Gene Kim

Author, Researcher, and Founder of IT Revolution

Gene Kim has been studying high-performing technology organizations since 1999. He was the founder and CTO of Tripwire, Inc for 13 years, an enterprise security software company. His books have sold over 1 million copies — he is the author of the WSJ bestselling book “The Unicorn Project”, and was co-author of “The Phoenix Project,” “The DevOps Handbook”, and the Shingo Publication Award-winning “Accelerate.”

Since 2014, Gene has been the organizer of DevOps Enterprise Summit, studying the technology transformations of large, complex organizations.

USN Admiral John Richardson (retired)

31st Chief of Naval Operations

Admiral John Richardson served 37 years in the U.S. Navy, completing his service as the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the top officer in the Navy. Since retirement, he has joined the boards of several major corporations and other organizations.

While in the Navy, Richardson served in the submarine force. He commanded the attack submarine USS HONOLULU in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, for which he was awarded the Vice Admiral James Bond Stockdale Inspirational Leadership Award. He went on to command at every level of the Navy.

Richardson served as the Director of Naval Reactors from 2012 until 2015. After Naval Reactors, he served as the 31st Chief of Naval Operations, the senior office in the Navy, from 2015 until August 2019. Richardson retired from the Navy in August 2019.

Since leaving the Navy, Richardson has joined the Board of Directors for The Boeing Company, Constellation Energy Corporation, and BWX Technologies. He also serves on the Boards of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Center for New American Security, and the Navy League of the United States.

Richardson graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in physics. He also holds master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and a master’s degree in national security strategy from the National War College.

Paul Puckett

Director, Army Enterprise Cloud Management Agency

Paul Puckett is passionate about solving problems for national security by finding the unique blend of people, process and technology to support the mission. With over 15 years experience supporting the public sector, Paul has served as a senior executive in both federal and commercial organizations driving outcomes along the digital transformation journey. From incepting DevOps in the most secure and contested environments, to enabling the first Continuous ATO in the federal government, to catalyzing the cloud modernization of the world’s third largest organization, Paul loves turning challenges into capabilities for the United States and our allies.

Janice Fraser

Principal

Janice Fraser is an investor, speaker, and expert in emerging management practices to support innovation at scale. A Silicon Valley veteran, she’s built a storied career as a product manager, founder, facilitator, and confidant for entrepreneurs and enterprise executives alike. But her impact extends beyond the Valley with innovation and transformation projects at NASA, the Obama White House, Procter & Gamble, and many other companies in the Fortune 500. As an investor, she is particularly committed to championing and extending access to the brilliant entrepreneurs who are typically underrepresented in the world of venture-backed startups.

Josh Marcuse

Head of Strategy & Innovation, Google Cloud Public Sector

Josh Marcuse is the head of strategy and Innovation for Global Public Sector at Google Cloud. He leads a team of public sector digital transformation experts who work to solve real-world problems in public health, smart cities, cyber defense, and more for governments around the world. Previously, Josh served as executive director of the Defense Innovation Board, a group of distinguished leaders focused on bringing technological and cultural innovations of Silicon Valley to the Department of Defense (DoD). Josh served as the innovation advisor to the DoD CTO and also held roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) for Policy, Personnel & Readiness, and the Chief Management Officer. Prior to DoD, Josh worked at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, Booz Allen Hamilton, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Josh is active in several nonprofit organizations outside of Google, including serving as an advisor or board member to Schmidt Futures, Tech Talent Project, Silicon Valley Defense Group, Globally, Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, and the Federal Innovator Network at the Partnership for Public Service. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Fellow of the Truman National Security Project.

Delali Dzirasa

Founder & CEO at Fearless

Delali Dzirasa is the CEO and founder of Fearless, a full stack digital services firm in Baltimore, Maryland with a mission to create software with a soul — tools that empower communities and make a difference. He’s also the CEO and founder of Fearless Sports, an apparel company with a mission to ignite, equip, and uniform the impactful. Delali’s committed to creating a soulful world where action breeds impact, and he’s been named as one of Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneurs of the Year for the Mid-Atlantic Region, the Daily Record’s Most Admired CEOs, in the Baltimore Business Journal’s (BBJ) Power 10 list, and in the Black Business Review’s 40 under 40 list. He chaired the inaugural DevOpsDays Baltimore, as well as Hack Baltimore, and is a founding member of the governing board of the Digital Services Coalition.

Delali’s passion and entrepreneurial spirit started at a young age. As a kid, he used to knock on doors and offer to cut grass, mow lawns, wash cars, or walk dogs. He then went on to graduate from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) with a B.S. in Computer Engineering. Delali has over 15 years of experience leading agile software teams and programs, and he strives to make a difference in technology and in his surrounding community. He’s passionate about increasing the rate of city youth heading into STEM fields and works closely with city nonprofits to provide funding and mentorship programs in city schools, as well as other education initiatives. In 2019, Delali testified to the US Senate Small Business committee on behalf of the National HUBZone Council for the Small Business Reauthorization Act. He was also awarded the National HUBZone Corporate Citizen of the Year in 2020.

Delali currently lives in Baltimore City with his wife Dr. Letitia Dzirasa (Baltimore City's Health Commissioner) and two sons Dominic and Jaden. When he isn’t busy running Fearless’ family of brands, he enjoys working out and hanging out with friends and loved ones.

Adam Furtado

Founder & CEO, Sagely

Adam Furtado is the founder and CEO of Sagely- the world’s most trusted guide to personal and professional growth. Adam has spent his career in and around government on a quest to make “good enough for government work” no longer sarcastic. Prior to founding Sagely, Adam led efforts to scale and grow Kessel Run, the Department of Defense’s premier digital transformation initiative as its Chief Product Officer. Prior to his civil service, Adam served 8 years in the US Air Force.

Cornelia Davis

Author, Cloud Native Patterns; Amazon

Cornelia has spent a career at the forefront of technological innovation, starting with image processing algorithm development, moving to web-centric computing in the late 1990s, and then more than a decade working in cloud-native software and DevOps platforms. She was part of the team that brought Cloud Foundry to the industry - both the open source project and the Pivotal CF product. She then spent more than 5 years applying that container-centric systems experience to Kubernetes-based developer platforms, pushing even further into cloud-native operational practices with things like GitOps. She is the author of Cloud Native Patterns: Designing Change Tolerant Software.

Cornelia currently works on artificial intelligence and natural language processing for Alexa products at Amazon.

Meagan Metzger

Founder & CEO, Dcode

Meagan Metzger is the founder and CEO of Dcode, a privately owned company that connects the emerging technology industry and government to drive commercial innovation in the federal market. Meagan is also a General Partner at Dcode Capital, a venture capital firm that invests alongside top-tier venture firms in commercially-successful, high-growth technology companies in areas that are of high priority across the U.S. government. Meagan serves on the Board of Directors for the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF) and for The Alliance for Commercial Technology in Government (The-Alliance).

Prior to Dcode, Meagan worked as Chief Operating Officer of a government-focused mobile and cloud company, growing it 200% year-over-year. Meagan was also previously Chief Strategy Officer at a government-facing IT and Acquisition support consultancy and established it as one of the fastest-growing small businesses on Washington Technology’s Fast 50 for three years in a row. Through her various roles, Meagan has worked closely with senior leadership across DoD and civilian agencies, using her expertise in federal IT acquisitions and commercial technologies to drive innovation into multi-billion-dollar IT programs. Meagan holds degrees in both Applied Science and Technology and Business Administration/Marketing from The George Washington University.

Riya Patel

Managing Director - Government, Dcode

Riya is the Managing Director for Government at Dcode. Dcode’s government team works directly with the federal government on how to be better customers and enablers of high growth tech. Riya is dedicated to improving the jobs of service members and civilians through the implementation of emerging technology solutions and innovative culture. FCW recognized Riya as a Fed100 winner in 2019 for her work scaling technology prototypes within the Department of Defense.

Prior to Dcode, Riya was a fellow on the Defense Innovation Board where she supported the Science and Technology Subcommittee as well as the Workplace, Behavior, and Culture Subcommittee. She has also worked as an Acquisition Resource Analyst within the Office of the Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment and within the Intelligence Community.

Riya earned her degrees in International Security and Russian language from Tufts University.

Lt Col Max Reele

Materiel Leader, Kessel Run

Lieutenant Colonel Maximilien H. Reele is proud to present information and a hypothesis around organizing teams for successful DevSecOps within large bureaucracies. The research and suggestions are a result of his experience and collaboration with the DevOps Enterprise Summit (DEOS) and several other key contributors. The focus of the work is to enable leaders of innovation organizations to control a simple set of variables in a way that best establishes success criteria for their teams, ultimately creating an environment where appropriate overlap of responsibility for performance against outcomes can be achieved.

Lt. Col. Reele is a Materiel Leader within the Program Executive Office, Digital Directorate at AFLCMC/HBB (Kessel Run). He leads daily operations and associated acquisition strategy for Kessel Run’s modernization and sustainment activity of multiple programs of record.

Lt. Col. Reele has served in the Pentagon on the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Staff for a variety of space technology portfolios. He also had a previous tour through Kessel Run during the earliest phases of the organization. Most recently, he was a founder and Chief of Delivery for the Air Force's Business and Enterprise System Product Innovation (BESPIN) organization and software lab.

Lt. Col. Reele has a B.S. in Operations Research from the United States Air Force Academy, a M.S. in Systems Engineering and a M.S. in Operations Research from Southern Methodist University, and a M.S. in Engineering and Management from MIT.

Angel Phaneuf

CISO, Army Software Factory

Angelica (Angel) Phaneuf is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at the Army Software Factory (ASF). Prior to the Army, Angel was the Director of Security Engineering at Kessel Run and built and ran the innovative security program under the Air Force. Angel has extensive experience in the technological innovation and security field including work in the biotech industry. Angel has a husband and two kids and resides in the Greater Boston area.

Nick Sinai

Senior Advisor, Insight Partners

Nick Sinai is a venture capitalist, adjunct Harvard faculty, and a former senior White House official in the Obama Administration. As a Senior Advisor at Insight Partners, Nick serves on the board of Rebellion Defense, Hawkeye360, LeoLabs, and Shift5. He writes and teaches about technology in government, and serves as a commissioner on the Atlantic Council's Commission on Remaking the US Defense Innovation System. He’s been quoted in the Economist and the WSJ, and testified in front of Congress. Recently, Nick co-founded the U.S. Digital Corps, a new two-year federal fellowship for early-career technologists, launched in the summer of 2021.

Paul Gaffney

Free Agent

Paul Gaffney is a change agent. He led profound transformations in technology, operations, and overall business results for several iconic American brands including The Home Depot, DICK’s Sporting Goods, Kohl’s, Staples, Office Depot, and Charles Schwab. Paul has held roles including Chief Technology Officer, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Supply Chain Officer, and Chief Executive Officer. Regardless of title, Paul focuses on a human-centered approach to identifying and solving problems that motivates team members to contribute to success in ways they previously thought impossible.

Paul has also been an early-stage executive at two start-ups: the initial CEO of Website Pros, now web.com, and the COO of Desktone, acquired by VMWare. Paul was inducted into the Chief Information Officer Hall of Fame by CIO magazine. He lives on Scraggy Neck in Cataumet, Massachusetts with his wife Kate and their two black labs, Nike and Cosmo. Paul earned his A.B. in Computer Science from Harvard College and has completed graduate coursework in Psychology at Harvard University. He is a 2009 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute as well as a member of and Moderator for the Aspen Global Leadership Network and the Institute’s seminars program.

Bryon Kroger

Founder & CEO, Rise8

Bryon Kroger is Founder and CEO of Rise8. Before that, he spent seven years as a targeteer using terrible software, which led him to cross-train to acquisitions and spend his first year building a transformation at AFLCMC, ultimately becoming one of three co-founders of Kessel Run.

Bryon served as Kessel Run COO for two years, leading acquisitions, development, and operations for the enterprise-scale software lab that defined DoD DevSecOps. Frustrated by the path the DoD was taking to scale the team’s success across the rest of the enterprise, he separated and decided to tackle the problem as a digital services provider.

Bryon launched Rise8 in 2019 to help change agents overcome bureaucracy and transform the way they build and deploy software to create national security outcomes in prod.

Dominica DeGrandis

Author, Making Work Visible; Principal Flow Advisor, Planview

A huge fan of using visual cues to inspire change, Dominica DeGrandis, author of Making Work Visible - Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow, and Principal Flow Advisor at Planview, helps organizations make work visible to improve workflow. Obsessed with flow metrics & influencing change, Dominica advises customers on flow metrics, value stream management and how to affect change.

Eric Lofgren

Senior Fellow, Center for Government Contracting, George Mason University

Eric Lofgren leads initiatives on business, policy, regulatory, and other issues in government contracting. He is the principal investigator for the “Acquisition Next” playbook, studies on cost and price analysis, and studies on defense budgeting. He also manages the blog Acquisition Talk and produces a podcast with the same name where he speaks with leading experts in the field. Before that, he was a senior analyst and employee owner at Technomics, Inc. where he supported government program cost estimates.

James "Guideaux" Crocker

CTO, BESPIN

James “Guideaux” Crocker is the CTO for BESPIN (Business and Enterprise Systems Product Innovation) in Montgomery, Alabama. Guideaux is one of the founders of BESPIN and has grown the organization from 9 to 300+ active members in a year. BESPIN is focused on providing DevSecOps digital services environment for mobile, web and cloud native development across DAF enterprise systems. In addition to his enterprise software efforts, he has established Digital University designed to train and certify DoD cyber warriors. His team is also empowering citizen developers by providing a uniform environment and a DevOps pathway to production across the services.

He has more than 20+ years of professional Cyber experience. Prior to joining the Air Force, he worked for IBM as a network and infrastructure engineer. Guideaux joined the Air Force in November of 1999 and attended Computer Programming School at Keesler AFB graduating in March 2000. His first assignment was at Kelly Air Force Base as a Modeling and Simulation Programmer for the Air Force Intelligence Agency. During this assignment, he worked on several aircraft to provide countermeasures by designing and programming munitions and providing IR/RF Analysis. In 2005, Guideaux started his second and most notable green door assignment working in northern Japan as an Intel Systems Developer and Crypto specialist for the National Security Administration.

Prior to his current position, Guideaux was the Enterprise Information System Security Manager and Communications System Lead, at a geographically separated unit in North Carolina. There he completed five Enterprise Enclave ATOs across three classifications, modernized the second largest specialized data center in the Air Force, built and maintained secure facilities and networks for the Air Force and other government agencies, worked with FBI and other government agencies to secure a Tristate region and led software development for DoD’s sole msn planning capability.

Ben Hale

Technical Lead - Tanzu Application Platform, VMware

Ben Hale is the Technical Lead for the Tanzu Application Platform at VMware. Ben has long worked in open source communities including being a long-time member of the Spring team and founding the Cloud Native Buildpacks (CNB, Cloud Native Computing Foundation), Service Binding for Kubernetes Specification, and Reactive Relational Database Connectivity (R2DBC, Reactive Foundation) projects. In what little spare time he has left, Ben loves riding his bike, especially in the high mountains of the Italian Dolomites.

Anthony Butt

Principal Engineer, Second Front Systems

Anthony Butt is a Principal Engineer at Second Front Systems (2F) where he leads, architects, and builds software and platforms that fast tracks government access to disruptive, commercially-proven software as a service (SaaS) applications for national security mission sets.

Prior to joining 2F, Anthony served as Director of Technology and Innovation at CSEngineering. At CSE Anthony was customer zero for Platform One and was one of the first engineers implementing it for the U.S. Air Force in the Sentinel Systems Directorate, the new ICBM platform replacing the Minuteman III.

Anthony also served 8 years in the USAF—three years with a base communications unit and the remaining five as one of "The DoD's Finest Communicators" at The Joint Communications Unit, the Tier 1 Element supporting all things nerd in the Joint Special Operations Command. At JSOC, Anthony was a founding engineer of the Global Analytics Platform (GAP). Anthony built cutting edge software and platforms for special operators and intelligence gurus to further enhance their effectiveness in the Global War on Terror.

Nav Sagoo

Azure Specialist, Microsoft

Nav Sagoo is an Azure Apps and Innovation Specialist at Microsoft. He has been supporting Department of Defense customers with their digital transformation led through modern application development, delivery, and adoption of cloud data technologies for several years. He works with software organizations across the Air Force, supporting their mission outcomes by enabling delivery of cloud-native applications and platforms across Azure Government and Azure Secret cloud regions.

Adelina Colaku

Customer Engineer, Google Cloud

Adelina Colaku is a Customer Engineer at Google Cloud, where she serves as a trusted technical advisor for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC) as they adopt Google Cloud. Previously, she supported Department of State leadership in organizing interagency efforts to combat disinformation from foreign state and non-state actors. She has also worked for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory where she delivered research to the DoD, IC, and White House on the perspective of U.S. adversaries on 5G, microelectronics, and quantum. She is a Fulbright Scholar alum, and has a Masters degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University.

Amanda Schonfeld

Talent Acquisition Lead, GSA TTS

Amanda Schonfeld is currently the talent acquisition lead for the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), growing the TTS team to over 460 people. She has over 20 years of experience casting people into professional roles and developing high performing, diverse teams both in the private and public technology sector. She spends time connecting with colleagues on how to run a thoughtful talent acquisition strategy that is inclusive and focused on creating the best outcome for both the organization and the candidate.

Leah Vincuilla Peterson

Chief People Officer, Kessel Run

Leah Vincuilla Peterson currently serves as a US Air Force civilian in Kessel Run's Chief People Officer role. A Boston native, she returned to her roots on active duty and started with Kessel Run in 2019 as the organization's first Section Commander. Leah has grown and evolved over the years through KR's organizational scaling in multiple Talent and People Operations roles to come to where she is today. Prior to Kessel Run, Leah served in a variety of personnel and services roles as an active duty Force Support officer. She is focused on creating positive employee lifecycle experiences through a culture of psychological safety and feedback. While off the clock, she enjoys her time on the beachy shores of Massachusetts with her husband and dog.

Eric Bram

Senior DevOps Engineer, Rise8

Eric Bram is a Senior DevOps engineer at Rise8 where he works to enable the Department of Veterans Affairs Lighthouse program by streamlining and automating their secure integration and deployment process, as well as helping to build out an EKS-based platform. At his previous company, Eric was the sole DevOps and Platform engineer on a development team focused on delivering training and simulation environments around cybersecurity to the government workforce. Prior to finding DevOps, he spent years as a software developer, mainly programming in C# building both frontend and backend applications, as well as embedded systems in the hardware audio domain. In his free time, Eric loves to spend his time learning as much as possible about the world around him—currently his focus is around learning the basics of the construction trades, but he also loves to relax with his hobby of candle-making.

Marshall Hendricks

Senior Staff SWE, Rise8

Marshall Hendricks is a Cloud Software Architect and Developer. He brings a wealth of experience to the Rise8 Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) Program from 20 years as a software developer and, specifically, 10 years supporting the Department of Defense with Raytheon.

As a Riser, Marshall is focused on facilitating tailored digital transformation that successfully integrates a specific organization and the associated people. He thrives on helping teams identify paths to prod or minimum viable product (MVP) integrations, delivering clear value to end users with minimal time from identification of need to capability.

Marshall lives by “6Cs of Engagement:” Challenge, Communication, Collaboration, Culture, Credibility, and Consensus.

Aine Nakai

Director of Guardian Generation, USSF

Ms. Aine Nakai is the Director of Guardian Generation overseeing recruiting, hiring, outreach, and interservice transfers for the United States Space Force. Previously, she was the Director of Talent Management for Space Systems Command, formerly the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, California. She established the Talent Management Organization to oversee the career development, training, recruitment, hiring, retention, and engagement for SMC and geographically separated units in Peterson AFB and Kirtland AFB. In her role, she was responsible for monitoring the career of nearly 5,000 military and civilian personnel in the Contracting, Finance, Program Management, Engineering, Cyber, Security, Human Resources, and Logistic career fields.

Ms. Nakai entered the Air Force as a commissioned officer when she graduated from Officer Training School in 2000. She earned her contracting warrant and was stationed at Langley AFB in support of Air Combat Command. She was then stationed at Yokota AB in Japan where she served as a Flight Commander for the 374th Contracting Squadron. Her final assignment as an Active Duty officer was at Los Angeles AFB where she managed the EELV Launch Capability contract and supported the procured of the $3 billion Spacelift Range modernization. Ms. Nakai deployed to the Philippine Islands and Kandahar during her Active Duty career.

Ms. Nakai worked as an Acquisition Manager in the Space Superiority Systems Directorate at Los Angeles AFB. She served as a business advisor on various classified programs with a portfolio of over $30 million. Prior to her current position, she served as the Division Chief for Resource Management & Force Development for the Contracting Directorate at Los Angeles AFB. In that role, she was responsible for recruiting, retention, personnel actions & career development of more than 250 contracting professionals across SMC.

Ramona Jackson

Product Manager III, Rise8

Ramona is a Product Portfolio Manager pairing with Kobayashi Maru (KM), Space Domain Awareness Branch. She is currently pairting with the branch Materiel Lead and the Product Lead for the Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System (ATLAS) to form a nascent branch product practice, enable new product practitioners and facilitate delivery focused progress towards an operationally accepted lean slice of the satellite catalog administration/maintenance and event management domain.

Ramona brings with her over a decade of IT program and product portfolio consulting experience in the fintech, logistics, and the public sector. She’s spent the last few years enabling teams from BESPIN, Rapid Capabilities Office Advanced Battle Management Systems (Applications), Kessel Run (Data Ops) and now Space Force KM. Ramona is committed to execution first and foremost and education on the value of product portfolio management as a practice as opposed to product management at scale.