Wendy Barron serves as the Chief Information Officer of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles (TxDMV), a customer focused agency that provides motor vehicle services, including registration and titling, to the citizens of Texas. As the Department’s technology leader, Wendy is helping to build strategic partnerships across and outside the organization to deliver customer-centric motor vehicle services to the TxDMV constituents.
Wendy has managed information technology projects and operations at Texas government organizations for over 20 years. Her prior leadership roles include serving as the Deputy CIO of the TxDMV and leading the Information Technology Divisions of the State Office of Administrative Hearings and the Texas Water Development Board. In the early days of her career, Wendy served in various information technology roles including as a data analyst, systems analyst, and project manager.
Wendy has a BBA in Computer Information Systems and a Master of Public Administration, both from Texas State University. She is also a certified Project Management Professional.
In her off time, Wendy enjoys spending time with her husband and being a mom to her elementary-aged son. She also enjoys the outdoors and helping her family run their cattle ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

Phil Bertolini is a senior vice president for Government Technology, the premiere event and thought leadership content provider for state and local government technology professionals. 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.

Mr. Blanco is responsible for overseeing the Health and Human Services (HHS) Information Technology (IT) division; directing innovation efforts; determining IT needs; and developing standards and methodologies for the overall strategy of system development and integration of client/server applications.
Utilizing his depth of IT knowledge, an innovative mindset, and the ability to create high-performing teams, Mr. Blanco has delivered key departmental accomplishments since being promoted to the role of Chief Information Officer in August 2019, including consolidation of almost 900 servers into the State’s Data Center Services (DCS) program, standardization of business processes, agency-wide operating system upgrades to Windows 10, transition of all in-scope IT contracts, and development of a 10-Year Modernization Plan.
During COVID, Mr. Blanco’s utilized his experience in emergency response and disaster recovery to define risks, assess priorities, and strategically and efficiently deliver remote working technology solutions to over 40,000+ HHS and DSHS staff, thus enabling the agency to continue their mission of improving the health, safety, and well-being of Texans. This included imaging and distributing over 15k laptops, deploying Microsoft Teams ahead of schedule, and expanding network perimeters and applying more effective security protocols to serve an almost fully remote workforce; cloud-based capabilities to legacy systems for improved data reporting and sharing; implement COVID-critical applications, including Texas Health Trace (THT), Vaccine & Allocation & Ordering System, Client Encounter System (CES), and Infectious Diseases Data Integration (IDDI).
Mr. Blanco practices value-based leadership. His supportive, transparent, and honest approach cultivates an environment of shared goals, while encouraging innovation and allowing room for staff growth and development.

Alexis Bonnell is a Senior Business Executive and the Emerging Technology Evangelist for Public Sector at Google. Government is navigating unprecedented times, unprecedented opportunity and can leverage unprecedented technology to solve our nations and the world’s most pressing challenges. More than ever, Public Servants are leading the charge to create a better, more equitable, and empowered experience for citizens.
Alexis was one of the first members of the Internet’s original Trade Association, served as a Chief Profit Officer for companies transitioning to a digital existence, applied her communications, project management, innovation and technology application skills in over 20 warzones, global disasters, and major transformation projects for the United Nations. At USAID, Alexis was a public servant who led Transformation and Knowledge Management in the Management Bureau, was the Chief of Engagement for Education, one of the Founders of USAID’s U.S. Global Development Lab, and recently completed her service as USAID’s Chief Innovation Officer.
At Google, Alexis dedicates her time to helping public servants catalyze their missions with technology.

Vinod Brahmapuram is Senior Director of Security for state and local government and education markets at Lumen Technologies. With more than 25 years of information technology experience, Vinod has held cybersecurity leadership positions in three states, advising governors and legislators on key cyber issues. Before joining Lumen, he served as the State Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Washington.

Amanda Crawford is the Executive Director of DIR and serves as the Chief Information Officer for the State of Texas. In this role, she is responsible for the overall leadership, direction, and daily operations of DIR, an agency with an annual fiscal profile of more than $4 billion per year. DIR's responsibilities include protecting the state's data and critical technology infrastructure, managing a multi-billion dollar cooperative contracts program, and providing strategic technology leadership, solutions, and innovation to all levels of Texas government. Under Mandy’s leadership, DIR led the state’s successful response to the 2019 ransomware attack that affected over 20 local government entities in Texas and secured the transition to the next-generation suite of managed IT services offered through DIR’s Shared Technology Services program.
Prior to leading the team at DIR, Mandy served at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas (OAG) for more than 17 years. She held various positions at the OAG, including ultimately serving for two and a half years as the Deputy Attorney General for Administration and General Counsel. Mandy also served as a faculty member for the National Attorneys General Training Research Institute’s Center for Leadership Development, teaching managerial leadership across the country.
Mandy earned her B.A. from The University of Texas at Austin and her law degree from the University of Houston Law Center. She is a graduate of the Governor’s Center for Executive Development through the LBJ School of Public Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin.

Tony DiCuffa is a Document Cloud Solutions Consultant at Adobe. Tony spent the first 23 years of his career as a technical architect serving the Public Sector, primarily state and local governments. He has designed, built, and supported some of the largest systems in this space, across a wide array of governmental industries. Tony used this knowledge to design several technology products that are in use in many states. Tony has spent the last few years focused on a problem that continues to challenge many state and local governments: digitizing the paper and signature process. Today, Tony’s primary goal is to help his customers eliminate the cost, hassle, and environmental effects of dealing with paper.

As Vice President of Product & Industry Solutions, Chris is responsible for defining the product and technology solutions that Armis brings to market. He is a seasoned product and business development executive leading teams through development and marketing of exceptional products and cutting-edge technologies across enterprise, service provider and consumer market segments. Prior to Armis, Chris held executive management roles in product management, product marketing and business development at MobileIron, Cisco, Nokia, Ipsilon Networks and Kalpana. Chris’ journey to Silicon Valley started after leaving college early to pursue his passion for building great products.

Mike Driessen joined e.Republic in 2021 as the VP of Subscription Services, where he is responsible for managing execution, strategy and operations for all recurring revenue services. He also oversees Navigator, a market and sales intelligence tool for private-sector SLED teams, and Techwire and Industry Insider – Texas Edition, each of which provide daily news and insights into the California and Texas GovTech markets.
Mike brings over 25 years of experience in the IT consulting and systems integration industry with firms like Accenture, Grant Thornton and Hitachi Consulting. His experience covers Sales and Marketing leadership, advising on Digital Strategies, and managing Enterprise Application alliances and implementations. He has managed large global teams and led start-ups. Mike lives in Los Angeles, although he grew up in the Midwest, and graduated from Marquette University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Business Administration.

Matt Federoff served as the Chief Information Officer for the Vail School District in Vail, Arizona for 22 years. He helped open 18 new schools, and was first in his state to provide comprehensive wifi, 1-1 student laptops, and all digital content for instruction. Before Vail, Matt taught high school science for eight years, where he was named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 1997. Matt was the 2005 Arizona Technology Director of the Year, a 2007 National School Board Association "20 to Watch”, a 2010 Tech & Learning “100 Future Technology Leaders to Watch”, 2013 Center for Digital Education “40 Top Innovators”, and in 2015 received ISTE’s “Making IT Happen” award. Matt served on Intel’s Education Board of Advisors from 2015-16. From 2018-19 Matt assisted the Tucson Police Department in digitizing their police academy curriculum, earning an “Award of Merit” in 2019. Retired in 2021 after 30 years in public education, Matt lives with his wife and children in the wilds of the Empire Mountains south of Vail.

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).

Heather Hall serves as the CIO for the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC). Prior to TWC, she served as the Director for Strategic Decision Support at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and as the CIO at the Texas Department of Aging and Disability Services (DADS). She is a certified Project Management Professional and has a Bachelors’ Degree in Latin fom Baylor University, a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science from The University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in Information Science from The University North Texas. She has over 25 years of IT experience in a variety of roles.

Beth Hallmark joined TxDOT in June 2018 as Director of Communications, where she oversees Media Relations, Executive and Employee Communications, Creative Services and Public Information Offices statewide. She brings with her more than 25 years of experience in communications and media, including work in both the public and private sectors.
Hallmark came to TxDOT from the University of Texas in Austin, where she directed career development strategies and communications at the School of Information. Prior to UT, she served as Director of Public Relations and Communications at Hanger, Inc., managing media relations as well as internal and corporate communications.
Hallmark has more than 15 years of experience in Texas state government. Most recently, she served as Deputy Chief of Communications, Transparency and Public Outreach at the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, where she helped lead the agency’s award-winning fiscal transparency initiatives as well as public outreach strategies and digital communications. In addition, she led social media and marketing strategies at the Texas Department of Agriculture. She began her career as a radio news reporter and newspaper staff writer in Texas.
Hallmark holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Information Studies, both from The University of Texas in Austin.

Kenny Holmes became the leader of go-to-market strategy for Public Sector at Fortinet in March 2019. He was selected due to extensive industry experience, expertise in a wide range of technologies, and his proven sales execution and analytics background. An advocate and speaker for the Public Sector, he has been in Information Technology for more than twenty years and held more than ten technology certifications and positions spanning from Engineering to Sales Executive. He is an expert in cybersecurity with a background in cryptography. He has worked in the Federal Government, State Governments, Research Institutions, and Universities on some of the largest security projects in the world. Kenny currently resides in the Chicagoland area with his amazing wife and ten-year old daughter. He spends as much time as possible with them including taking them along whenever possible on his business travels.

Sanjeev is a technology entrepreneur with expertise in enabling digital transformation and access to information using AI technologies in automation and user engagement applications.
Sanjeev is currently the COO of codemantra. In this capacity Sanjeev leads the product vision of codemantra’s Intelligent Document Automation Solutions and its applications in enabling Accessibility and Digital Access to All. codemantra is the leader in Intelligent Document Automation – the winner of CODiE award in this category in 2021 and supports multiple government institutions across the world to further their Digital Accessibility and Document Automation initiatives. Prior to codemantra Sanjeev founded companies and launched products that touched millions of users and resulted in successful acquisitions by Bloomberg and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Casey Kennedy has been the Director of Information Services for more than a decade. His team provides direct IT support for the Texas Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, the 14 intermediate appellate courts and several judicial branch state agencies. Casey also manages the statewide electronic filing system (eFile Texas) as well as the statewide document access system (re:SearchTX). Casey is also the lead OCA staff for the Judicial Committee on Information Technology or JCIT. The committee is appointed by the Supreme Court and makes recommendations and sets standards for court technology in Texas.
Casey is currently the chair of the Court Information Technology Officer Consortium, a national organization of Court IT professionals.
He holds a BA in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.

Keegan has been dedicated to public sector clients throughout his 8+ year tenure at VMware. In that time, Keegan has assisted clients with strategy, planning, and execution of projects related to datacenter modernization, cybersecurity, end user computing, and - you guessed it - cloud migrations.

Thomas Nisbet is an Associate Partner with IBM, assisting clients apply cognitive capabilities in their enterprises. Over 10 years of AI and advanced analytics experience across State and Local and Federal government have given Thomas a diverse background and experience with how cognitive capabilities can help deliver on the promise of the digital reinvention of Government. He is currently focused on using AI and automation to transform agencies with goals to increase program satisfaction, lower costs, improve employee efficiency, and overall program outcomes. Thomas lives in Raleigh, NC with his wife and 2 children.

Brandon Pearce is the AVP, Product Management and Development at AT&T Cybersecurity. His portfolio covers government products, consulting products, and compliance. He joined AT&T in 2019 after a full Air Force career and retiring as a Colonel and served in multiple staff and command positions in the Air Force and the Intelligence Community. Notably, he commanded the 91st Network Warfare Squadron, served as the Chief of Current Intelligence for USCYBERCOM, was the CISO at National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and finished his career as the deputy for Counterintelligence and Cyber at the National Security Agency. Since joining AT&T, he has overseen the launch of FedRAMP-approved products as well as other products focused on government customers or commercial customers who need protection at government standards. He lives in Austin with his wife and dog, where you can often find him driving or wrenching on interesting vehicles.

Nancy Rainosek is the Chief Information Security Officer for the State of Texas at the Department of Information Resources. She has over 35 years of IT experience in Texas state government and private sector consulting. Prior to joining DIR, she served as the deputy Chief Information Security Officer and the Enterprise Security Operations Manager for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. She was an IT Audit Manager and Information Resource Manager at the Texas State Auditor’s Office.
Nancy has a Bachelor of Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems from Texas State University.

Morgan Reed spent nearly 4 years as Chief Information Officer for the State of Arizona, where he led cloud transformations to consolidate 30 different email systems, modernize 15 citizen-facing applications, migrate critical agency workloads off the state-owned mainframe, and shut down the state’s largest datacenter after migrating 80% to the cloud. He joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) as an Executive Government Advisor, to coach State and Local Government Executives through strategy, policy, and governance challenges to help them accelerate their journey to the cloud, and help governments innovate for their customers.

Rhiannon has worked in private, nonprofit, and government sectors in a variety of roles that all revolve around information, records, and data management, including data quality control, usability testing, policy research, training, and documentation. Her joint Masters of Arts and Masters of Library and Information Studies thesis was focused on identifying factors that affect employee contributions to institutional repositories. Her doctoral research, in Information Studies, was an examination of how performance measures can be applied to determine the value of information. She has published and presented in international journals and conferences, and was formerly a lecturer on the topic of information agency management at the University of McGill in Montreal. She is now the Enterprise Data Architect at the Lower Colorado River Authority, where she works with a multidisciplinary team in converging technology planning, user expectations, data governance principles, and business needs.

Anh Selissen serves as Chief Information Officer (CIO) forTxDOT, overseeing information security, infrastructure, strategic direction, and the personnel and vendor activities of the Information Management Division.
Selissen has led enterprise IT systems and staff in both the public and private sectors, having previously held positions as CIO at NuStats Inc. and director of enterprise systems at the University of Texas at Austin. Most recently Selissen served as deputy CIO at the Texas Comptroller’s Office. Among several professional affiliations, Selissen is president elect of the Texas Association of State Systems for Computing and Communications, and IT chair of the State Agency Coordinating Council.

Vinay Singh is an Enterprise Solutions Architect at Verizon supporting state local and education for the last 6 years. Vinay has completed his 4 year Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and has been in the IT industry for more than 18 years.
Vinay currently leads design, development and transition of business requirements and solutions for various public sector customers. Vinay has helped and proposed specific strategies, initiatives, and remedies necessary to align technology with customers objectives and vision. He has spoken at various conferences on next generation technologies across various platforms. In today's fast paced world, as someone once said ….”It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Gincy Thoppil is the Planning & Development Services Director for the City of Arlington, Texas. Her all-round experience in Urban Design, Comprehensive Planning, as well as Development Services for the past 20 years makes her polished in developing practical regulations that is easy to understand, build, and administer. She has been instrumental in raising the quality of public and private projects in Arlington and has embraced innovative initiatives and cutting-edge technology in order to provide exceptional customer experience. She is a Certified Public Manager, focused on improving the performance of her organization. She holds a master’s degree in Community Planning with Urban Design specialization from the University of Cincinnati and a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Mumbai, India.

As a Client Technical Leader, Chris provides overall technology vision, guidance, and strategy for Public Sector clients across the United States. He is a highly talented, forward thinking IT leader with expansive experience in Hybrid and Multi-Cloud solutions, Cloud strategy, infrastructure architecture and design, IT systems transformation and systems integration.

Allen Zolondek is a Development Supervisor for the Texas Education Agency where he is currently building a new team to help implement a CRM system. He has previous experience as a developer and lead the Texas Education Agency, Texas Department of State Health Services, and Texas Health and Human Services Commission, previous software consulting experience for oil & gas/manufacturing companies, and previous engineering experience as an air pollution engineer and nuclear test engineer.