IT Modernization Summit

Joe Becker is the VP of Customer success at Uptake, focused on the company’s transportation and federal business. He serves as the conduit between Uptake’s internal teams and stakeholders at both the U.S. Army and UCMC, ensuring that each customer and user is achieving the desired outcomes while using Uptake products. Joe has been with Uptake since 2015, serving various leadership roles within the company, from product development to pre-sales engineering. Regardless of his role at Uptake, Joe is committed to developing products that meet technical requirements, exceed partner expectations, delight users, and ultimately deliver tremendous value. A passionate entrepreneur and trained mechanical engineer, Joe leverages deep technical expertise gained by spending over a decade managing the people, process, and outcomes of large-scale infrastructure projects around the globe.

Mr. Catanoso has over 25 years of experience in fields ranging from database development to enterprise architecture design and enterprise cloud solutions, contributing to a solid track record of success culminating in the overall growth of multiple technology initiatives. Mr. Catanoso led a cross-organizational team over three years to design and implement the VA Enterprise Cloud (VAEC), capable of hosting most of the VA’s applications. The VAEC is designed to be controlled by the VA and to accommodate all applications up to and including the FedRAMP High security level.

Prior to joining the VA in 2011, Mr. Catanoso worked in the private sector serving in roles related to project management, strategic planning, and systems integration. He also served as a Signal Officer in the US Army. A native of New Jersey, Mr. Catanoso holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s degree in Computer Science from Fairleigh Dickinson University. In 2017 he completed the Senior Executive Fellows program at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

He currently serves as Director for the Enterprise Cloud Solutions Office (ECSO) at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). ECSO enables the leveraging of cloud solutions by internal and external customers and ultimately Veterans by providing standardization and common services. ECSO will support the efficient migration to and utilization of cloud technology by project teams/business sponsors and their customers.

Mr. Catanoso is married with 4 children. He is a member of the Civil Air Patrol and the Knights of Columbus. In his spare time he enjoys alpine skiing, scuba diving, target shooting, video games and photography.

Bob Ritchie is vice president of the software practice with SAIC’s Strategy, Growth, and Innovation group, leading over 4,000 software engineers and providing technical direction and expertise for the enterprise modernization initiatives of SAIC’s customers. His responsibilities include the strategic roadmap and investments for the software practice, supporting customer programs with DevSecOps teams, and leading SAIC in the areas of cloud native development, application modernization, agile development, and intelligent software.

Ritchie joined SAIC in 2006 as a senior principal software engineer. He has led several agile teams in developing, modernizing, migrating, and operating resilient, highly available, enterprise-scale software systems in the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force and the Defense Logistics Agency.

Prior to SAIC, he served as director of software engineering at Capital One, where he provided technical direction within an engineering organization of over 500 employees spanning multiple areas of expertise. He oversaw and guided the successful completion of major programs, including the enterprise migration of over 400 distributed applications from legacy data centers to full cloud infrastructure. He instilled DevSecOps best practices and reusable artifacts throughout the software engineering practice, highlighted by co-founding the Capital One DevOps Guild, an organization-wide effort.

Ritchie earned his Bachelor of Science in computer engineering from Virginia Tech. He holds all nine AWS certifications.

Ms. Sharon Woods is a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) and currently serves as the Executive Director for the Cloud Computing Program Office (CCPO) in the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). In this role, Ms. Woods is responsible for transforming cloud to enable the warfighter. As a part of this responsibility, Ms. Woods oversees the acquisition and execution of the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI Cloud) program, as a critical piece of the overall DoD Digital Modernization Strategy. CCPO is also responsible for deploying the Commercial Virtual Remote environment, the largest Office 365 deployment in the world. CCPO continues to resolve enterprise cloud capability gaps that support the Joint Force.

Prior to this role, Ms. Woods served as the General Counsel for the Defense Digital Service (DDS) where she provided legal counsel and bureaucracy hacking expertise for a team of federal government technologists working on high impact challenges at the Pentagon. Prior to joining DoD, she was an attorney for the U.S. Department of the Navy, specializing in information technology acquisitions.

Ms. Woods holds a law degree from the Washington College of Law, American University and a bachelor's degree from Johns Hopkins University. She has received numerous awards from the Defense and Acquisition communities in recognition of her leadership and accomplishments including the Pinnacle Award for Cloud Government Executive of the Year (November 2020), Secretary of Defense Coin (January 2017), the Department of the Navy SPAWAR Exemplary Achievement Award (November 2015), and the Meritorious Civilian Service Award (December 2013).

Clare Martorana is an industry leader in deploying innovative technology and human-centered design to create products, services, and experiences that improve people’s lives.

In March 2021, Clare was appointed by President Biden as the Federal Chief Information Officer. She previously served as Chief Information Officer of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and a member of the U.S. Digital Service team at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, launching the agency’s enterprise-wide digital modernization effort to give Veterans the 21st century digital experience they deserve. Prior to joining government, Clare was a President at Everyday Health and Senior Vice President and General Manager and editor-at-large at WebMD.

Throughout her career, Clare has worked to improve and simplify the digital experiences people have when interacting with businesses – and knows the same is possible when our citizens interact with our government. As a creative leader and big thinker, she is leading government technologists and policy experts in meeting federal mandates while working collaboratively to deliver secure modern tools and services to our citizens. She looks forward to partnering with key stakeholders to maximize investments and deliver high-quality digital services to the American people.

Kevin Flanagan is the Associate Vice President of Government and Education at Hyland Software. Kevin has over 17 years of experience in consulting, sales, and customer service in the area of Content Services and Records Management. Throughout his career Kevin has focused on helping Hyland’s government clients build solutions that enhance internal efficiencies, enable organizational transparency, improve constituent service, and comply with regulatory requirements. Kevin is passionate about his role, informing and enabling strategy for agencies of all sizes as they navigate their digital transformation journey.

With more years working in the Security, Risk, Privacy and Resiliency professions than she cares to say, Helen Patton advocates using information risk, security and privacy to enable the mission of organizations and to support society at large. Helen is an Advisory CISO at Duo Security (now CISCO), where she shares security strategies with the security community. Previously she was the CISO at The Ohio State University where she was awarded the ISE North American Academic/Public Sector Executive of the Year, and an Executive Director at JPMorganChase. Helen actively encourages collaboration across and within industries, to enable better information security and privacy practices. She believes in improving diversity and inclusion in the workforce, and mentors people interested in pursuing careers in security, privacy and risk management. Helen has a Master’s degree in Public Policy and has earned Certified Information Systems Auditor and Certified In Risk and Systems Control certifications from ISACA. She serves on the State of Ohio Cybersecurity Advisory Board and is a founding board member of the National Technology Security Coalition.

Serena Chan, Ph.D., is a member of the scientific and professional cadre of senior executives and the senior technical advisor in the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Operations and Infrastructure Center. In this position, she provides technical leadership and strategic direction to raise the bar for command and control of DISA’s operational environment. Her focus is on refining integrated processes, operationalizing innovative capabilities, and transforming data into meaningful information for improved information sharing and enhanced decision-making.

Previously, Dr. Chan served as the director of DISA’s Cyber Development Directorate, overseeing a diverse portfolio of capabilities and services including public key infrastructure (PKI); identity, credential, and access management (ICAM); zero trust (ZT); software defined environment (SDE); endpoint security; Joint Regional Security Stacks (JRSS); boundary security; cross domain solutions (CDS); big data platform (BDP); cyber situational awareness and data sharing; data analytics; and NetOps solutions.

Prior to joining DISA, Dr. Chan worked as a research staff member with the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), where she provided objective analyses and strategic advice on national security issues to senior leaders in the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Office of the Program Manager of the Information Sharing Environment (PM-ISE) under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). She managed a portfolio that included survivable, resilient, enduring, effective, and interoperable communications for national security, emergency management, and continuity of operations, as well as cybersecurity developmental test and evaluation.

A prolific scholar, she has led research teams that have published numerous papers for IDA impacting policy for the whole of government. Her most recent works were in supply chain risk management, mission assurance, and public safety communications. Her research efforts helped drive policy and ensured the operational effectiveness and resilience of critical national systems and infrastructures.

Dr. Chan received her bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering with a minor in economics, a master’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science, and a doctorate in engineering systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. She is a member of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, Asian American Government Executives Network, and Sigma Xi, a national scientific research honor society.

Tommy Gardner is HP’s Chief Technology Officer for HP Federal, spanning the US Federal Agencies, Higher Education, K-12 Education, State and Local government customer segments, as well as Federal Systems Integrators. His current responsibilities include technology leadership, strategic technology plans, product and technology strategies, sales force technical support, and customer and partner relationships.

Previously, Tommy has served as the Chief Technology Officer for Jacobs Engineering, Scitor, and ManTech. Earlier in his career he was a senior technical executive at Raytheon. In the U.S. Navy he served as the Deputy for Science and Technology for the Chief of Naval Research. He oversaw the Navy’s Deep Submergence Program as well as its Advanced Technology Program. He also commanded the nuclear submarine, USS San Juan (SSN 751).

Tommy’s educational background covers multiple disciplines and fields of interest including: cybersecurity, data science, blockchain, quantum information science, artificial intelligence, high performance computing and systems integration.

Tommy holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University, an M.S. in Management of Technology from MIT and a Ph. D. in Energy Economics from George Washington University. He is a Professional Engineer, an ASME Fellow, and serves on the ASME Board of Governors, the ANSI Board of Directors and the U. S. Council on Competitiveness as the Co-chair of the Advanced Computer Roundtable.

Mark Montgomery serves as the Senior Advisor to the Chairmen of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, and was the Executive Director. He is also the Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served as Policy Director for the Senate Armed Services Committee under the leadership of Senator John S. McCain.

Mark completed 32 years as a nuclear trained surface warfare officer in the U.S. Navy, retiring as a Rear Admiral in 2017. He commanded the USS McCampbell (DDG 85) and Destroyer Squadron FIFTEEN. His flag officer assignments included Director of Operations (J3) at U.S. Pacific Command; Commander of Carrier Strike Group 5 embarked on the USS George Washington stationed in Japan; and Deputy Director, Plans, Policy and Strategy (J5) at U.S. European Command.

Sonny Hashmi is the commissioner of the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Federal Acquisition Service (FAS).

In this position, he oversees the delivery of more than $75B of products, services, and solutions that enable federal agencies to efficiently accomplish their missions while saving taxpayer dollars.

Known as a cloud computing thought leader in the emerging technology industry, Sonny previously served as the managing director of global government strategy at Box. There, he worked with federal, state, local and international government organizations on cloud and mobility strategy.

Prior to joining Box, Sonny served as GSA’s chief information officer (CIO) and chief technology officer (CTO). He led the agency's IT modernization strategy as GSA adopted cloud computing, agile acquisition and DevSecOps principles, and helped create a cloud computing and performance measurement roadmap for the federal government.

Sonny Hashmi is active in the federal IT community and has been recognized with several awards including the Fed100, FedScoop 50 and as a finalist for the prestigious Samuel J. Hayman Service to America medal.

He earned a master’s degree in engineering from Purdue University and a master’s certificate in innovation management from the University of Maryland.

Prior to joining SAIC, Sardar was the chief information officer for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where he had responsibility for oversight of the strategic management of its IT portfolio. During his tenure in civil service, Sardar also chaired the Federal Small Agency CIO Council, representing more than 80 small agencies on the Office of Management and Budget’s Federal CIO Council. Prior to 2008, Sardar was a senior manager at General Dynamics Information Technology, leading technology efforts for many major government agencies.

During his career, Sardar has spent more than 25 years working and consulting in the public sector and private industry, focusing on providing strategic technology management services to technology providers, pharmaceuticals, telecoms, financial institutions, and federal/state/local governments. He has extensive training in advanced analytics, information management, systems/enterprise architecture, and custom software development. He previously held technology management positions at Oracle, Computer Associates, and several internet-based startups in Canada, Europe, and the U.S.

Sardar serves on several boards including WashExec, Evanta, AFFIRM, and the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center (ATARC).

Sardar earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia and an MBA with concentration in finance and strategy from George Washington University.

Nancy Sieger serves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Information Technology where she is responsible for all aspects of our systems that operate the nation's tax infrastructure. She oversees the 7,000-person IT organization that maintains hundreds of systems and supports the processing of millions of tax returns annually.

Nancy previously served as the Deputy CIO for Filing Season and Tax Reform. In that capacity, she provided leadership for executing all technology changes needed to deliver the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, in addition to ensuring IT delivers a seamless annual tax filing season and integrates software and operational solutions that align with modernization goals. Nancy also previously served as the Acting Deputy CIO for Operations and the Associate CIO for Applications Development.

Throughout her career, Nancy has been committed to the principles of Equal Employment Opportunity and Diversity. She served as chair of the IT Diversity & EEO Advisory Committee and actively mentors employees at all levels. Nancy is the recipient of a Fed Scoop 50 award for exemplary Federal Leadership and was honored with a Presidential Rank Award in 2018 for Meritorious Service. Nancy is a graduate of the University of Maryland. She resides in Pleasant View, Utah with her husband, Eric. In her spare time, she is an avid gardener and enjoys nothing more than a relaxing day outside.

Drew Zachary is Managing Director of Census Open Innovation Labs at the US Census Bureau, where she has also led user experience research, development of new human centered design trainings, a data curation hub, and the first ever Census/Opportunity Project America COMPETES prize challenge. She is also serving as Deputy Chief Data Officer for Innovation at the US Department of Commerce. Previously, Drew was a Policy Advisor at the White House Domestic Policy Council and senior analyst at the Commerce Data Service. Throughout her career, Drew has worked with communities to use data, science and technology to support economic development, and leveraged the tools of human centered design to improve how federal agencies serve the public. Drew has designed federal program evaluations and policies to support cities, including the Promise Zones Initiative, and designed technologies to improve healthcare delivery, and urban public health interventions to ensure that all people have access to healthy communities. Drew holds an MPP from Johns Hopkins University and is a PhD candidate in social policy at Brandeis University. Drew's research on technology and program design has been published in Qualitative Health Research, The Diabetes Educator, and eGEMs. She has been recognized as one of the world’s 100 most influential young people in government for 2018 by Apolitical, one of 20 rising stars by FCW/GCN’s Government Innovation Awards 2018, and a Federal 100 winner by FCW in 2019.

Robert McNamara is a partner and leads the strategy and IT solutions practice. At Guidehouse, he works across industry sectors advising senior executives on their business and technology strategies, helping them increase performance, build capabilities, improve service and reduce costs. Recent clients include the USPS, DHS-FEMA and NYPD.

Prior to joining Guidehouse, Robert led the federal strategy practice at Accenture. He has 20 years of consulting experience, working with clients on business, IT, and cybersecurity strategies, organization and operating model development, workforce improvement, enterprise transformation, process improvement, M&A and sustainability with commercial and public sector organizations in North America and Europe. He began his career at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and JP Morgan Chase, serving in various financial and investment banking roles.

Ann Dunkin was most recently the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer focused on state and local government at Dell Technologies. Prior to that, she was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the County of Santa Clara. Dunkin served in the Obama Administration as CIO of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Previously, she was the Chief Technology Officer for the Palo Alto Unified School District, after a long career at Hewlett Packard in a variety of leadership roles focused on Engineering, Research & Development, IT, Manufacturing Engineering, Software Quality and Operations.

Dunkin is a published author, most recently of the book Industrial Digital Transformation, and a speaker on the topics of government technology modernization, digital transformation and organizational development. Dunkin was named one of ComputerWorld’s Premier 100 Technology Leaders for 2016, one of DC’s Top 50 Women in Technology for 2015 and 2016, and to StateScoop's Top 50 Women in Technology list for 2017. In 2018, she was inducted into Georgia Tech’s Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni. Dunkin holds an M.S. and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering, both from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a licensed professional engineer in the states of California and Washington.

Jason Gray was selected in May 2016 to serve as the US Department of Education's (ED) Chief Information Officer (CIO). As the CIO, he oversees an IT portfolio of more than $844 million in programs and is responsible for protecting more than 100 million social security numbers, distributing over $1.4 trillion in student loans, and servicing the needs of nearly 6000 users. As the CIO, he serves as a principal advisor to the Under Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and Secretary with respect to the operational, tactical, and strategic use of IT to exceed the needs and expectations of the Department's customers. He serves as the day-to-day lead for managing the various functions within the Office of the CIO, providing advice to ED’s senior leadership regarding IT, information management, and information assurance, and website activities management and operations.

Prior to his selection as CIO, Jason served as the associate chief information officer for the Department of Transportation (DOT), where he provided executive leadership on IT policy and oversight for information governance, compliance, and departmental policy, as well as managed DOT’s $3.5 billion IT portfolio.

He has held several leadership roles in the information technology and healthcare administration fields. He has more than 20 years of experience in the planning, development, delivery, and monitoring of technical solutions that address the needs of his customers in support of their missions.

Jason received his M.B.A. from Colorado Technical University, completed the Key Executive Leadership Certificate at American University, and holds a variety of technical and professional certifications, including the Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certifications.

Rick Kryger is a leader and manager with over 20 years of experience in information technology systems development, maintenance, and operations for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). Currently, he serves as the Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) for Operations in the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO).

As DCIO, Rick Kryger heads the IT initiative for shared services across DOL’s agencies, particularly the Office of Safety and Health Administration and the Mine Safety and Health Administration. His role in the shared services initiative is to translate the technological needs of each agency and match them to enterprise-wide IT solutions currently in use. He also is responsible for building relationships across agencies.

His previous role at DOL involved being the Director of Survey Processing for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In that role, he was responsible for overseeing 13 statistical and administrative data processing systems.

John Osborne is a Chief OpenShift® Architect with Red Hat® Public Sector. He has focused for more than 3 years on the role of Kubernetes in government IT modernization. Before his arrival at Red Hat, he worked at a startup and then spent 7 years with the U.S. Navy developing high-performance applications and deploying them to several mission-critical areas across the globe. He is also co-author of OpenShift In Action.

Stephen Moon has supported federal and defense customers and their data initiatives for more than 12 years. Starting out in the RTD&E and mission space, Stephen was doing “Big Data” before there was such a thing. He has spent the last five years supporting federal and defense customers on their cloud journeys as a solution architect focusing on mission enablement through Data Operations and the Data Platform. Stephen has given multiple public presentations and worked with various government chief data offices covering such topics as data acquisition, data processing, data distribution, and data cataloging.

Anne Armstrong is Chief Content and Alliance Officer of Public Sector 360.

Steven Boberski is a Senior Business Development Executive for the Genesys Federal Team. He is a recognized Unified Communications Subject Matter Expert with more than 25 years of designing, delivering and selling large enterprise VoIP, Unified Communications and Contact Center Solutions into the Public Sector space. He has been a featured guest on Federal News Radio as thought leader on the merits of Federal digital transformation as well as a subject matter expert on FedRAMP and CMMC compliance. He has also appeared as a guest speaker on the local television show, Government Matters and has published several articles in a variety of industry periodicals.

Steve earned a B.A. in English Writing and Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a M.S in Systems Engineering from George Washington University. Steve currently serves as a board member of the National Capital Chapter of the International Telecommunications Pioneers Association (ITPA).

Jeff Frederick is a Senior Solutions Engineer at Yubico, Inc. where he assists public sector customers in developing and implementing strong multi-factor authentication solutions to protect their IT assets and data. He helps customers develop strategies for identity proofing, identity and credential lifecycle, authentication, authorization, and compliance.

Jeff has over 30 years of experience in cybersecurity with a focus in identity, credential, and access management (ICAM). Prior to Yubico, Jeff assisted federal government agencies and numerous commercial organizations implement large scale ICAM programs for both internal and external identities.

Jeff holds project management professional (PMP) and certified information systems security professional (CISSP) credentials. He is also a member of the FIDO alliance’s government deployment working group (GDWG).