As founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Techstrong Group, Alan manages a broad array of businesses and brands including Techstrong Media, Techstrong Live, Techstrong Research, Devops.com, Security Boulevard, Techstrong TV, and Techstrong Learning. To do so and succeed, Alan has to be attuned to the world of technology, particularly DevOps, cybersecurity, cloud-native and digital transformation.
With almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, Alan has been instrumental in the success of several organizations.
Shimel is an often-cited personality in the security and technology community and is a sought-after speaker at conferences and events. In addition to his writing, his DevOps Chat podcast, TechStrong TV and Digital Anarchist audio and video appearances are widely followed.
Alan attributes his success to the combination of a strong business background and a deep knowledge of technology. His legal background, long experience in the field and New York street smarts combine to form a unique personality.
Mr. Shimel is a graduate of St. John's University with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics, and holds a JD degree from NY Law School.
With almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, Alan has been instrumental in the success of several organizations.
Shimel is an often-cited personality in the security and technology community and is a sought-after speaker at conferences and events. In addition to his writing, his DevOps Chat podcast, TechStrong TV and Digital Anarchist audio and video appearances are widely followed.
Alan attributes his success to the combination of a strong business background and a deep knowledge of technology. His legal background, long experience in the field and New York street smarts combine to form a unique personality.
Mr. Shimel is a graduate of St. John's University with a Bachelor of Arts in Government and Politics, and holds a JD degree from NY Law School.
Howard has spent most of the last five years consulting with the Fortune 500 and governments around the world on strategy and digital transformation, helping organizations get the most from their tech spend and transition from cost centers to transformation leaders in their organizations.
Currently, Howard is the CTO of an engineering research firm and runs the advisory portion of the business. He works with end user executives on strategic planning and technology vendors on market direction and how to reach their ideal customer.
Currently, Howard is the CTO of an engineering research firm and runs the advisory portion of the business. He works with end user executives on strategic planning and technology vendors on market direction and how to reach their ideal customer.
Paige Cruz is a senior developer advocate at Chronosphere and is passionate about cultivating sustainable on-call practices and bringing folks their 'Aha!' moment with observability. She started as a software engineer at New Relic before switching to site reliability engineering, holding the pager for InVision, Lightstep and Weedmaps. Off the clock, you can find her spinning yarn, swooning over alpacas or watching trash TV on Bravo.
A lifelong learner turned developer advocate, Adrian is a network engineer at heart who loves technology, especially automation and network programmability. In his current role, he covers everything developer-related for enterprise networking and multi-domain technologies and also enjoys helping, mentoring and meeting new people.
Sanjeev is an established thought leader in the areas of cloud, big data and analytics. He researches and advises on changing trends and technologies in modern cloud data architectures. Until recently, he was a Gartner vice president known for his prolific and detailed research, and for directing the data and analytics agenda. Now a principal at SanjMo, he provides advisory and consulting services, covering modern data architectures, governance, DataOps, data products and observability. He regularly presents on topics pertaining to end-to-end data pipelines and helps businesses discover what their data can do for them.
Mikaela Pisani is a computer engineer with a Master's in Data Science. She is currently the chief data scientist and head of machine learning at Rootstrap. This award-winning custom software development agency has built web and mobile apps for startups, publicly traded companies and public figures.
She also runs Girls In Tech Uruguay, a global non-profit organization focused on the engagement, education, and empowerment of women and girls in tech, as well as educating children on STEAM. Mikaela is a member of a community of girls in AI called AI Wonder Girls and is also on the AI Research team at ORT University in Montevideo, Uruguay.
In addition, Mikaela plays a key role as part of the interdisciplinary group ANT. ANT aims to create artistic devices by integrating its three core disciplines - Art, Neuroscience and Technology. She also is part of Fibras, a community that supports projects using technology as a platform to generate social Impact.
For all her contributions in STEM, she won the Globant Award ¨Women That Build¨ and was selected as a finalist in Women In Tech awards under the category ¨Global AI Inclusion¨.
She’s also been featured in several publications, most recently with LifeWire, BBC news and MKAI, regarding AI. She has spoken at some conferences and events, including Women in Tech Global Conference, ValleyML, and Airflow Summit.
She also runs Girls In Tech Uruguay, a global non-profit organization focused on the engagement, education, and empowerment of women and girls in tech, as well as educating children on STEAM. Mikaela is a member of a community of girls in AI called AI Wonder Girls and is also on the AI Research team at ORT University in Montevideo, Uruguay.
In addition, Mikaela plays a key role as part of the interdisciplinary group ANT. ANT aims to create artistic devices by integrating its three core disciplines - Art, Neuroscience and Technology. She also is part of Fibras, a community that supports projects using technology as a platform to generate social Impact.
For all her contributions in STEM, she won the Globant Award ¨Women That Build¨ and was selected as a finalist in Women In Tech awards under the category ¨Global AI Inclusion¨.
She’s also been featured in several publications, most recently with LifeWire, BBC news and MKAI, regarding AI. She has spoken at some conferences and events, including Women in Tech Global Conference, ValleyML, and Airflow Summit.
John Willis has worked in the IT management industry for more than 35 years. John is currently working as a distinguished researcher at Kosli. He is researching DevOps, DevSecOps, IT risk, modern governance and audit compliance. Previously he was an Evangelist at Docker Inc., VP of solutions for Socketplane (sold to Docker) and Enstratius (sold to Dell), and VP of training and services at Opscode where he formalized the training, evangelism, and professional services functions at the firm. Willis also founded Gulf Breeze Software, an award winning IBM business partner, which specializes in deploying Tivoli technology for the enterprise. Willis has authored six IBM Redbooks for IBM on enterprise systems management and was the founder and chief architect at Chain Bridge Systems. https://itrevolution.com/author/john-willis/
Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director at Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as editor-in-chief at CRN and InfoWorld.
Bonnie Schneider is a Sustainability and Climate Contributor for Techstrong.tv, Bonnie is the author of the new book, Taking the Heat: How Climate Change is Affecting Your Mind, Body & Spirit, and What You Can Do About It, (Simon & Schuster ) and Weather & Wellness©, successfully launching its original video content focusing on climate change and health. Bonnie has shared her insight and expertise on everything from hurricanes to snowstorms as an on-camera meteorologist for MSNBC, CNN, HLN, Bloomberg TV, and The Weather Channel. Bonnie has over 260k followers on her social platforms.
Denis has extensive experience helping highly regulated institutions across Europe and North America deliver mission-critical digital platforms, products and automated infrastructure. He founded NetraScale in 2014 with the aim of delivering high-impact cloud-native architecture and implementation services for cross-sector clients and recently expanded the business to build niche SaaS-based fintech, regtech and compliance solutions, leveraging his practical knowledge of cybersecurity, risk management, operational resilience and data-driven technologies. Denis has a proven track record of assembling high-grade teams, building strong stakeholder relationships across the value chain and solving complex technical and operational problems. He is a firm advocate for design thinking, Agile-Lean principles and sustainable innovation. In his spare time, he enjoys organizing interactive tech talks, panel discussions and coding hackathons.
Roman is the co-founder and SVP of products at Xage Security - the zero-trust real-world cybersecurity company. Prior to Xage, Roman held vice president of product and engineering roles at ABB, Tropos Networks and Mimosa Networks solving networking, security and data analytics challenges for industrial and commercial enterprises enabling millions of IoT devices in production today. Earlier in his career, Roman developed the first generation of content distribution networks (CDN) and secure proxy servers at Blue Coat Systems (Symantec). Roman holds a Bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics with an emphasis in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from Columbia University.
Jon Arnold is the principal of J. Arnold and Associates, an independent analyst providing thought leadership and go-to-market counsel with a focus on the business-level impact of communications technologies on digital transformation. Core areas of his expertise include unified communications, collaboration, team messaging, cloud services (UCaaS/CPaaS/CCaaS), AI, automatic speech recognition (ASR), future of work, contact centers, customer experience, video, VoIP and social media.
He has been consulting in many of these areas since 2001, starting as an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, and his independent practice was founded in 2005. JAA is based in Toronto, Ontario, and serves clients across North America as well as in Europe.
Jon’s thought leadership can be followed on his widely-read JAA’s Analyst Blog, along with daily commentary on Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, Jon produces a monthly podcast - Watch This Space – which is a regular feature in his monthly newsletter, JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review.
He served as a judge for the Voice Summit 2019 Awards, and has been a Best in Biz Awards International judge since 2016. Also in 2019, Jon was named a “Top 50 Unified Comms Influencer”, and a “Top 30 Contact Center Influencer”. In 2018, Jon was included in a listing of “Top 10 Telecoms Influencers”, and “TOP VoIP Bloggers to Follow”.
He has been consulting about these technologies since 2001, and contributes to publishers and portals such as UCStrategies, Ziff Davis/VoIP News, TechTarget and Internet Telephony Magazine. Jon is frequently cited in the media, speaks regularly at industry events, and is an active member of the SCTC.
He has been consulting in many of these areas since 2001, starting as an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, and his independent practice was founded in 2005. JAA is based in Toronto, Ontario, and serves clients across North America as well as in Europe.
Jon’s thought leadership can be followed on his widely-read JAA’s Analyst Blog, along with daily commentary on Twitter and LinkedIn. In addition, Jon produces a monthly podcast - Watch This Space – which is a regular feature in his monthly newsletter, JAA’s Communications and Collaboration Review.
He served as a judge for the Voice Summit 2019 Awards, and has been a Best in Biz Awards International judge since 2016. Also in 2019, Jon was named a “Top 50 Unified Comms Influencer”, and a “Top 30 Contact Center Influencer”. In 2018, Jon was included in a listing of “Top 10 Telecoms Influencers”, and “TOP VoIP Bloggers to Follow”.
He has been consulting about these technologies since 2001, and contributes to publishers and portals such as UCStrategies, Ziff Davis/VoIP News, TechTarget and Internet Telephony Magazine. Jon is frequently cited in the media, speaks regularly at industry events, and is an active member of the SCTC.
Mike Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist with over 25 years of experience. He also contributed to IT Business Edge, Channel Insider, Baseline and a variety of other IT titles. Previously, Vizard was the editorial director at Ziff-Davis Enterprise as well as editor-in-chief at CRN and InfoWorld.
I have successfully led transformations to business agility in regulated environments at 4 global companies. I have the fortune to work with executives in some of the largest companies in the world to share my experiences. I'm an expert in bringing efficiencies and effectiveness into the entire organization, including creating streamlined end-to-end business processes to optimize flow. I currently am a member of CHIEF, Forbes Technology Council, Change and Transformation Council, and the VSM Consortium Board. I also authored ""Modern Business Management: Creating a Built-to-Change Organization"".
ValueOps is a new approach to data-driven decision-making that connects your business operations and technology functions together to drive business outcomes. By successfully employing ValueOps, your teams can build a new level of transparency, traction and trust that drives collaboration across departments. This will allow your teams to maximize resources and align efforts toward delivering meaningful business outcomes.
Outside of work, you'll find me traveling the globe and satiating my voracious appetite to learn new things. I love science, science fiction, and learning about people and cultures.
You can learn more about Broadcom Software, Value Stream Management, and ValueOps by clicking the below links in the ‘Featured’ section. Please don’t hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn if I can be of assistance
ValueOps is a new approach to data-driven decision-making that connects your business operations and technology functions together to drive business outcomes. By successfully employing ValueOps, your teams can build a new level of transparency, traction and trust that drives collaboration across departments. This will allow your teams to maximize resources and align efforts toward delivering meaningful business outcomes.
Outside of work, you'll find me traveling the globe and satiating my voracious appetite to learn new things. I love science, science fiction, and learning about people and cultures.
You can learn more about Broadcom Software, Value Stream Management, and ValueOps by clicking the below links in the ‘Featured’ section. Please don’t hesitate to connect with me on LinkedIn if I can be of assistance
Caroline Wong is the chief strategy officer at Cobalt. She has 15+ years of cybersecurity leadership, including practitioner, product and consulting roles. Caroline authored the popular textbook, Security Metrics: A Beginner's Guide. She teachers cybersecurity courses on LinkedIn Learning and hosts the Humans of InfoSec podcast.
Andy is the Advisory CISO at Orca Security. He is the Operating Partner at cybersecurity venture capital firm, YL Ventures, and is an advisor to several cyber security startups, including Vulcan, Uptycs, Grip, Perygee, Vendict, Valence, Piiano, and Eureka. He is the founder and CEO of Duha, a leadership development company that focuses on bringing training to people earlier in their careers, and is writing a book on leadership. Andy writes the Straight Up Security column for CSO Online.
Andy Ellis is a seasoned technology and business executive with deep expertise in security, managing risk, and leading an inclusive culture. A graduate of MIT and former US Air Force officer, Andy designed, built, and brought to market many of Akamai’s security products. His leadership helped propel the Fortune 1000 company from its start as a content delivery network into an industry powerhouse with a billion-dollar dedicated cybersecurity business. In his twenty-year tenure, Andy led Akamai’s information security organization from a single individual to a 90+ person team, over 40% of whom were women. In running Akamai’s security program, Andy designed systems, governed risk management, implemented policy, and supported go-to-market functions. Widely respected across the cybersecurity industry for his pragmatic approach to aligning security and business needs, Andy regularly speaks and writes on cybersecurity, leadership, diversity & inclusion, and decision-making.
Long active in internet policy and governance circles, Andy supported Akamai CEOs in roles on the NIAC and NSTAC, as well as directly served on the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council. A recognized thought leader on security issues, Andy has spoken at conferences like RSA and Business of Software, and lectured at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Army War College, BC Law, and the MIT Sloan School.
Andy has received a wide variety of accolades, including the CSO Compass Award, Air Force Commendation Medal, Spirit of Disneyland Award, Wine Spectator Award of Excellence (for The Arlington Inn), and was the winner of the Sherman Oaks Galleria Spelling Bee. He was inducted into the CSO Hall of Fame in 2021.
He currently serves on Harvard University’s Visiting Committee to IT. After receiving a degree in computer science from MIT, Andy served as an officer in the United States Air Force with the 609th Information Warfare Squadron and the Electronic Systems Center.
Andy Ellis is a seasoned technology and business executive with deep expertise in security, managing risk, and leading an inclusive culture. A graduate of MIT and former US Air Force officer, Andy designed, built, and brought to market many of Akamai’s security products. His leadership helped propel the Fortune 1000 company from its start as a content delivery network into an industry powerhouse with a billion-dollar dedicated cybersecurity business. In his twenty-year tenure, Andy led Akamai’s information security organization from a single individual to a 90+ person team, over 40% of whom were women. In running Akamai’s security program, Andy designed systems, governed risk management, implemented policy, and supported go-to-market functions. Widely respected across the cybersecurity industry for his pragmatic approach to aligning security and business needs, Andy regularly speaks and writes on cybersecurity, leadership, diversity & inclusion, and decision-making.
Long active in internet policy and governance circles, Andy supported Akamai CEOs in roles on the NIAC and NSTAC, as well as directly served on the FCC’s Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council. A recognized thought leader on security issues, Andy has spoken at conferences like RSA and Business of Software, and lectured at the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, Army War College, BC Law, and the MIT Sloan School.
Andy has received a wide variety of accolades, including the CSO Compass Award, Air Force Commendation Medal, Spirit of Disneyland Award, Wine Spectator Award of Excellence (for The Arlington Inn), and was the winner of the Sherman Oaks Galleria Spelling Bee. He was inducted into the CSO Hall of Fame in 2021.
He currently serves on Harvard University’s Visiting Committee to IT. After receiving a degree in computer science from MIT, Andy served as an officer in the United States Air Force with the 609th Information Warfare Squadron and the Electronic Systems Center.
Adam is a leading expert on threat modeling and a consultant, expert witness, author and game designer. He has decades of experience delivering security. His experience ranges across the business world from founding startups to nearly a decade at Microsoft.
His accomplishments include:
- Helped create the CVE and is now an Emeritus member of the advisory board.
- Fixed Autorun for hundreds of millions of systems
- Led the design and delivery of the Microsoft SDL Threat Modeling Tool (v3)
- Created the elevation of privilege threat modeling game
- Wrote Threat Modeling: Designing for Security and Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn from Star Wars
- Co-authored The New School of Information Security
Beyond consulting and training, Shostack serves as a member of the Blackhat Review Board, an advisor to a variety of companies and academic institutions and as an Affiliate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.
His accomplishments include:
- Helped create the CVE and is now an Emeritus member of the advisory board.
- Fixed Autorun for hundreds of millions of systems
- Led the design and delivery of the Microsoft SDL Threat Modeling Tool (v3)
- Created the elevation of privilege threat modeling game
- Wrote Threat Modeling: Designing for Security and Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn from Star Wars
- Co-authored The New School of Information Security
Beyond consulting and training, Shostack serves as a member of the Blackhat Review Board, an advisor to a variety of companies and academic institutions and as an Affiliate Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.
Mostafa Radwan is a technology consultant focused on cloud and cloud-native technologies. He started his career as a Java software engineer before getting in the trenches of application and production support. For the past several years he has been helping enterprises adopt DevOps and cloud-native technologies to drive better business outcomes. When not tinkering with technology or serving clients, Mostafa likes to read, bike, and travel the world with his family.
Jason Bloomberg is a leading IT industry analyst, author, keynote speaker and globally recognized expert on multiple disruptive trends in enterprise technology and digital transformation. He is a leading social amplifier in Onalytica’s Who’s Who in Cloud? for 2022 and was named in the Top 50 Agile Leaders of 2022 by Team leadersHum. He was ranked among the top nine low-code analysts on the Influencer50 Low-Code50 Study for 2019, #5 on Onalytica’s list of top digital transformation influencers for 2018 and #15 on Jax’s list of top DevOps influencers for 2017.
As founder and president of digital transformation analyst firm Intellyx, he advises, writes and speaks on a diverse set of topics, including digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, DevOps, cloud-native computing, AI/big data, cybersecurity, no-code/low-code platforms and tools, observability, legacy modernization, internet of things, enterprise architecture, mainframes and hybrid IT, among other topics. He is also a notorious skeptic on the topics of cryptocurrency, NFTs, DeFi, Web 3.0 and the Metaverse.
Mr. Bloomberg currently writes for SiliconANGLE and other publications. During his five years writing for Forbes, his articles were often viewed by more than 100,000 readers. He has published over 1,900 articles (270 for Forbes alone), spoken at over 500 conferences and webinars and he has been quoted in the press and blogosphere over 2,600 times.
Mr. Bloomberg is the author or coauthor of five books: Low-Code for Dummies (Wiley, 2019), The Agile Architecture Revolution (Wiley, 2013), Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business (Wiley, 2006), XML and Web Services Unleashed (SAMS Publishing, 2002) and Web Page Scripting Techniques (Hayden Books, 1996).
At SOA-focused industry analyst firm ZapThink from 2001 to 2013, Mr. Bloomberg created and delivered the Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) course and associated credential, certifying over 1,700 professionals worldwide. He is one of the original managing partners of ZapThink LLC, which was acquired by Dovel Technologies in 2011.
Prior to ZapThink, Mr. Bloomberg built a diverse background in eBusiness technology management and industry analysis, including serving as a senior analyst in IDC’s eBusiness Advisory group, as well as holding eBusiness management positions at USWeb/CKS (later marchFIRST) and WaveBend Solutions (now Hitachi Consulting) and several software and web development positions.
As founder and president of digital transformation analyst firm Intellyx, he advises, writes and speaks on a diverse set of topics, including digital transformation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, DevOps, cloud-native computing, AI/big data, cybersecurity, no-code/low-code platforms and tools, observability, legacy modernization, internet of things, enterprise architecture, mainframes and hybrid IT, among other topics. He is also a notorious skeptic on the topics of cryptocurrency, NFTs, DeFi, Web 3.0 and the Metaverse.
Mr. Bloomberg currently writes for SiliconANGLE and other publications. During his five years writing for Forbes, his articles were often viewed by more than 100,000 readers. He has published over 1,900 articles (270 for Forbes alone), spoken at over 500 conferences and webinars and he has been quoted in the press and blogosphere over 2,600 times.
Mr. Bloomberg is the author or coauthor of five books: Low-Code for Dummies (Wiley, 2019), The Agile Architecture Revolution (Wiley, 2013), Service Orient or Be Doomed! How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business (Wiley, 2006), XML and Web Services Unleashed (SAMS Publishing, 2002) and Web Page Scripting Techniques (Hayden Books, 1996).
At SOA-focused industry analyst firm ZapThink from 2001 to 2013, Mr. Bloomberg created and delivered the Licensed ZapThink Architect (LZA) Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) course and associated credential, certifying over 1,700 professionals worldwide. He is one of the original managing partners of ZapThink LLC, which was acquired by Dovel Technologies in 2011.
Prior to ZapThink, Mr. Bloomberg built a diverse background in eBusiness technology management and industry analysis, including serving as a senior analyst in IDC’s eBusiness Advisory group, as well as holding eBusiness management positions at USWeb/CKS (later marchFIRST) and WaveBend Solutions (now Hitachi Consulting) and several software and web development positions.
Michael is a principal in the Risk and Financial Advisory business leading Deloitte’s Enterprise Trust offering. He focuses on helping clients improve company performance by building, protecting and enhancing levels of trust for organizations across a wide range of stakeholder groups.
Michael began his career leading business process transformation and ERP implementation programs for global clients across Consumer, Life Sciences & Health Care, and Technology, Media & Telecom industries. Then, after spending time as a technology executive at a leading software company, Michael returned to Deloitte to lead the firm’s Global Innovation efforts focused on the development, scaling, and commercialization of technology solutions.
A graduate of the University of Kansas, having earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Michael resides in Boca Raton, FL with his wife and two children.
Michael began his career leading business process transformation and ERP implementation programs for global clients across Consumer, Life Sciences & Health Care, and Technology, Media & Telecom industries. Then, after spending time as a technology executive at a leading software company, Michael returned to Deloitte to lead the firm’s Global Innovation efforts focused on the development, scaling, and commercialization of technology solutions.
A graduate of the University of Kansas, having earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, Michael resides in Boca Raton, FL with his wife and two children.
Amanda works for Techstrong Group as the editor of Techstrong.ai and DigitalCxO.com, and is a podcast host as well. With over 14 years of experience as a professional writer, editor and project coordinator, Amanda’s work can be found in magazines, newspapers, books, blogs and podcasts around the world. She is regularly invited to tech conferences to report on the latest tech announcements and is a technology enthusiast.
Kaitlin Carrollo is a Sales Engineer that helps her customers meet their data protection needs as their IT environments evolve. She started her career in software engineering and has now been with Commvault for over 2 years specializing in SaaS-based data protection. Kaitlin is especially passionate about the role that cyber security plays across the tech stack, including backups, to ensure that critical assets are safe.
Sharon Goldberg is the CEO and co-founder of BastionZero, a Boston infrastructure cybersecurity startup, and a tenured professor at Boston University. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed technical papers on infrastructure security and cryptography, has contributed to BGP, NTP, DNS Bitcoin, and cryptography standards, and is an author of the 2015 attacks on NTP. Lately, she spends most of her day thinking about SSO, MFA, shell access, and Kubernetes.
Alex spent his first 20 years in business as a self-made entrepreneur that started, led and sold multiple companies. These ventures were built across software, consumer internet, commercial real estate, venture capital and franchising. Alex raised over $25 million in capital and had one partnership reach #34 on the Inc. 500 list. Five years ago, Alex left the world of entrepreneurship to join Weber State University full-time as vice provost. Alex worked on a number or projects at Weber State including Startup Ogden, Technology Commercialization and the WSU Research Foundation. In July 2022, Alex joined the professional sales program as a full-time faculty member, specializing in internet sales, internet technology and social media sales. Alex has a BS from the University of Utah, an MBA from Weber State and holds a PhD from Oklahoma State University (Ph.D., Business). You can see Alex regularly appearing on KSL Channel 5 as their technology expert. Alex is a highly sought-after investor, mentor, speaker, author and teacher. He is married with two little girls and enjoys the outdoors of Utah, including golfing and fly fishing.
Kevin is responsible for security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi. He brings more than 16 years of experience in IT security with leading security and privacy leaders including RSA Security, Thales, PGP Corporation, IronKey, CipherCloud, NCipher and Xcert.
Kevin has authored several books and is often asked for comment by the world’s leading media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune, BBC, Suddeutsche Zeitung, USA Today, Associated Press, Guardian and The Telegraph, along with security press including SC Magazine, Dark Reading and Network World. Kevin has a B.S. in chemistry from the College of William and Mary and an MBA from Wake Forest University.
Kevin has authored several books and is often asked for comment by the world’s leading media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune, BBC, Suddeutsche Zeitung, USA Today, Associated Press, Guardian and The Telegraph, along with security press including SC Magazine, Dark Reading and Network World. Kevin has a B.S. in chemistry from the College of William and Mary and an MBA from Wake Forest University.
Tracy is CEO and co-founder of DeployHub. She is an expert in supply chain management and pipeline DevOps practices with a hyperfocus on microservices and cloud-native architecture. She serves on the OpenSSF Governing Board and the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF) Technology Oversight Committee. She previously served as a founding board member of the CDF and the Eclipse Foundation. She is the executive director of the Ortelius Open Source project, a microservices governance catalog. She is a blog contributor for the CDF, recognized by TechBeacon as one of the top 100 DevOps visionaries and speaks at many [professional events such as CNCF’s KubeCon and CloudBees DevOps World.
Donald Lutz is an accomplished director of software engineering, cloud architect and software architect with an enormous depth and breadth of experience in Microsoft architecture. He also has over 25 years of experience designing and building large enterprise systems. Lutz specializes in providing companies with real-world cloud solutions implemented to build integrated, choreographed microservices using AWS, Azure, Docker and Kubernetes in a multi-cloud environment.
Passionate Architect! Tracy (Trac) Bannon is a senior principal with MITRE Labs. She is an accomplished software architect, engineer, and DevSecOps advisor, having worked across commercial and government clients. She thrives on understanding complex problems and working to deliver value at speed.
She’s passionate about mentoring and training, and enjoys community and knowledge-building with teams, clients and the next generation. Trac guest lectures at universities, leads working groups, and shares experience stories.
Trac is a long-time advocate for diversity in technology, helping to narrow the gaps as a mentor, sponsor, volunteer and friend. Ms. Bannon is a featured industry speaker, blogger, author and accomplished podcaster - including 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 and 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝟱𝟬𝟱! 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 (part of Sourced Network Productions).
She’s passionate about mentoring and training, and enjoys community and knowledge-building with teams, clients and the next generation. Trac guest lectures at universities, leads working groups, and shares experience stories.
Trac is a long-time advocate for diversity in technology, helping to narrow the gaps as a mentor, sponsor, volunteer and friend. Ms. Bannon is a featured industry speaker, blogger, author and accomplished podcaster - including 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 and 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝟱𝟬𝟱! 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 (part of Sourced Network Productions).
Taruna Gandhi leads product marketing for the Evergreen subscriptions portfolio and Pure1 at Pure Storage. Taruna is passionate about helping customers simplify and automate IT operations, accelerate cloud evolution and use the latest AI and ML technologies to solve business issues. Taruna is focused on delivering next-gen data storage technologies and business models that empower customers to focus on outcomes instead of infrastructure. Prior to joining Pure Storage, Taruna held multiple leadership positions in software development, product management and product marketing at companies such as VMware, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems. Taruna holds an MS in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Theresa Lanowitz is a proven global influencer and speaks on trends and emerging technology poised to help today’s enterprise organizations flourish. Theresa is currently the head of cybersecurity evangelism at AT&T Business.
Prior to joining AT&T, Theresa was an industry analyst with the boutique analyst firm voke and Gartner. While at Gartner, Theresa spearheaded the application quality ecosystem, championed application security technology and created the successful Application Development conference.
As a product manager at Borland International Software, Theresa launched the iconic Java integrated development environment JBuilder. While at Sun Microsystems, Theresa led strategic marketing for the Jini project – a precursor to the internet-of-things (IoT).
Theresa’s professional career began with McDonnell Douglas where she was a software developer on the C-17 military transport plane and held a U.S. Department of Defense Top Secret security clearance.
Theresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
Prior to joining AT&T, Theresa was an industry analyst with the boutique analyst firm voke and Gartner. While at Gartner, Theresa spearheaded the application quality ecosystem, championed application security technology and created the successful Application Development conference.
As a product manager at Borland International Software, Theresa launched the iconic Java integrated development environment JBuilder. While at Sun Microsystems, Theresa led strategic marketing for the Jini project – a precursor to the internet-of-things (IoT).
Theresa’s professional career began with McDonnell Douglas where she was a software developer on the C-17 military transport plane and held a U.S. Department of Defense Top Secret security clearance.
Theresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
Ian Khan, a.k.a “The Futurist”, is an emerging technology futurist featured on CNN, BBC, Bloomberg and Fast Company. Ian is the author of the highly anticipated “Metaverse for Dummies” the first comprehensive explainer for the Metaverse. Ian has also created the Future Readiness Operating System (FROS™) and the Future Readiness Score(FRS™), used by leading organizations as a tool for Future Readiness. He is also an authority on Web3 and Metaverse security and speaks about digital transformation through algorithms, robotics, automation and blockchain. Ian has also produced several critically acclaimed documentaries available on Prime Video, Emirates Airlines and leading streaming platforms. A highly sought after Future Readiness pioneer, Ian is an energetic keynote speaker sharing his insights with audiences worldwide, virtually and in person.
Amanda works for Techstrong Group as the editor of Techstrong.ai and DigitalCxO.com, and is a podcast host as well. With over 14 years of experience as a professional writer, editor and project coordinator, Amanda’s work can be found in magazines, newspapers, books, blogs and podcasts around the world. She is regularly invited to tech conferences to report on the latest tech announcements and is a technology enthusiast.
Kaitlin Carrollo is a Sales Engineer that helps her customers meet their data protection needs as their IT environments evolve. She started her career in software engineering and has now been with Commvault for over 2 years specializing in SaaS-based data protection. Kaitlin is especially passionate about the role that cyber security plays across the tech stack, including backups, to ensure that critical assets are safe.
Sharon Goldberg is the CEO and co-founder of BastionZero, a Boston infrastructure cybersecurity startup, and a tenured professor at Boston University. She has published over 30 peer-reviewed technical papers on infrastructure security and cryptography, has contributed to BGP, NTP, DNS Bitcoin, and cryptography standards, and is an author of the 2015 attacks on NTP. Lately, she spends most of her day thinking about SSO, MFA, shell access, and Kubernetes.
Alex spent his first 20 years in business as a self-made entrepreneur that started, led and sold multiple companies. These ventures were built across software, consumer internet, commercial real estate, venture capital and franchising. Alex raised over $25 million in capital and had one partnership reach #34 on the Inc. 500 list. Five years ago, Alex left the world of entrepreneurship to join Weber State University full-time as vice provost. Alex worked on a number or projects at Weber State including Startup Ogden, Technology Commercialization and the WSU Research Foundation. In July 2022, Alex joined the professional sales program as a full-time faculty member, specializing in internet sales, internet technology and social media sales. Alex has a BS from the University of Utah, an MBA from Weber State and holds a PhD from Oklahoma State University (Ph.D., Business). You can see Alex regularly appearing on KSL Channel 5 as their technology expert. Alex is a highly sought-after investor, mentor, speaker, author and teacher. He is married with two little girls and enjoys the outdoors of Utah, including golfing and fly fishing.
Kevin is responsible for security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi. He brings more than 16 years of experience in IT security with leading security and privacy leaders including RSA Security, Thales, PGP Corporation, IronKey, CipherCloud, NCipher and Xcert.
Kevin has authored several books and is often asked for comment by the world’s leading media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune, BBC, Suddeutsche Zeitung, USA Today, Associated Press, Guardian and The Telegraph, along with security press including SC Magazine, Dark Reading and Network World. Kevin has a B.S. in chemistry from the College of William and Mary and an MBA from Wake Forest University.
Kevin has authored several books and is often asked for comment by the world’s leading media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Fortune, BBC, Suddeutsche Zeitung, USA Today, Associated Press, Guardian and The Telegraph, along with security press including SC Magazine, Dark Reading and Network World. Kevin has a B.S. in chemistry from the College of William and Mary and an MBA from Wake Forest University.
Tracy is CEO and co-founder of DeployHub. She is an expert in supply chain management and pipeline DevOps practices with a hyperfocus on microservices and cloud-native architecture. She serves on the OpenSSF Governing Board and the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF) Technology Oversight Committee. She previously served as a founding board member of the CDF and the Eclipse Foundation. She is the executive director of the Ortelius Open Source project, a microservices governance catalog. She is a blog contributor for the CDF, recognized by TechBeacon as one of the top 100 DevOps visionaries and speaks at many [professional events such as CNCF’s KubeCon and CloudBees DevOps World.
Donald Lutz is an accomplished director of software engineering, cloud architect and software architect with an enormous depth and breadth of experience in Microsoft architecture. He also has over 25 years of experience designing and building large enterprise systems. Lutz specializes in providing companies with real-world cloud solutions implemented to build integrated, choreographed microservices using AWS, Azure, Docker and Kubernetes in a multi-cloud environment.
Passionate Architect! Tracy (Trac) Bannon is a senior principal with MITRE Labs. She is an accomplished software architect, engineer, and DevSecOps advisor, having worked across commercial and government clients. She thrives on understanding complex problems and working to deliver value at speed.
She’s passionate about mentoring and training, and enjoys community and knowledge-building with teams, clients and the next generation. Trac guest lectures at universities, leads working groups, and shares experience stories.
Trac is a long-time advocate for diversity in technology, helping to narrow the gaps as a mentor, sponsor, volunteer and friend. Ms. Bannon is a featured industry speaker, blogger, author and accomplished podcaster - including 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 and 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝟱𝟬𝟱! 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 (part of Sourced Network Productions).
She’s passionate about mentoring and training, and enjoys community and knowledge-building with teams, clients and the next generation. Trac guest lectures at universities, leads working groups, and shares experience stories.
Trac is a long-time advocate for diversity in technology, helping to narrow the gaps as a mentor, sponsor, volunteer and friend. Ms. Bannon is a featured industry speaker, blogger, author and accomplished podcaster - including 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘀 and 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝟱𝟬𝟱! 𝗗𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 (part of Sourced Network Productions).
Taruna Gandhi leads product marketing for the Evergreen subscriptions portfolio and Pure1 at Pure Storage. Taruna is passionate about helping customers simplify and automate IT operations, accelerate cloud evolution and use the latest AI and ML technologies to solve business issues. Taruna is focused on delivering next-gen data storage technologies and business models that empower customers to focus on outcomes instead of infrastructure. Prior to joining Pure Storage, Taruna held multiple leadership positions in software development, product management and product marketing at companies such as VMware, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems. Taruna holds an MS in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
Theresa Lanowitz is a proven global influencer and speaks on trends and emerging technology poised to help today’s enterprise organizations flourish. Theresa is currently the head of cybersecurity evangelism at AT&T Business.
Prior to joining AT&T, Theresa was an industry analyst with the boutique analyst firm voke and Gartner. While at Gartner, Theresa spearheaded the application quality ecosystem, championed application security technology and created the successful Application Development conference.
As a product manager at Borland International Software, Theresa launched the iconic Java integrated development environment JBuilder. While at Sun Microsystems, Theresa led strategic marketing for the Jini project – a precursor to the internet-of-things (IoT).
Theresa’s professional career began with McDonnell Douglas where she was a software developer on the C-17 military transport plane and held a U.S. Department of Defense Top Secret security clearance.
Theresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
Prior to joining AT&T, Theresa was an industry analyst with the boutique analyst firm voke and Gartner. While at Gartner, Theresa spearheaded the application quality ecosystem, championed application security technology and created the successful Application Development conference.
As a product manager at Borland International Software, Theresa launched the iconic Java integrated development environment JBuilder. While at Sun Microsystems, Theresa led strategic marketing for the Jini project – a precursor to the internet-of-things (IoT).
Theresa’s professional career began with McDonnell Douglas where she was a software developer on the C-17 military transport plane and held a U.S. Department of Defense Top Secret security clearance.
Theresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
