Keynote

Nicolas Chaillan, Chief Software Officer, US Air Force

Mr. Nicolas Chaillan is the United States Air Force Chief Software Officer and the co-lead for the Department of Defense Enterprise DevSecOps Initiative with the DoD CIO. He is responsible for enabling Air Force programs in the transition to Agile and DevSecOps to establish force wide DevSecOps capabilities and best practices.

Robert Bohn, Cloud Computing Manager, NIST

Dr. Robert Bohn, of the Advanced Network Technologies Division in NIST/ITL, serves as Program Manager for the NIST Cloud Computing Program. In this role, he manages and coordinates the goals and strategy of the program and also works with industrial, academic and other government stakeholders to address requirements needed for the US Government’s successful and timely adoption of cloud computing as described in the NIST Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap (NIST SP 500-293).

Jamie Baker, Senior Manager Federal Civilian, AWS

Jamie Baker manages the Federal Health, Science and Policy team in the
Amazon Web Services Worldwide Public Sector division. His team is
responsible for supporting those customers in Federal including NASA,
DOE, HHS, VA, DHA, GSA and State Department. Jamie has been at AWS
for 6 years and in Federal sales for over 20 years and has worked with
numerous agencies providing solutions ranging from cloud computing, data
center infrastructure and advanced video analytics.

Jon Clay, Director, Global Threat Communications, Trend Micro

Jon Clay has worked in the cybersecurity space for over 23 years. He is responsible for managing marketing messages and external publication of all threat research and intelligence within Trend Micro as well as different core technologies. Prior to this role, Jon held numerous roles within Trend Micro as a sales engineer, sales engineering manager, training manager, product marketing manager for small business solutions. As an accomplished public speaker with hundreds of speaking sessions around the globe, Jon focuses on the threat landscape and the use of big data in protecting against today’s sophisticated threats.

Moderator: Steven Watkins, Founder of Watkins Communications and
former federal editor

Steven Watkins is a content marketing professional. Prior to launching Watkins Communications, he served 15 years as the editor of Federal Times. Under Watkins’ leadership, Federal Times won more than three dozen national and regional peer-reviewed awards for journalism excellence in the categories of investigative reporting, news analysis and government coverage. He is a frequent speaker and moderator at events focused on federal management and technology.

Brian Merrick, Deputy Director, Cloud Program Management Office, U.S. Department of State

Brian joined the Department of State in 2008 working for the Bureau of Information Resource Management as the Deputy Manager for the IT Cost Center Working Capital Fund supporting the Department’s desktop computing operations. Brian then became the Deputy Executive Director for the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in 2010 providing management support, including HR, financial, procurement, IT and general services. In 2012, he became the Director of the Office of Digital in the Bureau of International Information Programs, which provides cloud-based web solutions, and interactive digital programing to 260 embassies. In 2014, Brian became the Senior Advisor to the Deputy Chief Information Officer for Foreign Operations in the Bureau of Information Resource Management supporting global IT infrastructure operations. He then served as the Director of the Office of Innovative Infrastructure providing wireless and cloud-based products and services across the Department. Brian is currently the Deputy Director of the Cloud Program Management Office, working to modernize IT across the enterprise.

Roy Varghese, Chief Information Officer, NOAA Fisheries

Roy Varghese serves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries). In this capacity, Roy is responsible for providing strategic vision and leadership in the design, development, and delivery of digital products and services that support the 4,200 NOAA Fisheries staff including scientists, policy managers, and law enforcement officers located across the country, and at the national headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Since assuming the CIO position at NOAA Fisheries in November 2017, Roy has implemented policies that increase the pace of IT modernization; designed a maturity assessment approach to identify and improve cybersecurity posture; and collaborated with stakeholders to execute a digital strategy that included modernizing Fisheries’ web presence and deploying next generation application platforms.

Moderator: Brad Wintermute, Vice President, TSPi

As the Vice President of TSPi, Brad provides executive oversight and direction for the company’s public sector agriculture, financial, and healthcare business solutions. Prior to TSPi, he worked at the US Food and Drug Administration. Brad held multiple roles during his tenure including the role of Deputy CIO from 2014-2017. In that role he led the delivery of Information Technology which enabled the 22,000 FDA staff to meet the mission of the FDA to protect and promote the public health for the United States.

Mia Jordan, Government Subject Matter Expert

John Osborne, Chief Architect, North America Public Sector, RedHat

John Osborne is a Chief Architect with Red Hat Public Sector. He has been largely focused on the role of Kubernetes in government IT modernization for more than five years. Before his arrival at Red Hat, he worked at a start- up and then spent seven years with the U.S. Navy developing high- performance applications and deploying them to several mission-critical areas across the globe.

Moderator: Tom Suder, President and Founder, Advanced Technology

Academic Research Center (ATARC) A respected thought leader in the Federal IT community, Tom Suder is Founder and President of the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC). Tom is a two-time winner of a Federal 100 Award, a prestigious honor that recognizes government and industry leaders who played pivotal roles in Federal IT and made a made a difference in the way technology transformed the government. Tom is also the Founder & President of Apcerto, a mobile DevSecOps company, and he serves on a variety of technology advisory boards.