Mr. Dan McCune oversees software development and portfolio, program, and project management of IT projects for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology (OIT). Mr. McCune has the privilege of directing the development and delivery of software solutions that ultimately benefit the more than nine million Veterans who are actively enrolled in VA services. These software solutions help VA provide high quality, accessible health care and play an instrumental behind-the-scenes role in helping Veterans and their families buy homes, earn degrees, start careers, and receive relief during hardships like the pandemic. Under his guidance, IT teams also support VA’s burial and memorial services and provide innovative ways to honor our Veterans, allowing surviving family members, friends, and others to memorialize their service to our nation.

John is a pragmatic leader with 25 years’ experience working in companies at all levels, from teams to c-suite, bringing real, value-adding change to the way organisations really work. Dissatisfied with the standard discourse around transformation and agility he is passionate about applying cutting-edge knowledge from fields as diverse as complexity, sociology and psychology in practical, proven ways that immediately increase productivity at the same time as embedding continuous learning in ways of working.

Chris Aherne leads Smartsheet Gov’s dedicated Federal team based in McLean, VA. Smartsheet Gov is a secure and reliable platform that helps federal agencies bring collaboration and transparency to government initiatives to drive innovation and achieve more. Prior to Smartsheet Mr. Aherne has 20+ years of experience leading Federal teams at Salesforce.com, MuleSoft, Adobe and BMC Software. He is passionate about building high performing teams and helping government agencies leverage technology to transform how they deliver mission success.

Frank Romano is based in Annapolis, MD where he works as a Senior Solutions Engineer at Cloudera. He has a degree in Computer Engineering and has spent over 30 years designing hardware, firmware and software for various technology sectors. He started his career as a Radar Engineer for Raytheon where he architected and implemented the world’s first digital waveform generator used in Phased Array radars. He went on to work in other industries such as Gaming (GTECH), Consumer Electronics (BOSE) and Data Storage (MAXTOR, EMC) In 2008, he shifted his technology focus to a new technology from Yahoo called “Hadoop” which lead him to join the National Security Agency as a Technology Director reporting directly to the CTO of the agency to start a new lab called the "Cloud Computing Laboratory (CCL). The CCL was responsible for the development work in Hadoop, Openstack, NiFi and Accumulo. He joined Hortonworks in 2014 and was the 231st employee supporting their new focus in the Public Sector. He has architected Big Data platforms for various agencies within the DoD and Federal Civilian sectors and spoken at various conferences. He considers this the best technology and job he has ever had helping customers harness the immense power of the Big Data technologies.

Wyn Elder is the Managing Director of the Public Sector practice at Box, Inc. He is responsible for all US Federal, State & Local growth and the Go To Market strategy across the Global Public Sector.

Wyn spent 25 years as decorated combat pilot in the US Air Force before retiring as a Colonel in 2015. He commanded at the squadron, group and wing levels, and held several key Pentagon positions establishing operational warfighting requirements and building the AF budget and resourcing strategies to execute on those requirements. He served as a senior advisor for five separate 4-star generals, culminating his career as the Senior Executive Officer to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

After his distinguished AF career, Wyn joined Apple and led all Business Development, Strategic Partnerships and Strategy for Apple's Federal, State & Local markets. During his time at Apple, he also served as a senior partner at Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), the DoD's crown jewel of Innovation Hubs where he spearheaded the rapid adoption of critical commercial technologies into the hands of warfighters involving Cloud, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, commercial space technologies, human performance improvement, and unmanned aerial vehicles.

Before joining Box, Wyn spent three years at Deloitte Consulting, helping government clients transform their information technology, lines of business, and strategies while also leading Deloitte's Public Sector Innovation group. Wyn holds a BA in Mathematics from the University of Virginia and an MBA from the The University of Florida in addition to master’s degrees in National Security Strategy and Military History.

At U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Mr. Sanjeev “Sonny” Bhagowalia currently holds the Senior Executive Service position of Assistant Commissioner (AC), Office of Information and Technology (OIT) and CBP Chief Information Officer (CIO).

Mr. Bhagowalia has over 35 years of senior technical, managerial, and executive leadership experience in private industry, the U.S. Government, and state government. Mr. Bhagowalia has spent over 21 of those years in senior executive capacity, including over 17 years as a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES), one year as a Senior Level (SL) in the Federal Government, and three years as a Senior Executive in State Government. He has served in key CIO leadership roles at five agencies: Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, State of Hawaii, U.S. Department of Treasury and CBP, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He also served in Chief Executive Officer (CXO) roles as a Deputy Associate Administrator for Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies at General Services Administration, and as a Program Management Executive/Assistant Director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice. Mr. Bhagowalia also served for 14 years in Industry at Boeing, a Fortune 30 company, ultimately serving for five years in senior technical leadership roles as a Chief Engineer/Manager and an honorary Senior Principal Engineer in the Boeing Company.

He has used his knowledge of IT/Information Resource Management (IRM), cybersecurity, and business process re-engineering to transform and secure organizations, and has helped the Federal CIO/CTO to roll out foundational White House Government-wide initiatives such as Open Data, Federal Cloud, FedRAMP and Federal Data Center Consolidation. Mr. Bhagowalia has received 33 awards from the U.S. Government and Industry, including a Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive Service; three Federal 100 Awards; and White House Champion of Change. His team won the Chief Information Officer 100 award for data.gov; and “Best of the Web” State Portal award from Center for Digital Government (CDG) for Hawaii.gov. He was inducted into the Boeing Technical Excellence Fellowship Program in 2014, recognizing the top one percent of engineers and scientists in the Boeing Company; the 2014 Federal Enterprise Architecture Certification Institute Hall of Fame; and the 2015 National Defense University IRM College Hall of Fame.

Mr. Bhagowalia has a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical Engineering (EE) and a Master of Science (MS) Degree in EE from Louisiana State University, and an MS in IRM from Syracuse University. He is also a twice-distinguished graduate from the National Defense University, with an IRM Diploma and Federal CIO Certificate.

Troy Doller is the Director of Government and Education at Hyland Software. Troy has an extensive training and corporate development background with over 15 years of experience in consulting, sales, system design, implementation and training. Throughout his career Troy has focused on helping his government clients build solutions that enhance internal efficiencies and enable organizational transparency. Troy is passionate about his role, informing and enabling strategy for agencies of all sizes as they navigate their digital transformation journey. His diverse industry and product experience along with a background in public speaking and a love of teaching enables Troy to discuss technical elements simply and succinctly while allowing him to convincingly connect with audiences regardless of their background. Troy holds an undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in Provo, and an MBA from BYU’s Marriott School of Business.

Jason Barke currently serves as the Acting Principal Deputy Associate Director for Employee Services at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). He previously served as the Group Manager for Forecasting and Methods in Strategic Workforce Planning where he led the implementation of the Strategic Human Capital Management requirements for the Federal Government. Some of his other areas of expertise are workforce data analytics, conducting competency assessments, cybersecurity implementation, strategic planning, workforce and succession planning. He has been at OPM for 13 years and has 20 years of Federal service.

Joshua “Josh” Di Frances is the Executive Director of the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program within the Technology Transformation Services (TTS). The PIF program was established by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2012 to attract into government top innovators from the private sector, capable of tackling issues at the convergence of technology, policy, and process. The program embeds talented technology leaders into agencies to challenge existing paradigms by rethinking problems and leverage novel, agile approaches.

Mr. Di Frances was hired as the Executive Director of PIF in June 2018. In this position, he leads and manages 65+ fellows annually and the PIF front office staff. He also facilitates key strategic efforts to position the program for success. These efforts Include working with legal counsel, creating partnerships with the White House and federal agencies, and meeting with key federal and external stakeholders to identify projects for Fellows across government and plan and execute recruitment events.

r. Di Frances previously served as the Deputy Director for PIF where he oversaw the operations and finances for the program. Before joining the federal government, Mr. Di Frances worked at CVS Health to accelerate innovation through healthcare and technology strategic partnerships and investments. He also worked with Mass General Brigham — a Harvard affiliated academic medical center — in the Brigham Digital Innovation Hub where he partnered with Harvard Medical School professors to commercialize technology. Prior to Mass General Brigham, Mr. Di Frances served as Director of Operations for a biotechnology start-up in Cambridge, MA that focused on novel gene editing technology.

Mr. Di Frances’ expertise is in digital health, health policy, civic technology, healthcare/technology strategy, biotechnology, strategic partnerships, venture capital, joint ventures, and corporate business development.

Mr. Di Frances has a Bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Boston University. Mr. Di Frances is originally from Wisconsin, but most recently lived in Boston. He and his wife currently reside in Washington, DC. Josh is also a proud volunteer of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Ms. Carlene Ileto serves as the Deputy Executive Director in the Chief Data Officer Directorate at the Office of the Chief Information Officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). She is a part of the agency's senior leadership team and data management, privacy, confidentiality, and data access are among her executive responsibilities. In addition, Ms. Ileto leads the federal government-wide Chief Data Officers Council to adapt policies, practices and protective measures to safeguard data privacy and promote appropriate data sharing across the whole of government and in partnership with industry.

Previously, Ms. Ileto served as Director, Infrastructure Services Office at DHS. In that role, she applied her operations and project management expertise to addressing Data Center Consolidation, Network Infrastructure, Data Center Consolidation/Optimization, Network Services and Cloud Strategy.