Texas Digital Government Summit 2015

Joe Grant Bluechel brings over 17 years of experience in consulting, product development, data, and analytics. He possesses depth and breadth in the management of business intelligence, data warehouse, web applications, portal, and integration. He has directed the creation and delivery of technical education, training offerings, and lead business development and new product offerings across a wide spectrum of data and analytics initiatives. Joe has functional expertise in supply chain management and real estate management including lease administration and facility maintenance.

Joe spearheads all aspects of Brightlight’s Managed Services and the Brightlight Innovation Center. Brightlight Managed Services provides BI/DW/Analytics services focusing on infrastructure support, cloud services, and packaged services. The Managed Services department offers a wide variety of service levels and service options designed to sustain and optimize analytic environments focusing on technology such as IBM Netezza and Big Insights, Microsoft BI technology, AWS, MicroStrategy, Tableau, SAP Business Objects, Oracle, Cloudera, and Hortonworks. Joe also oversees the Brightlight Innovation Center with a mission
of ensuring Brightlight leads the market in applying new BI/DW and Big Data technology, methodologies, and capabilities turning research and ideas into innovation capability meeting the high value-add needs of our clients.

Prior to joining Sirius, Joe was a member of management and consulting teams at Accruent, CDS, Oracle, Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards. He gained a breadth of hands-on leadership experience in support operations, business intelligence, web services, ERP, supply chain, system integration and web applications.

Jason Dusterhoft currently serves as an Assistant Chief of the Austin Police Department, appointed by the Chief of Police. The department, which employs over 2,000 law enforcement and civilian support personnel, serves the 11th largest city in the United States with a population of almost 900,000 citizens. Serving on the executive staff, Chief Dusterhoft plays a leading role in the success of the department, which can claim Austin as the second safest major city in the United States in regards to violent crime.
Prior to beginning his career with APD, Chief Dusterhoft served his country in the United States Air Force and graduated from the University of Western Illinois in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science degree. Between 1995 and 2011, he served with numerous divisions within APD, including Patrol, Investigations, Family Violence, Training, Highway Enforcement and Technology. The Leadership Command College which he developed as a Lieutenant, in partnership with the University of Texas and local business leaders, continues to develop successful leaders within APD.
By 2011, Chief Dusterhoft had risen to the rank of Commander, overseeing the Downtown Austin region (including the department’s operations during the Occupy Austin movement).  Under his leadership, crime in Downtown Austin fell from a record high (in 2012) to a record low (in 2013). In 2014, he was promoted to the rank of Assistant Chief.  Chief Dusterhoft currently heads the department’s Support Bureau, overseeing the Technology, Fleet, Special Operations (including SWAT), Air Operations, K-9, Explosive Ordinance, Victim Services and Forensics divisions.

Chief Dusterhoft has earned numerous commendations and awards, including a Lifesaving Medal. He is a graduate of the Senior Management Institute for Police and the West Point Leadership Program and a member of several prominent law enforcement associations, including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Police Executive Research Forum and the Major City Chiefs Association. Chief Dusterhoft is currently earning a Master of Science degree from Texas State University.

Elizabeth Frisch, Founder and CXO of The Thrival Company is the best-selling author of Mission to Million$ - Taking Big Ideas and Making Them Reality. Known for taking complex organizational issues and creating easy to implement frameworks, she has worked with over 50 different industries, all levels of local, state, and federal governments as well as NGOs/NPOs. She is nationally recognized for developing a unique and trademarked approach to performance and behavior-based auditing and has trained thousands of people globally in the areas of mobility management, business performance, auditing, and compliance. Having worked in state government herself, as well as provided consulting support to dozens of government agencies and cities, Ms. Frisch brings a deep understanding of the inner workings of public agencies and the cultures surrounding them.
Ms. Frisch has over 25 years of experience leading business performance, management, engineering, organizational development and auditing programs. She is also co-campaign leader and facilitator of the Central Texas 20/20 Mobility Campaign (funded by the City of Austin and Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority) working with dozens of organizations across Central Texas to build effective mobility strategies into their organizations including TxDOT, AISD, ACC, Freescale, Bazaarvoice, NetSpend, AMD, Seton Health Systems, Parkway Properties, and many others.
She is a trained facilitator and has facilitated hundreds of retreats, events, training courses and workshops and is a keynote speaker on the topics of leadership, teams, auditing, and business performance. She frequently works as a high performance executive leadership coach and is hired to facilitate difficult dynamics and contentious meeting situations. Her work in the for profit, non-profit, and governmental arenas allows her to bring a broad and unique perspective on how to combine the best practices in each model of business to create organizations that deliver on their vision and mission and have fun doing it!  From the plant floor to the top floor, Elizabeth is just as comfortable in a hard hat and boots as working with boards and C-level management. In 2014, she was a Top 3 Finalist for the Austin Chamber of Commerce Small Business Leader of the Year out of hundreds of nominations for this award.

Alex Froyo is Director of Continuity Services for HP Enterprise Services. In his role, Alex assists both Enterprise and Public Sector clients meet their unique Continuity challenges through forward-thinking recovery planning and cloud technology. Prior to joining HP, Alex spent 9 years with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines where he held various management roles including Sr. Manager for Disaster Recovery and Data Protection. He is a Certified Business Continuity Professional with DRI International and is a SANS GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst. Alex holds a BA in International Relations from Florida International University and is a resident of North Texas.

Janet Gilmore serves as Director of Digital Government for the Department of Information Resources.  In her role as Director of Digital Government, she provides oversight and management for Texas.gov, official state web site for the state of Texas.  She also manages the DIR IT Services and ISO departments and serves as the DIR Information Resources Manager (IRM). 
Ms. Gilmore joined the state in 2007 as Database Architect for the Enterprise Architecture division.  She managed the re-procurement team for the Texas.gov contract in 2008-2009 and has managed the Texas.gov program and other Digital Government initiatives since that time.
Before working for DIR, Janet worked as an IT professional for over 25 years, including positions as an IT consultant, Project Manager, Database architect an administrator, programmer, developer and manager for development teams for the private sector.  She began her technology career as a COBOL programmer and Project Manager for the Texas General Land Office.
Janet is a graduate of Texas Christian University and is certified as a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP).

Dustin Haisler is the Chief Innovation Officer for e.Republic. As the finance director and later CIO for Manor, TX, a small city outside Austin, Haisler quickly built a track record and reputation as an early innovator in civic tech. A member of Code for America’s original steering committee, Haisler pioneered government use of commercial technologies not before used in the public sector – including Quick-Response (QR) barcodes, crowdsourcing and gamification. In 2010 Haisler launched Manor Labs, a website that let residents submit their own ideas and vote other peoples’ ideas up or down. The most popular suggestions went to city officials for review and possible implementation. Haisler looked to the private sector to help broaden the adoption of these and other civic innovations, joining California-based Spigit as director of government innovation. While at Spigit, a company that makes crowd-sourcing and innovation management software, Hailser helped design and deploy innovation programs for New York City; Bogota, Columbia; and even part of the space program (through NASA’s Langley Research Center).
Notably, Haisler helped design and launch one of the first government open innovation programs in the United States in 2010, which received global recognition as a new model of citizen engagement and innovation. Among other first-in-nation innovations, Haisler architected a Crowdsourcing Master Land Use Plan (Harford County, MD) and patented a crowd-based business process (Crowd-as-a-Service). Named a Government Technology Top 25 Doer, Dreamer and Driver in 2009, 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).
As Chief Innovation Officer, Haisler 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.

Tony Lauro is Senior Enterprise Security Architect for Akamai Technologies. With over 15 years of Information Security industry experience Tony works with Akamai 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 payments. He is currently responsible for the training of an internal specialized group at Akamai whose focus is on Application and Web Security disciplines. Tony’s previous responsibilities include 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.

Chad Lersch is Assistant General Counsel with the Department of Information Resources where he provides counsel in many aspects of the Department’s core business. However, he works particularly close with the Data Center Operations, as well as the policy group, to identify and understand all related legal matters, including the implementation and use of emerging technologies, for which he engages in extensive research and has acquired an in-depth knowledge on all aspects of new and emerging technologies, including social media, cloud computing, employee mobility and the use of personal devices.
Prior to joining the Department, Chad consulted with a national consulting firm. As such, Chad assisted his mostly public clients at the local, state, and national level to operate in a more effective and efficient manner. To achieve his client’s goals, Chad was often required to undertake extensive analysis to identify technology solutions appropriate for his clients. The technology solutions most often identified were those involving new and emerging technologies. As an early adopter, extensive analysis, including a risk-benefit analysis, was necessary to ensure the use of such emerging technologies was appropriate for his public sector clients.
Chad has a wealth of knowledge in helping government entities operate in the most effective and efficient way possible. As such, he has assisted the Department of Information Resources, as well as other state and local agencies across the United States, embrace new and emerging technologies while minding the potential legal issues that often arise for early adopters. Chad holds a law degree and Bachelor of Science.

Marlon Miller is Director, Public Sector Workflow and Business Process Automation Solutions for Large Enterprise Operations – US. He is responsible for the delivery of workflow automation solutions to Xerox Public Sector customers. Xerox provides solutions to improve document intensive businesses processes leveraging professional consulting and technologies such as document scanning, intelligent capture, enterprise content management, workflow automation software and integration with ERP and custom systems. Xerox Public Sector workflow solutions reduce process complexity, improve responsiveness to constituents and lower overall processing costs for our Public Sector customers.
Marlon has supported the U.S. Public Sector business at Xerox for the last 10 years in a variety of different business areas. Most recently he has been the Director of Public Sector Marketing covering Primary Education, Higher Education, State/Local Government and the Federal government. Marlon has used his broad experience in technology, workflow, content management solutions, security, contracts and sales to help drive the growth of the Public Sector business for Xerox. He has helped develop multiple partners and vertical solutions for Xerox’ public sector business. He has extensive experience in the application of security technology to meet the unique data and network protections required in government environments.
Marlon’s previous experience at Xerox included roles in software development, product testing, professional consulting services, customer support, direct sales and partner development.
Marlon joined Xerox in 1984 from a Systems Integrator to help develop new products for the electronic publishing industry. Marlon is a graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University with post-graduate computer science work completed at UCLA.

Casey Ping presently works as the Program Director for Travis County STAR Flight. STAR Flight, is a public-safety EMS rescue helicopter serving Central Texas. He has worked in emergency services for over 30 years in a variety of roles within EMS in numerous (EMT, Paramedic, Flight Paramedic, Training Captain, EMS Supervisor and Division Commander). In those capacities he has served on numerous EMS/Rescue committees that include Texas Task Force One Water Rescue Steering Committee, State of Texas Governors EMS and Trauma Advisory Council Air Medical Committee and FEMA Search and Rescue Credentialing Committee. He has presented in numerous local, state, national and international EMS/Rescue conferences. He is currently a water and helicopter rescue manager with Texas Task Force One. He has been involved in multiple hurricane and tropical storm responses including Hurricane Katrina and Rita. He is currently the Mountain Rescue Association representative to the International Commission for Alpine Rescue- Air Rescue Committee.

Jill Smith is a Senior Solutions Engineer with Akamai in San Diego, California. She provides technical guidance to Akamai’s State and Local Government customers on a breadth of solutions, ranging from availability and performance to security.  She earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo with a concentration in Communication Systems.  She has over 10 years of engineering experience designing, testing, and supporting network communication systems. She began her career at Raytheon where she developed the first shipboard wide area network (SWAN) that is deployed on the U.S. Navy’s LPD ship class. Next, as a systems engineer at ViaSat, she designed a global mobile satellite communication network that continues to provide broadband Internet access aboard commercial and military aircraft. Finally, before joining Akamai, Jill worked at Symantec where she provided security and availability solutions for enterprise customers.

Tedi Wells is an accomplished IT services executive with over 25 years of information technology experience focused in three areas: IT Sourcing Strategy, Planning and Execution, IT and Business Transformation,  and Managed Services Delivery. Ms. Wells currently is an IBM Executive Consultant with the mission of combining key deal leadership for cloud infrastructure consulting as well as training and mentoring IBM cloud consultants teams around the world. Ms. Wells’ has developed lasting professional relationships built on a foundation of trust and client integrity. Tedi is a graduate of Central Michigan University.