at VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority. He began his career in public service in 2018 as the Chief Innovation Office for the City of San Antonio. Prior to joining the local public sector, Brian was a Cybersecurity consultant in the private sector working with Shell Oil, Chevron Oil, Lockheed Martin, and Delta Risk Inc. Brian began his career as a member of the United States Air Force where he served ten-years Active Duty as a Cybersecurity Operations Specialist
Brian holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science, and a Masters in Public Administration from UTSA.

Brian Eckert leads Data Governance with a focus on connection, clarity, and collaboration. He loves helping teams understand their data, improve its quality, and feel confident using it to make decisions. Brian has a knack for breaking down complexity and creating shared standards that work for the people who rely on them every day. He’s driven by a belief that good data—and good governance—should make work easier, not harder, and should empower teams to do their best thinking.

Michael has over 25 years of experience at Southwest Research Institute work in applied research and technology development. He has contributed to a wide range of application areas including defense, space systems and, most recently, smart cities and urban technology. His current research is focused on the development of novel methods to provide security and protect user privacy in transportation systems and other infrastructure. He is also working on deployments of advanced computer vision systems to address unique urban challenges and applications of connected vehicle technology.

Perschbach leads the team that is developing the 1,900-acre Tech Port innovation campus as a nationally important destination for advanced technologies, including aerospace, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure resiliency, defense, manufacturing and global trade.
The Port is one of South Texas’ fastest-growing economic engines—home to over 80 tenant customers and their 19,000 employees, which generate a regional economic impact of over $20 billion in annual economic activity in our region and across the state of Texas, according to a 2025 study.
In addition to his work at the Port, Perschbach serves his community in numerous leadership roles. Currently, he is a member of the Texas Advanced Air Mobility Committee—a statewide body supporting the development of legislation and policies that support the implementation of emerging air transportation technologies across the state.
Perschbach is also Board Chair of the Kelly Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports innovative K-12 learning programs and adult workforce development efforts centered in the San Antonio region’s advanced technologies.
He has also been named by the American Business Journals as one of the country’s top 100 executives to watch.
Perschbach holds an undergraduate degree in business administration from The George Washington University and earned his law degree from The University of Houston Law Center.

Matthew Reat is Senior IT Manager for the Emerging Technology Team within the City of San Antonio's Information Technology Services Department. Previously, he served as an Innovation Administrator in the city's Office of Innovation, where he led the Innovation Academy — a program embedding process improvement and data-driven decision-making across city departments. He brings experience from healthcare management, operational consulting, and holds an MBA in Health Organization Management from Texas Tech University.

Emily’s career has focused on advancing public interest technology through strategic procurement and governance. She is Founder of Public Bench, an organization advancing AI benchmarking for municipal government. She is also Assistant Director at Partners for Public Good (PPG), where she oversees the Procurement Excellence Network (PEN), a free virtual community designed to empower public sector leaders seeking to transform their jurisdiction’s procurement practices. Her professional experience spans academic, non-profit, and government organizations, including City Form Labs in Singapore, the Massachusetts Office of Information Technology (MassIT), and the City of San Antonio, where she served as Emerging Technology Division Head and established the city’s first smart cities program, "Smarter Together".
Beyond her work in local government, Emily has shaped the global conversation on responsible and people-centered technology. She has served on the boards of UrbanAI and the GovAI Coalition, a network of more than 950 public agencies advancing responsible AI in the public sector and has advised UN-Habitat’s “People-Centered Smart Cities Flagship Program,” authoring six playbooks for local governments worldwide. Recognized as one of GovTech’s 2025 Top 25 “Doers, Dreamers & Drivers,” Emily continues to champion the use of technology as a bridge for democratic participation and public good. She holds a Master’s in City Design & Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John Sarantakes is a seasoned sales leader with nearly three decades of experience guiding global technology organizations through complex growth and transformation. As Chief Revenue Officer at BlackFog, he leads the company’s worldwide sales strategy, helping public and private sector clients strengthen their cybersecurity posture in an era defined by data sovereignty, threat intelligence, and digital trust.
John’s leadership spans senior roles at Dell, Absolute Software, Headspring Systems, and InMotion, where he built and scaled high-performing teams across North America and EMEA. His approach blends commercial acumen with a deep understanding of the evolving threat landscape, making him a compelling voice on topics such as data exfiltration prevention, behavioral threat modeling, and the future of endpoint security.
John brings a strategic lens to the conversation, sharing insights on how organizations can move beyond reactive defense and adopt proactive, intelligence-driven security frameworks that protect data at its source.

Steve Troxel is a Field CTO at SHI International Corp, advising public sector and commercial organizations across the U.S. With over 25 years of experience in IT infrastructure, cybersecurity, and enterprise strategy, he has held executive roles including interim CTO for the Arizona Department of Education and VP of Technology for a national payment card processor. His work bridges public policy, operational execution, and long-term technology planning.

Geoffrey Urbach is the Product and Partnerships Lead on the Emerging Technology Team for the City of San Antonio's Information Technology Services Department.
A San Antonio-based civic technologist, Geoffrey manages a portfolio of digital transformation initiatives focused on how the City and region deliver services to residents. He leads the SmartSA Partnership — a regional collaboration among 19 public and civic organizations across the greater San Antonio area, working together to drive efficiencies, leverage opportunities, and coordinate strategies to build a more connected, inclusive, and resilient San Antonio.
His current work includes responsible AI adoption for the City and the Regional Digital Twin initiative, a collaborative effort to develop shared technology infrastructure and analytical capabilities across the San Antonio–Bexar County region.
Geoffrey holds an MPA in Sustainable Urban Systems from American University and a BA in Government from The University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Jinjun Xiong is founding dean of the College of AI, Cyber and Computing at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UT San Antonio), and holds the Microsoft President’s Endowed Professorship with the Department of Computer Science and Department of Computer Engineering. Dr. Xiong also serves as the Scientific Director for the $20 million National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, and the AI lead for the $10 million IES Center for Early Literacy and Responsible AI. Prior to UT San Antonio, Dr. Xiong was Empire Innovation Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University at Buffalo (UB), Director for the SUNY-UB Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, and Senior Researcher and Program Director for AI and Hybrid Clouds Systems at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He was the former co-founder and co-director for the IBM-Illinois Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research (C3SR), the success of which in 5 years has led to the 10-year $200M expansion of the center to the IBM-Illinois Discovery Accelerator Institute. His research interests are on across-stack AI systems research, including AI applications, algorithms, tooling and computer architectures.  Many of his research results have been adopted in IBM’s products and tools. He published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in top AI conferences and systems conferences. His publication won 9 Best Paper Awards and 10 Nominations for Best Paper Awards. He also won top awards from various international competitions, including the championship award for the IEEE GraphChallenge on accelerating sparse neural networks in 2020, and the First Place Awards for the 2019 DAC Systems Design Contest on designing an object detection neural network for edge FPGA and GPU devices, respectively.