Speakers

Salvador D'Itri is Chairman of the National Spectrum Consortium. He is currently a public sector technology advisor at Federated Wireless. He has served on the board of the Wireless Innovation Forum, the IEEE Connecting the Unconnected Steering Committee and as an appointed advisor to the Arlington County IT Advisory Commission. His fields of practice include 5G, spectrum management and cloud computing. 

Ms. Theresa Kinney is a Deputy Director and Director for Operations and Communications of the NASA SEWP Program Oce. Ms. Kinney manages the strategic direction, planning and day-to-day operations of SEWP - a premier Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) providing Federal Agencies access to the latest in Information & Communication Technology solutions.

Ms. Kinney is a 20+ year veteran to Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt Maryland. In this capacity, she is the Contracting Ocer Representative (COR) for the SEWP Program and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Ms. Kinney is an ACT/IAC Fellow and Board member, a Fellow of the Society for Information Management (SIM), an active member of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA), and Board Member for ATARC. She prepared NASA’s first WCF business case, and worked to fit the WCF model within the framework of the existing SEWP architecture while insuring continuation of NASA’s Executive agent designation from Oce of Management and Budget (OMB).

A native of Montana, Ms. Kinney graduated with academic honors from Strayer University in Maryland. Following graduation, she continued her education at George Washington University to receive her Master’s Certificate in Federal Contracting.

Ms. Barbara McQuiston is Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Science and Technology. In this role, she serves as the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering’s principal advisor on the entire Department of Defense (DoD) Science and Technology (S&T) portfolio. Ms. McQuiston leads the Department’s work to create DoD’s technology advantage, advocates for the Department’s S&T workforce and foundational laboratory infrastructure, oversees the DoD Federally Funded Research and Development Centers and University Affiliated Research Centers, advises on the Department’s critical technology protection policy, and oversees the health of the Defense technical industrial base and innovation communities for future technology.

Ms. McQuiston previously spent nearly a decade in Government service at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where she served in the Defense Science Office, the Strategic Technology Office, and finally as Special Assistant to the Director for Energy.  Throughout her tenure at DARPA, Ms. McQuiston directly supported the development of significant communications technologies and championed the development of alternative energy programs to reduce DoD’s dependency on imported fossil fuels.  In 2010, she received the Office of Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service for her accomplishments in these leadership roles.  In 2011, President Obama nominated Ms. McQuiston for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, though after her nomination became stalled in Congress, she requested it be removed.

In addition to her time at DARPA, Ms. McQuiston has more than 30 years of commercial experience, including executive management in high-technology companies and Government service.  Her background includes strategic planning and development of new and innovative technologies for information, communications, biotechnology, medical, and environmental markets; negotiation for technology agreements; and technology transfer from private institutes, governments, and laboratories to the commercial sector.  She has been deeply involved in venture fund technology investment and technical oversight for research, development, and commercial product efforts.  Additionally, she advised capital management funds and negotiated and managed technology transfer agreements in both the public and private sector.

Dr. Tim Persons is GAO's Chief Scientist and one of two Managing Directors of the Science, Technology Assessment, and Analytics team. The team conducts technology assessments, provides oversight of federal science and technology programs, provides technical assistance on science and technologies issues to the Congress, and develops innovative analytical techniques for carrying out audits and evaluations.

Tim joined GAO in July 2008. Prior to that, he served in key executive roles at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) and the National Security Agency.

Dr. Persons received his B.Sc. in Physics from James Madison University, his M.Sc. in Nuclear Physics from Emory University, and his M.Sc. in Computer Science and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Wake Forest University.

Korie Seville serves as the Defense Information Systems Agency’s (DISA) Hosting and Compute Center (HaCC) Technical Director. In this role, Seville is responsible for the strategic technical direction of various DISA HaCC data center and cloud initiatives, including the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) and Zero Trust.

Prior to becoming the Technical Director, Seville was the HaCC’s cloud infrastructure architect. As a member of the HaCC, he was responsible for architecting and integrating commercial cloud hosted solutions into the DoD network infrastructure.

Before joining the HaCC, Seville was an infrastructure architect for the Cloud Computing Program Office (CCPO) providing support to critical cloud enabling projects to include the Cloud Layered Obfuscation Application Kit, Global Directory, Azure Hosting Infrastructure, and the Commercial Virtual Remote (CVR) environment, which brought Microsoft 365 to over a million Department of Defense employees during the global pandemic. Prior to becoming a government civilian, Seville worked as a DISA contractor serving as the network architect for the Secure Cloud Computing Architecture (SCCA) program. He was previously a network engineer and security consultant for multiple private sector industries, including Tapestry Technologies, Inc. and Collections marketing Center, Inc.

Seville received a Bachelor of Computer Science from the Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

Michael Shrader joined Carahsoft shortly after its founding in 2004, and serves as the company’s vice president for Innovative and Intelligence Solutions.

In this role, he manages Carahsoft’s efforts to help small, emerging technology manufacturers as well as established solution providers, do business with the government. Under his leadership, he has grown the IIS team from a team of two sales representatives supporting five technology vendors and generating $5M annually to more than 250 team members who support 100+ vendors and drove $3B in 2020 bookings.

As the only one of its kind in the industry, Mike’s rapidly growing team includes 50+ In-Q-Tel portfolio and other emerging technology companies. These companies offer cutting-edge solutions of great benefit Intelligence, DoD, and civilian agencies, but typically have little government visibility or experience.

Shrader and his team work to change that by opening doors to new business opportunities in the government; organizing hundreds of educational events each year to help government managers and technologists learn innovative ways to solve difficult problems; and then helping with contract vehicles and transaction execution.

In recognition of his contribution both the technology community and the government, Shrader was named an FCW Rising Star for work with emerging technology companies.

In addition to nurturing these emerging technology vendors, Mike is also driving demand and working to expand the public sector footprint for marquis brands including Splunk, NVIDIA, Tableau, Broadcom, Cloudera, SolarWinds, Okta, Zscaler and Blackberry.

Aaron Smith is the Regional Vice President for Federal Technical Account Management at Tanium. He is an accomplished cyber security and information technology professional with 20+ years of experience guiding the strategic activities of high-performing organizations. Aaron's insights are uniquely framed from experience working for and supporting the Federal Government as a Military Officer, contractor, and civilian in Europe, the Middle East and across the United States.

Juliana Vida is the GVP, Chief Strategy Advisor - Public Sector at Splunk. She and her team of business and mission advisors provide guidance and thought leadership around the Splunk Data platform.

Prior to joining Splunk, Juliana was a Vice President at Gartner in the Executive Programs practice, advising and coaching federal government Chief Information Officers (CIO) and IT senior leaders. Before that, she served honorably for 24 years as a US Naval Officer at sea and on shore as both a combat ship driver and a helicopter pilot. Her final role in government was as the Navy’s Deputy CIO in the Pentagon where she led policy and governance over technology investments and implementation.

A 1994 graduate of the US Naval Academy, Juliana serves on several advisory boards in both defense and higher education organizations. She is the fourth woman in USNA history to be elected as a Trustee on the Naval Academy Alumni Association’s Board of Trustees. A lover of word puzzles and trivia games, she is also a former champion of two televised game shows, “The Weakest Link” and “Wheel of Fortune.”

Zach is a Federal Solution Architect with GitLab, and has a 15 year history supporting the Public Sector in various roles from writing code and building DevOps teams, to serving as Chief Architect on a CBP program.

Dr. Tao Zhang leads the Transformational Networks and Services Group in the Communications Technology Lab at NIST. The group has been innovating and advancing technology and standards in areas including edge (fog) computing, edge and network AI, automated driving and teleoperation, 6G networks, information-centric networking, cloud computing, and wireless localization.

Before joining NIST, Dr. Zhang was the CTO / Chief Scientist for the Smart Connected Vehicles business unit at Cisco Systems, and a Chief Scientist and Director of Research at Telcordia Technologies (formerly Bell Communications Research) where he led breakthrough research on 3G/4G wireless networks and vehicular networks. He has cofounded two industry consortia—the Open Fog Consortium and the Connected Vehicle Trade Association—and served as a founding Board Director for them. More recently, he helped the industry establish the Teleoperation Consortium and has been serving on its Advisory Board.

Dr. Zhang was elevated to IEEE Fellow (class 2011) for his contributions to wireless and infrastructure networking protocols for applications. He holds about 60 US patents and coauthored two books (“Vehicle Safety Communications: Protocols, Security, and Privacy” and “IP-Based Next Generation Wireless Networks”), several book chapters, and over 100 peer-reviewed papers. He served as the CIO and a Board Governor of the IEEE Communications Society and as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He cofounded several international conferences and served on leadership roles for many conferences and journals.