Nicholas is a technology enthusiast currently serving as a Senior DevOps Engineer at Here Technologies. His focus is working with development teams to automate infrastructure, build delivery pipelines, and break down silos. He is passionate about driving initiatives that automate engineering operations, while maintaining high technical standards, security, and innovation as top priority.

Patrick McClory has helped to shape organizations from end-to-end as a consultant, product leader and executive for the past 8 years in the cloud and DevOps space. From his time at AWS, as co-founder and COO of the strategic technology consulting firm DualSpark to his product leadership roles today, Patrick has both hands-on and personal experience navigating the variety of concerns from engineering to the executive suite but has also coached and consulted for hundreds of organizations and tens of thousands of successfully deployed workloads.

I am Enterprise Architect within is Industrielle Alliance acting as IT advisor on compagny omnichannel strategy, responsible to define technical roadmap and to orchestrate IT building blocks projects and initiatives that sustain the strategy. I have over that 20-years of experience with-in high regulated environments private sectors as Medical Health and Financial in IT research & development. My expertise encompasses design thinking, portfolio, program and project management, development, continuous improvement, organizational efficiency. I am efficient in construct, promote and articulate visions that align business current and future needs with technologies and companies’ capabilities.

Carlos Rojas has over 20 years of experience implementing Agile practices, driving initiatives, and global programs across Technology, Financial, Telecom, Government, and Health IT firms. In his current role as Director of Operations and Technology (O&T) at Fannie Mae, he is focused on organizational strategy, Agile cultural transformation, automation and operational savings.

Shashi Kiran, Technology Strategy and GTM - Shashi Kiran works at Quali in Santa Clara, CA as their CMO. Quali is the leader in sandbox software that offers up on-demand, self-service environments on any cloud.  He has 20+ years of experience in the datacenter, cloud, security and software space working for large-scale publicly traded corporations and startups. Quali’s automation and orchestration software – CloudShell - is in over 300+ customers globally including public cloud providers, telcos, large enterprises and technology vendors. CloudShell increases cloud and DevOps agility with higher quality and lower costs and is architected to work in a hybrid and multi-cloud environment.

Tracy has lived and breathed Application Lifecycle Management, what is now referred to as DevOps, for over 20 years.  She began her career as a software programmer for Wall Street in the late 1980s working with OS/2, and Sun Workstations.  Even though agile was not yet a topic, working with end users who were ‘traders’ taught her the importance of getting a new feature delivered quickly.  To the end user, it equated to big dollars.  Tracy co-founded OpenMake Software with Steve Taylor with the goal of standardizing and automating the software release process from build through deploy.

Tracy likes order and finds the chaos of software development a fascinating challenge.  She has devoted most of her professional career to helping organizations define improved software development procedures, even before Agile and DevOps were in vogue.  Tracy has a black belt in Shotokan and enjoys her free time with her dogs and horses. 

As the Director of DevOps at Ipreo, Lee Eason is serious about high-performing teams.  As his responsibilities changed over his career from a hands on developer into a director, he saw first-hand the waste and drop in quality that results from siloed organizations.  This led to him committing his career to enabling teams to own their applications end to end.  You can read Lee’s articles on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @leejeason.

Brennan Cropper is currently leading technology teams in the home loans space at Capital One that are building out cloud-based apps and services which are enabling the delivery of awesome customer experiences. Before joining Capital One, Brennan served as an architect and technical leader at Intuit building out API’s and apps that powered one of Intuit’s business units. Prior to that, Brennan grew up as an engineer in the real-time embedded arena, working in telecommunications and aerospace, where one of his most rewarding projects was working on one of the probes that is now on the surface of Mars.

Rosalind Radcliffe is a Distinguished Engineer in IBM. She is Chief Architect for DevOps and CLM for Enterprise Systems. She is responsible for driving the DevOps for multi-platform architecture. This includes z Systems and Power Systems. In addition she is responsible for the architecture for the Collaborative Management capability for Enterprise solutions. This includes UrbanCode Deploy and Rational Team Concert’s support for standard Mainframe development activities. Rosalind also works with clients on their cultural transformation to DevOps as well as their adoption of different tools in support of the transformation. She is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and a Master Inventor. Prior to Rational, she was in Tivoli responsible for the SOA Management Strategy for IBM. Rosalind has recently published the Mobile to Mainframe Dummies book and has many blogs written on DevOps and Enterprise Modernization.

Ashish is responsible for driving the global transformation and growth of the Oracle Cloud Platform portfolio including IaaS, PaaS, Mobile, Security, Big Data, Management and Business Analytics.  Prior to Oracle, he was General Manager for the technology incubator at Bertram Capital, a private equity firm, where he incubated and launched four Cloud startups focused on DevOps.  Ashish was also the Chief Marketing Officer at NuoDB, a cloud database company.  He has also held various product and marketing leadership roles at Symantec, BEA Systems, Calico Commerce and Trilogy.

Experienced Global Leader with a demonstrated history of working in the telecommunications industry. Skilled in Project Management, Software Management, Software Methodologies, Agile Methodologies, LTE, WiMAX, Embedded Systems, Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), and Global System for Mobile Communcations (GSM). Strong engineering professional with a BS focused in Math and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and Project Management Professional (PMP)

I look forward to my work everyday based on the excitement our team sees for being able to finally bring software to the market on a regular/monthly basis.  After 20+ years of being burdened with year long software release cycles, we are eagerly preparing for and anticipating the freedom of DevOps with open arms.  When Customers, Account Teams, Business Development, Product Managers, Project Managements and R&D teams all work synchronized hand in hand, the future with DevOps is truly bright!

Eric Chinchilla is currently the finance partner to the VPs across the J&J enterprise platforms, applications and big data strategies.  He has been with J&J since 1994, with his SAP experience beginning in 2004. His hold a baccalaureate in accounting and has been part of J&J finance, or IT supporting finance, through 2012, holding roles in: supply chain finance; financial reporting, planning and analysis; and business intelligence (OLAP).  His prior roles have spanned all business processes (e.g. plan, source, make, quality, deliver, and finance), as well as driving system architectures and landscapes to support the business.

Birender is a senior IT professional with extensive experience in leading all aspects of software product development including solution design and development, product management, project management, change management and team building. He is recognized organization wide for successful Agile and DevOps transformation with focus on automation.

In 10+ years of employment at Ryder, he has led design and development of several business critical web and scan (RF) applications. These applications have been built using Enterprise Design Patterns, Domain Driven Design (DDD), Test Driven Development (TDD) and SOA. He also has extensive experience in migration of legacy applications, upgrading technology stack and addressing technical debt. He was nominated for Ryder CIO leadership award, which recognizes achievements which go above and beyond. He is an engineer with MBA in Finance.

My passion is Continuous improvement. We continuously refactor applications for improving built in quality and maintainability.

Meredith Courtemanche is the senior site editor for SearchITOperations, exploring DevOps, systems management and IT monitoring and management topics. She edits tips and other content for the site, writes news stories and creates editorial guides. Meredith has spoken at events including AFCOM and Red Hat Summit. She also manages SearchWindowsServer with site editor Tomas Walat. Meredith joined TechTarget in 2012, covering virtualization and data center technologies for diverse sites. She previously covered semiconductor and photovoltaic cell manufacturing for PennWell. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Boston University.

Meredith's unofficial motto is that any project can become a big project. As an editor, her goal is to help IT pros work better. When she's not in the office, she trains dogs and rides her very headstrong horse.

Michael Harris is the Chief Technology Officer and a Fellow for GlobalMed and is responsible for the software, hardware and industrial design teams that develop their telehealth and telemedicine suite of products.
Harris has earned acclaim for his award-winning product designs and research coverage of the video software industries and holds multiple patents in light polarization.
Michael Harris has been in the camera and video conferencing industry for more than 25 years. Prior to co-founding GlobalMed in 2002, Harris was the Chief Technology Officer for PAR Technologies where he lead the charge in mobile video developments and software suite, and in 1995 was President and Chief Operation Officer for iREZ Research where he managed over the Sales, Marketing and DevOps of the company’s mobile video camera and h.324 video conferencing software technologies. Harris was also the Director of Marketing and Digital technologies at VideoLabs during a successful IPO in 1992.

Nishan is a Senior Engineer on the Search Ranking team.  He either spends his time running experiments to improve the user’s experience, or bridging the gap between the theory and practice of organizational culture and learning at Etsy. He is an active member of the PostMortem Facilitators’ group and teaches a course on Event Investigation.

As the Director of DevOps at Ipreo, Lee Eason is serious about high-performing teams.  As his responsibilities changed over his career from a hands on developer into a director, he saw first-hand the waste and drop in quality that results from siloed organizations.  This led to him committing his career to enabling teams to own their applications end to end.  You can read Lee’s articles on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @leejeason.

Rustom K. Mody, P.E., is VP–Technical Excellence - Enterprise Technology for Baker Hughes Inc.

Rustom holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration in Finance. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas. USA.
He holds 18 patents and is the author of over 75 articles, technical presentations  and  publications. He has won numerous Meritorious Awards for Engineering Innovation. In all, he has more than 35 years of experience in drilling, completion and production

Rustom is an active member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), American Association of Drilling Engineers, International Association of Drilling Engineers (IADC), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and serves on various sub-committees of all three organizations. He  serves on the Board of Advisors at the following Universities and Industry organizations:

• Department of Energy “Material Genome Project” 2016
• Offshore Technology conference Advisory Board 2017
• Society of Petroleum Engineers Advisory Board 2017
• University of Houston “Energy Advisory Board” 2016 - present
• University of Oklahoma Engineering Department,  2008 - present
• University of Oklahoma Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geologic Engineering 2008-present
• Texas A&M TEES Executive Advisory Board 2012-present
•  “Pumps & Pipes”  an organization made up of professionals from Medicine, Aerospace and  Energy Industry. 2007 - present
• World Oil ShaleTech North America Conference 2011-present
• ASME Hydraulic Fracking Conference 2012

Recently he was appointed to serve on the advisory board of Council on Competitiveness Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative - Washington DC.

Dr. Tonya M. Peterson, PfMP, PMP, LSSGB, CSM is a change facilitator, leader, and process improvement specialist within US Bancorp.  She has over 20-years of experience within the public and private sectors in the Information Systems area.  Her expertise encompasses PMO operations, portfolio, program, and project management, continuous improvement, quality direction, productivity metrics, instruction, leadership techniques, management practices, methodology alignment, and organizational efficiency.  She is proficient in capacity planning, technical guidance, strategic planning, resource management, and outsourcing.  Tonya is also an International Speaker, Author, Mentor, Consultant, Coach, and Instructor.

Tonya is goal-oriented individual who seeks to ensure value, benefits, and purpose are derived from investments and initiatives.  Tonya addresses improvement and innovation with through data driven decisions.  Tonya is excited to be here as she is driven to make a difference with each interaction

IT Executive specialized in Enterprise Service Management, Portfolio Governance, Portfolio/Project Management, and Technology Business Management.  Donna is experienced in developing high performing teams in technology delivery operations, with a focus on dynamic team collaboration, agility, and continuous improvement.  Donna has worked with large scale enterprises including The Home Depot, Autotrader.com, and Cox Automotive, Inc.

Nishan is a Senior Engineer on the Search Ranking team.  He either spends his time running experiments to improve the user’s experience, or bridging the gap between the theory and practice of organizational culture and learning at Etsy. He is an active member of the PostMortem Facilitators’ group and teaches a course on Event Investigation.

Solid global experience in Healthcare and Technology industry of more than 15 years leading cross functional global teams from vision (kickoff) to proven outcomes (sustenance) on new business changes like DevOps for lean organizations, supporting cloud based product infrastructure and supporting product deployments for traditional as well as Cloud based applications.

Specialties: Global teams, introduce new cultural changes, DevOps culture, Virtualization, Cloud infrastructures, Software Development, Budget Management, Supporting Regulatory Requirements/FDA (Medical Device Design controls)

Susan Nelson has been a technology leader for over 25 years commercializing complex software and systems solutions across several industries.  Industries include Government; Information Technology; Finance, Automobile, and Publishing. Over 10 years’ experience in business leadership, finance and operations.  She is currently a Sr. Technical Manager of Software Engineering, corporate R&D at 3M.   Her interests are in quality assurance and process improvement.
Specialties: Project Management, Product Commercialization, Software Quality Assurance, Software Architecture & Design, Off-shore outsourcing, Acquisition Strategy, Six Sigma, Standards Development.

As a Distinguished Engineer, I am an individual contributor who is positioned within technology leadership to lead by influence on matters of standardization, innovation, technical strategy, implementation and quality assurance efforts. I act in a technical advisory role to senior leadership and am responsible for managing and maintaining the integrity of Choice Hotel systems by applying knowledge of enterprise IT needs to design improved processes, ensuring functional requirements and non-functional requirements work together to create stable, scalable, and secure products.

A seasoned IT professional having 20+ years of experience who has a good understanding of various facets of IT business i.e. Technology, Product, Architecture, customer relations & Business goals. Currently leading a group of cloud automation professionals to plan & implement application migration solutions to target cloud using Infrastructure as a Code process. I am involved in building migration strategy to a leading financial organization which has a highly controlled IT environment.

Tim is Cloud Advisor at SICK helping the company with the Industry 4.0 shift focusing both on the topic itself as well on building up the corresponding organisation. Before he has worked for more than 15 years for 1&1, one of the biggest ISPs in europe in engineering and management. He started right after it went out of startup-mode and followed closely the transition to a global player in the hosting economy. In his last position he was responsible for the development of the first cloud solution hosting millions of customers.
During the years his focus shifted away from technology to collaboration topics and became an agile & devops enthusiast along this path.

Adam is software engineer, consultant and team lead since 8 years in Germany. His passions include technology, improving organisational culture, sharpening mindset and giving talks about his interests.
Currently Adam helps SICK, a successful traditional German hardware manufacturer, to do the shift with Industry 4.0. He is focusing on both the topic itself as well as building up the appropriate organisation.
Prior to SICK he worked for 1&1, one of the biggest ISPs in Europe, where he was responsible for the topic Order Management. Adam was significantly involved to switch to a new platform and introduced DevOps in that area.

Dr. Tonya M. Peterson, PfMP, PMP, LSSGB, CSM is a change facilitator, leader, and process improvement specialist within US Bancorp.  She has over 20-years of experience within the public and private sectors in the Information Systems area.  Her expertise encompasses PMO operations, portfolio, program, and project management, continuous improvement, quality direction, productivity metrics, instruction, leadership techniques, management practices, methodology alignment, and organizational efficiency.  She is proficient in capacity planning, technical guidance, strategic planning, resource management, and outsourcing.  Tonya is also an International Speaker, Author, Mentor, Consultant, Coach, and Instructor.

Tonya is goal-oriented individual who seeks to ensure value, benefits, and purpose are derived from investments and initiatives.  Tonya addresses improvement and innovation with through data driven decisions.  Tonya is excited to be here as she is driven to make a difference with each interaction

Keith Elder is the Senior Technology Evangelist at Quicken Loans, the nation’s largest online mortgage lender based in Detroit, MI. He is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer and all around geek. He has spoken throughout the United States at major technical conferences on topics ranging from various new technologies, software architectures and soft skills. For over 12 years he lead the Engineering Tools team as the Director of Software Engineering within Quicken Loans. When not sitting in front of a computer he spends the majority of his time as captain of the vessel Sea Sharp navigating the waters in the Gulf of Mexico in search of large pelagic fish. You can read more about Keith’s interests, hobbies, rants and raves on his blog at http://keithelder.net/ and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/keithelder.
You can click the button above to read my blog. If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to say hello through any of the social links below.
Also, if you are in the market for a new home or looking to refinance, here is a special link that will save you $500 on your closing costs with Quicken Loans just go here and start the loan process http://tinyurl.com/rocketmortgage . Enjoy!

IT Executive specialized in Enterprise Service Management, Portfolio Governance, Portfolio/Project Management, and Technology Business Management.  Donna is experienced in developing high performing teams in technology delivery operations, with a focus on dynamic team collaboration, agility, and continuous improvement.  Donna has worked with large scale enterprises including The Home Depot, Autotrader.com, and Cox Automotive, Inc.

Rustom K. Mody, P.E., is VP–Technical Excellence - Enterprise Technology for Baker Hughes Inc.

Rustom holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration in Finance. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas. USA.
He holds 18 patents and is the author of over 75 articles, technical presentations  and  publications. He has won numerous Meritorious Awards for Engineering Innovation. In all, he has more than 35 years of experience in drilling, completion and production

Rustom is an active member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), American Association of Drilling Engineers, International Association of Drilling Engineers (IADC), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and serves on various sub-committees of all three organizations. He  serves on the Board of Advisors at the following Universities and Industry organizations:

• Department of Energy “Material Genome Project” 2016
• Offshore Technology conference Advisory Board 2017
• Society of Petroleum Engineers Advisory Board 2017
• University of Houston “Energy Advisory Board” 2016 - present
• University of Oklahoma Engineering Department,  2008 - present
• University of Oklahoma Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geologic Engineering 2008-present
• Texas A&M TEES Executive Advisory Board 2012-present
•  “Pumps & Pipes”  an organization made up of professionals from Medicine, Aerospace and  Energy Industry. 2007 - present
• World Oil ShaleTech North America Conference 2011-present
• ASME Hydraulic Fracking Conference 2012

Recently he was appointed to serve on the advisory board of Council on Competitiveness Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative - Washington DC.

I'm helping Cox Automotive continuously enhance product offerings and get products to market as fast and reliable as possible. Through increased maturity in our Production Engineering discipline, we are helping our brands respond to ever-changing market conditions and continue leading the market.

Robin Yeman works for Lockheed Martin (LM) in Northern Virginia as a Lockheed Martin Fellow and an Agile Champion. She has over 20 years of experience in software and IT, across multiple business areas building everything from Satellites to Submarines. She has been actively supporting and leading Agile programs at Scale both domestically and internationally for the last 13 years with multiple certifications including SPC, CSM, CSP, PSM, PMP, PMI-ACP, INCOSE CSEP, and ITIL Practitioner. Robin has been actively driving DevOps into Lockheed Programs for the last 3 years and recently collaborated across all lines of business to develop and integrated delivery pipeline toolset known as Sparta to give new programs a jumpstart. She actively coaches and trains teams through in person coaching, Agile workshops, virtual training classes. She leads the Lockheed Martin's Agile Community of Practice and Center of Excellence, speaks at multiple conference engagements each year.   Robin received her Master's Degree in Software Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

I currently manage the SCM function and Release Management function. Responsibilities include managing source code repositories (TFS and subversion), software build services (Jenkins and TFS), software release automation using IBM Urbancode Deploy, and SCM metrics / key performance indicators.

Established automated application deployment methodologies to transform inconsistent manual deployments into a Continuous Delivery pipeline. Our team was instrumental in setting up "Infrastructure as Code" for Windows/Linux platforms as well as providing a platform for DevOps style collaboration.

My team is responsible for the delivery of 300+ heterogeneous applications (Windows and Linux) across multiple environments (DEV, QA, STG, PROD). Through the use of automation, we experienced a 90% reduction in the average deployment time. With limited staff, the implementation of a Continuous Delivery pipeline has resulted in 5x the number of production releases with a 99+% success rate. In addition to automation, we introduced a self-service model to allow Developers and QA to execute their own deployments, with a click of a button, increasing velocity to deliver and validate applications.

My team does 700 automated deployments a month to non-production (Dev, QA, STG) for both Linux and Windows. 90% are WCF Windows services. Additionally, we do 150 automated deployments a month to production.

Collaboration has been the key to accomplish the automation from end to end delivery (DevOps). I’ve developed the key partnerships across Software Development, Software Quality Assurance, Change management, and Core Operations to enable the partnerships to deliver this. Requested by IBM to present our Bridgepoint DevOps story at the Innovate 2014 IBM Technical Summit conference. The session was titled “Reaching a State of Deployment Nirvana at Bridgepoint Education with IBM UrbandCode Deploy” and was presented to 90 individuals.

Keep up with engineering technologies and working with development teams to implement continuous delivery pipelines for their applications.   Love coaching sports specifically soccer, and spending time with family.

Passionate leader dedicated to implementing DevOps in organizations from building out the functional team(s) to implementing the delivery pipelines for applications.  With over 13 years’ experience in SCM and DevOps roles.  Currently responsible for the Devops function as part of the software development group in the Talent & Reward Operations team.

Keep up with engineering technologies and working with development teams to implement continuous delivery pipelines for their applications.   Love coaching sports specifically soccer, and spending time with family.

Melissa Koehler is a leader in the CNN Digital technology team at Turner.  As Senior Director of Technology Portfolio Management and Delivery she is responsible for the successful technical implementation of the CNN Digital product portfolio from a resource, financial, scope, schedule, and quality assurance standpoint.  The portfolio comprises approximately 70 projects in flight at any point in time.  She manages a technology budget of approximately $20 million; including both dedicated labor and 3rd party relationships.  Her team of implementation managers, business analysts, program and project managers, and QA analysts totals approx. 60 resources. 
Melissa has her Bachelors of Business Administration in Marketing and an Executive MBA both from Kennesaw State University. In addition, she holds an IT Management certification from Georgia Tech. She is dedicated to helping women and this shows through her volunteer contributions with elementary girls and Ladies in Tech @ Turner which she is a co-founder.

What you really need to know about Melissa is her unique style that she brings into every situation.  She is passionate about helping others, finding creative and collaborative solutions, continous learning, and most of all to show kindness and empathy to problem solving.  Her management style is “The Golden Rule” and she likes to remind her team that we “work to live not live to work”.  To that end, she is blissfully married for 14 years to her hero of a husband Kevin (who is a fire fighter) and they have two very active boys, Jacob (11) and Joshua (8).

Lee Jennings is UPS Director of Information Technology.  In her role, Lee has responsibility for leading large scale technology programs that are powering UPS’ Smart Logistics Network via new and emerging technologies.

Lee joined UPS in 1986 as a Driver Service provider and has held various roles within UPS Package Operations and Information Technology organizations.  In 2013, Lee Joined the UPS Information Technology Operations Technology Group leading the systems development for UPS Hub Modernization strategy.  In 2016, Lee took on responsibility for the UPS Strategic Operations Technology Group where she currently has responsibility for critical technology initiatives that support UPS Global Small Package and Customer Brokerage Operations.

Lee earned her bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Louisville, Speed Scientific School.  She has also been a member of the Institute of Industrial and System Engineers.

Active in UPS’ Diversity and Inclusion program, Lee currently chairs the UPS Information Technology Women’s Business Resource Group. In this role, she leads a number of programs both internal and external to UPS that promote diversity and inclusion.

Chef is changing how companies build and deliver applications, services and infrastructure. Born with the DevOps movement, Chef has distilled the experiences of successful web innovators into patterns that characterize the DevOps workflow. These patterns have been incorporated into the Chef automation platform, making Chef your partner on the journey to DevOps. Alaska Airlines, Bloomberg, Facebook, Intuit, Microsoft, Standard Bank, and Yahoo are among hundreds of commercial customers worldwide using Chef to safely deliver applications, compliance policies, and infrastructure at velocity. The most enduring and transformative companies use Chef to become fast, efficient, and innovative software-driven organizations.

Mr. Forney is the Chief Security Architect for Schneider Electric and Technical Chair of the ISA Security Compliance Institute (ISCI) which develops the conformance specifications to the ISA 99/IEC 62443 ICS cyber security standard. He has held the Co-chair position for the Research and Development Sub-group of the Department of Homeland Security Industrial Control System Joint Working Group and is an active contributor in the ISA99 WG4 TG6 committee developing the IEC 62443-4-1 standard for secure software development. Paul has been a guest speaker on the subject of SDL and incident response in industrial control and cyber physical systems at national and international conferences for Microsoft, Gartner, SANS, ICSJWG, RCMP, S4, Codnomicon and Public Safety Canada. Paul works closely with the ICS-CERT organization on ICS cyber vulnerabilities and also with cyber researchers around the globe. Mr. Forney has been awarded eleven international patents for Internet Portal design and areas such as failure prediction for upstream Oil and Gas and collaboration technologies for the Power grid.  For twenty-six years he has been involved in the design, security and implementation of SCADA, Event Driven/Service Oriented Architecture (EDA/SOA) and distributed control software and systems for industrial automation. Paul is an active member of the Microsoft Advisory Board for Azure Active Directory and Azure Service Bus. He is certified Information Systems Security Professional –Information System Security Architect (CISSP-ISSAP), a certified Secure Software Lifecycle Professional (CSSLP) and an accomplished jazz musician.

Rajesh Wunnava is Senior Director of Product Management, Video Personalization for Gracenote – A Nielsen Company and the worldwide leader in entertainment data and Auto Content Recognition (ACR) technology working with the biggest TV providers, music services, CE manufacturers and automakers on the planet. In this role, he is responsible for product strategy, development and business planning related to Gracenote’s video personalization data products

Prior to joining Gracenote, Rajesh was Senior Director, Product Management at Warner Music Group where he owned responsibility for global product data driving product distribution and monetization. He played a key role in the company’s $750M acquisition of EMI Parlophone in Europe by leading product acquisition, integration and the global go-to-market execution. During his career, Rajesh has also worked and consulted for major brand advertisers and agencies including Procter & Gamble, Unilever and J. Walter Thompson/Mindshare handling multi-million dollar media planning and buying budgets.

Rajesh holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India in addition to an MBA from Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business where he also serves as an adjunct professor. He is a regular contributor to The Enterprisers Project, a collaboration between CIO Magazine, Harvard Business Review and Red Hat which brings together business and technology leaders to discuss how to create products that drive value in the digital world.

IT Executive specialized in Enterprise Service Management, Portfolio Governance, Portfolio/Project Management, and Technology Business Management.  Donna is experienced in developing high performing teams in technology delivery operations, with a focus on dynamic team collaboration, agility, and continuous improvement.  Donna has worked with large scale enterprises including The Home Depot, Autotrader.com, and Cox Automotive, Inc.

As the Director of Innovation Programs and Strategy at Cisco’s Corporate Strategic Innovation Group, Alex Goryachev leads a team responsible for driving co-innovation through the company’s ecosystem of its Cisco Innovation Center Program, entrepreneur partner community, and company employees.  In addition, Mr. Goryachev is responsible for driving Cisco’s global Innovation Grand Challenges and overseeing Cisco Technology Radar, which identifies emerging technology transitions to shape internal and external innovation strategies.

Prior to assuming his current position, Mr. Goryachev was Director of the Cisco Innovation Center Program, an initiative he launched in 2013 and that has grown it into nine development hubs in major cities worldwide.  At these hubs, Cisco brings together customers, partners, startups, accelerators, governments, research communities and universities in a lab setting to discover, develop and implement game-changing, outcome-based solutions in vertical markets.

Since joining Cisco in 2004, Mr. Goryachev has also held key roles in defining and operationalizing several high-profile Cisco initiatives, such as development of the company’s Country Transformation plan, which included leading the Country Transformation plan for Cisco in Russia. He also held senior roles in development, marketing, finance and channels organizations at Cisco.

Prior to Cisco, Mr. Goryachev had a successful consulting career with extended assignments at Napster, Liquid Audio, IBM Global Services and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. 

Alex Goryachev holds a masters degree in international economics from the Moscow Institute of Social Sciences. His awards include the IDC Award for Best Practices in Marketing Dashboard Development.

Patrick Lurlay is a senior-level security professional combining an MBA with over 20 years of multi-industry experience in enterprise scale software development projects

Received her MSC degree in 1996 from the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Joined Ericsson 1998 and worked with system design for radio telecom networks. During 15 years she was responsible for software development and system development organizations driving change to obtain organizations characterized of efficiency and effectiveness by introducing agile methods and continuous practices. Moved on to being responsible for infrastructure and service development of Ericsson’s new business segment, ICT centers. Since 2016 working on Ericsson DevOps strategy. In her spare time she enjoys skiing with her family and renovating their home and summer house.

She starts every work day with 2 hours in the gym/SPA to prepare herself for any possible situation at work.

She spends most of her spare time (& money) supporting her son reaching his goal of competing in the world champs in downhill skiing. Especially now that he undergoes leukemia treatment.

IT Executive specialized in Enterprise Service Management, Portfolio Governance, Portfolio/Project Management, and Technology Business Management.  Donna is experienced in developing high performing teams in technology delivery operations, with a focus on dynamic team collaboration, agility, and continuous improvement.  Donna has worked with large scale enterprises including The Home Depot, Autotrader.com, and Cox Automotive, Inc.

For over a decade, Bob Ready has never strayed far from technology in both career and education. Working in both consumer and enterprise IT environments and focusing on biological data science, his life has revolved around using technology to find the next, better way to do … anything. Currently the head of a DevOps team at INTL FCStone in Des Moines, Iowa, Bob focuses on pursuit of process improvement and ruthless elimination of the parts of IT jobs that suck. Late-night phone calls, marathon update weekends, war rooms for massive deployments … why wouldn’t we try to figure out how to avoid this stuff?

Brandon Every is a software engineer who works for Klarna focused on consumer facing products. Brandon is passionate about web development and collaborative work environments that empower teams to make great products. Before starting at Klarna, Brandon was a lead developer for Victoria's Secret and before that a consultant at Sogeti USA. Brandon holds a Bachelor of Science in Game and Simulation Programming from DeVry University and an Associates of Applied Science in Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology from Zane State College.

Heading Developer Experience at PayPal, responsible for full stack and micro-services in java and node. Envisioned and delivered several engineering tools including: application life cycle management, CI, build, compilers, dev-test environments for numerous engineering productivity initiatives, which reduced engineering waste time by 30-40% while modernizing the technology stack for public and private clouds by leveraging micro services, cloud functions, mesos, docker, container-based deployments, and CI/CD rail

Serves as the Lead Architect

• Leading the Information Management and Big Data strategy, technical innovation & evaluation, analytic capabilities to enable Data/Intelligent Driven infrastructure and business at MasterCard.
• Leading New Generation Enterprise Monitoring, Metrics and Analytics as a Service capabilities to enable future infrastructure platform (PaaS) at MasterCard.

Daniel Tobin has over 15 years of experience in the creation and deployment of solutions protecting networks, systems and information assets with a focus on providing the best value from solutions deployed. Daniel has a Masters of Science in Networking and Telecommunications from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently the Director of InfraOps at Addepar overseeing Security, DevOps and IT. Twitter:@dant24

Wilmar Minke heads up two IT departments with DevOps Teams that develop and maintain global online banking solutions for ING Wholesale Bank.
As such Wilmar is responsible for building capability, professional development, work force planning, talent acquisition and staff management of two departments, together comprising ~70 highly professional and experienced Engineers in Amsterdam, Germany, Poland and also in Asia.

Before that, within ING Domestic Bank, Wilmar used to manage the department that develops and maintains the ING Core Bank Loans software systems, maintains all Environments for the entire Core Bank (Loans, Savings and Current Accounts), started development of API's as connectivity solutions for the Core Bank system to ING Channels (My ING, Mobile, etc) and provides Continuous Integration as well as Continuous Delivery solutions to the Core Bank.

Before joining ING, Wilmar has worked for Capgemini, the first 10 years in The Netherlands and from 2007 until early 2011 in Australia, where he became Service Line Manager Application Development & Integration for Capgemini, which made him responsible for professional development, strategy, forecasting and staff management of ~75 Project Managers, Business Analysts, System Analysts, Designers, Developers and Testers in Australia and ~25 in India.

Ting Cosper is leading the DevOps journey at Freedom Mortgage Co. Long before continuous integration was a hot topic, he was designing and building both Microsoft and Novell networks. He was an innovator in the computer systems validation field at Bristol Myers Squibb and eventually moved into the operational space at TD Bank, where he focused on Internet Banking and Enterprise Availability. Nowadays he leads Enterprise Change Management, DevOps, Enterprise Monitoring, Performance Testing and Operational Test Automation teams and is a go-to guy for delivering enterprise solutions.

Having joined almost straight out of college, Karan is now the Lead Developer of the Accounting Services and Price Valuation division at Putnam Investments. A product development enthusiast passionate about technology in the financial services industry, he helped set up the first AI assisted product at the company. He enjoys participating in events in the FinTech space and collaborating with fellow enthusiasts. In his free time,  Karan is a soccer enthusiast and an active volunteer with Boston Partners in Education and Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

Siqi Zhang is a member of Aladdin Product Group at BlackRock Inc, the world's biggest Asset Management company. She has worked on a various products on the Aladdin platform including Reporting Tools, Workflow, Dashboard and multiple servers. Ms Zhang has a focus on Business Operations and product strategy on the framework. She graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a Master Degree of Computer Networks.

Alison Kuo Sullivan brings over 15 years of big data product management, analytic solution sales and go-to-market expertise. As a visionary strategist who identifies, develops, and delivers analytical solutions to market for organic sales pipeline growth and optimized revenue, she is a trusted partner and resource to company and customer executives. Leading process, planning, and infrastructure to sustain focus on customer and market requirements throughout the product life cycle, she enables the rapid growth of sales pipelines to deliver sustainable growth. From her insights, strategies, and guidance, Alison led the development of numerous repeatable cross-vertical and global solutions, along with go-to-market and channel partner strategies, that resulted in initial $50MM+ pipelines, account for 100MM+ in annual revenue, and position the company as a thought leader.
Alison is Elevada’s CMO and heads up marketing and sales. She.is a loyal and forever optimistic Golden Bear’s alum and fan. She later completed her MBA and MHA degrees from Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business and Institute of Health Administration. Alison is committed to community service where she serves on a variety of charitable organizations. She lives in San Diego with her husband and three children.

Patricia Srebrnic has worked for TD Bank Financial group for over 20 years having held various and progressively more senior positions.  For the last several years Patricia has held the position of Senior Manager Strategic Change Delivery and Management.  Mrs. Srebrnic received her undergraduate degree from Western University.  Mrs. Srebrnic is a Payments and Central Market Infrastructure subject matter expert as such attends and represents the TD Bank as a delegate at various Canadian Banking Industry meetings and forums.  Patricia is a certified facilitator for Taking the Stage (Judith Humphrey's group) which is part of TD's Women in Leadership initiative.  Patricia has delivered this course extensively in Canada, USA, London and Singapore. Patricia is a mentor with TRIEC-Toronto Region Immigrant Employment Council, a member of Women in Capital Markets and Women in Payments.  Patricia is also an active participant in Women in Leadership at TD Bank.

As the Director of DevOps at Ipreo, Lee Eason is serious about high-performing teams.  As his responsibilities changed over his career from a hands on developer into a director, he saw first-hand the waste and drop in quality that results from siloed organizations.  This led to him committing his career to enabling teams to own their applications end to end.  You can read Lee’s articles on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @leejeason.

Rustom K. Mody, P.E., is VP–Technical Excellence - Enterprise Technology for Baker Hughes Inc.

Rustom holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration in Finance. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texas. USA.
He holds 18 patents and is the author of over 75 articles, technical presentations  and  publications. He has won numerous Meritorious Awards for Engineering Innovation. In all, he has more than 35 years of experience in drilling, completion and production

Rustom is an active member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), American Association of Drilling Engineers, International Association of Drilling Engineers (IADC), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and serves on various sub-committees of all three organizations. He  serves on the Board of Advisors at the following Universities and Industry organizations:

• Department of Energy “Material Genome Project” 2016
• Offshore Technology conference Advisory Board 2017
• Society of Petroleum Engineers Advisory Board 2017
• University of Houston “Energy Advisory Board” 2016 - present
• University of Oklahoma Engineering Department,  2008 - present
• University of Oklahoma Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geologic Engineering 2008-present
• Texas A&M TEES Executive Advisory Board 2012-present
•  “Pumps & Pipes”  an organization made up of professionals from Medicine, Aerospace and  Energy Industry. 2007 - present
• World Oil ShaleTech North America Conference 2011-present
• ASME Hydraulic Fracking Conference 2012

Recently he was appointed to serve on the advisory board of Council on Competitiveness Technology Leadership and Strategy Initiative - Washington DC.

Dr. Tonya M. Peterson, PfMP, PMP, LSSGB, CSM is a Sr. Project Portfolio Manager for the enterprise technology team within US Bancorp responsible for strategic leadership, portfolio management, process improvement, methodology direction, resource management, and project management. Tonya is also a Mentor, Consultant, Coach, and Instructor. She has over 20-years of experience within the public and private sectors in the Information Systems area. Her expertise encompasses PMO operations, portfolio, program, and project management, continuous improvement, quality direction, productivity metrics, instruction, and organizational efficiency. She is proficient in capacity planning, technical guidance, strategic planning, and outsourcing. Tonya is writing her first two manuscripts on influencing project success and building a leadership organization

Throughout her career Angela has held various roles starting as a junior developer in the industry and moving into different roles as a development lead, project manager, development manager and managing director.  Angela has owned 13 different core platforms in banking including a payments gateway, ATM’s and Business Banking websites.  Angela led the wires rewrite program at BMO which was awarded the Best Corporate Payments System/Service Initiative at the 2016 Banking Technology Awards.

Angela’s current focus is on leading the Agile Centre of Excellence along with enabling the DevOps capabilities for BMO, which will enables BMO to digitize their SDLC.

Griffin is the Director of Engineering at Enova International. He is responsible for the engineering organization, handling all aspect of software development including recruiting, staffing, allocation and people management across the organization. While supporting 6 Global Lending Brands, generating >$750m in revenue, he ensures a clear technology vision across the organization. Previously his frank attitude and know-how have served him well as consulting CTO for more than 20 different companies.  He is the founder of the Chicago CTO forum and several other meet-up activity groups that help software professionals in the Chicago area to network and trade ideas.

Keith Elder is the Senior Technology Evangelist at Quicken Loans, the nation’s largest online mortgage lender based in Detroit, MI. He is an experienced technologist, systems administrator, software engineer, speaker, trainer and all around geek. He has spoken throughout the United States at major technical conferences on topics ranging from various new technologies, software architectures and soft skills. For over 12 years he lead the Engineering Tools team as the Director of Software Engineering within Quicken Loans. When not sitting in front of a computer he spends the majority of his time as captain of the vessel Sea Sharp navigating the waters in the Gulf of Mexico in search of large pelagic fish. You can read more about Keith’s interests, hobbies, rants and raves on his blog at http://keithelder.net/ and follow him on twitter at http://twitter.com/keithelder.
You can click the button above to read my blog. If you’d like to get in touch, feel free to say hello through any of the social links below.
Also, if you are in the market for a new home or looking to refinance, here is a special link that will save you $500 on your closing costs with Quicken Loans just go here and start the loan process http://tinyurl.com/rocketmortgage . Enjoy!

Leading a high performing team of ~50 DevOps Engineers, SDET’s, Scum Masters and Agile Coaches in the adoption of SAFe agile practices across multiple Operation and Technology portfolios driving transformation of application development teams to automation engineers. Engaged directly with executive business and IT leadership team members to define strategic goals and objectives across the enterprise. Managed operating budget of $10M annually.

As Director of Technology at Fannie Mae I lead a Tribe of DevOps Engineers, Software Engineers, Testers, Scrum Masters, Project Managers, and Portfolio Managers focused on delivering high quality software and technology services to our business partners in the Capital Markets, Finance, Treasury Services and Loan Conduit communities. I help our executive leaders take advantage of Agile and DevOps practices to drive down time to market, increase quality, and enable flexibility.

Dr. Tonya M. Peterson, PfMP, PMP, LSSGB, CSM is a Sr. Project Portfolio Manager for the enterprise technology team within US Bancorp responsible for strategic leadership, portfolio management, process improvement, methodology direction, resource management, and project management. Tonya is also a Mentor, Consultant, Coach, and Instructor. She has over 20-years of experience within the public and private sectors in the Information Systems area. Her expertise encompasses PMO operations, portfolio, program, and project management, continuous improvement, quality direction, productivity metrics, instruction, and organizational efficiency. She is proficient in capacity planning, technical guidance, strategic planning, and outsourcing. Tonya is writing her first two manuscripts on influencing project success and building a leadership organization

Shaun Childers has over 20 years of experience in product and software development. A veteran consultant with deep technical knowledge and experience, Shaun knows what it takes for a company to survive in today's ultra-competitive world, one where organizations struggle with issues related to the strategic management as well as the tactical execution of product development. Having expertise in organization design, team organization, Agile, Lean, and product development, Shaun understands that business and enterprise agility demands change at the team and organization levels, leadership development and coaching, a new operating model, a new funding model, changes to the organization structure, a new approach to demand management (demand and capacity planning), a focus on products and product development, a new Business and IT relationship, and a new culture. Today Shaun spends his time as a product development leader and coach, helping USAA implement a mature, industry-based product development and management practice.

I Graduated with a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from UC San Diego. For the past 20 years I have worked in software engineering with many technology and financial companies in the San Francisco Bay Area; including Charles Schwab, VMWare, Electronic Arts and BlackRock. For the past 10 years I have worked several different roles within BlackRock. I lead projects to develop IT applications used by developer and managers, authentication systems, applications to secure documents. I am currently working in retail tech to build financial web based applications used by financial professionals.

I have been working in financial services for the past 22 years in the debt collections space.  My background is in software engineering, specifically as a full stack Java and .NET software engineer.  I have managed organizations ranging from Solution Architecture, Software Development, DevOps and vendor management.  I am currently responsible for the global DevOps team at Encore Capital Group.  DevOps at Encore is comprised of the Middleware Integration Systems and the Application Lifecycle Management teams which are located in the US, India and Costa Rica.  My passion is in automation and working smarter, not harder.  DevOps teams are in a unique position right now to push new innovations, and I am excited to be on the forefront of that!

As part of Scotiabank's Digital Transformation Strategy, I have spent the last 5 months helping kick-off our Digital Factory in Colombia. The people I have met are very motivated and ready to take on this challenge! My role has been to support to Head of Digital Factory in a variety of activities such as: recruitment, training, setting up global communities of practice, and enabling faster results.

And recently, I was given the role of Agile Lead supporting a team of three Scrum Masters and one Agile Lead and it has been a tremendous learning experience.

Dave has been in the IT industry for 33 years.  Currently he leads a DevOps group in the Financial Crimes area of U.S. Bank.  He has been with U.S. Bank for 22 years.  Most of this time has been spent in the application development area overseeing groups in the Commercial, Consumer, Trust, Check Processing, Branch, and Indirect Lending domains along with some time in Enterprise Architecture.  Prior this he spent 11 years with IBM as a systems engineer and consultant for national clients in the areas of application development tools, process re-engineering, and knowledge systems.

Arneh Eskandari has been a Technical Engineer with Redgate for over six years. During this time, he has worked with hundreds of organizations from fintech start-ups to large financial institutions within the Fortune 100. He specializes in supporting clients with Database DevOps and improving their overall database change management process. His experience in the financial services industry in particular, includes helping leading organizations overcome complex legacy databases, integrate new tools and processes across multiple teams, and deliver proof of concepts to senior executives.

Patrick Lurlay is a senior-level security professional combining an MBA with over 20 years of multi-industry experience in enterprise scale software development projects

Throughout her career Angela has held various roles starting as a junior developer in the industry and moving into different roles as a development lead, project manager, development manager and managing director.  Angela has owned 13 different core platforms in banking including a payments gateway, ATM’s and Business Banking websites.  Angela led the wires rewrite program at BMO which was awarded the Best Corporate Payments System/Service Initiative at the 2016 Banking Technology Awards.

Angela’s current focus is on leading the Agile Centre of Excellence along with enabling the DevOps capabilities for BMO, which will enables BMO to digitize their SDLC.

Received her MSC degree in 1996 from the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Joined Ericsson 1998 and worked with system design for radio telecom networks. During 15 years she was responsible for software development and system development organizations driving change to obtain organizations characterized of efficiency and effectiveness by introducing agile methods and continuous practices. Moved on to being responsible for infrastructure and service development of Ericsson’s new business segment, ICT centers. Since 2016 working on Ericsson DevOps strategy. In her spare time she enjoys skiing with her family and renovating their home and summer house.

She starts every work day with 2 hours in the gym/SPA to prepare herself for any possible situation at work.

She spends most of her spare time (& money) supporting her son reaching his goal of competing in the world champs in downhill skiing. Especially now that he undergoes leukemia treatment.

Throughout her career Angela has held various roles starting as a junior developer in the industry and moving into different roles as a development lead, project manager, development manager and managing director.  Angela has owned 13 different core platforms in banking including a payments gateway, ATM’s and Business Banking websites.  Angela led the wires rewrite program at BMO which was awarded the Best Corporate Payments System/Service Initiative at the 2016 Banking Technology Awards.

Angela’s current focus is on leading the Agile Centre of Excellence along with enabling the DevOps capabilities for BMO, which will enables BMO to digitize their SDLC.