Rishi Sood

Vice President, Vertical Industries, Government, Gartner

Rishi Sood is a vice president in Gartner Research, where he is part of the U.S. State and Local Government, U.S. Federal Government, and Global Public Sector programs. In this capacity, Sood provides strategic direction for his clients by helping them understand key business issues, leading technology trends and drivers, demand for IT solutions, industry best practices, competitive landscape, and future scenarios for public sector organizations. Within the state and local government marketplace, Sood specializes in the following agency segments: health, human services, tax/revenue, and public safety. Sood's key technology areas include e-government, CRM, outsourcing, homeland security, ERP and agency-specific solutions. Sood's key business issues include economic development, governance, sourcing and customer service. Within the U.S. Federal government market, Sood focuses on the civilian, defense and intelligence agency segments. His key technology areas include e-government, security, RFID, CRM, IT services, outsourcing, data warehousing and ERP. Sood's key business issues are e-government, homeland security, transformation and sourcing. He frequently presents at major industry conferences and is a regular contributor to leading IT services publications and also writes a monthly column called "Across the Digital Nation" for Washington Technology.

Industry Awards/Accolades include Gartner Thought Leadership Award, Gartner Gold Team Award, Gartner Research Award, 2005, and Gartner Quarterly Award, 2007.

Sood received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Chicago.

Apurva Davé

Vice President of Product Marketing, Riverbed

Apurva Davé is the vice president of product marketing for Riverbed. As part of the pioneering team in WAN optimization, Apurva has helped grow Riverbed from $3 million to over $100 million in revenue over the past 5 years. Apurva works closely with enterprise customers to improve the performance and efficiency of their applications over the WAN and understand how cloud architectures fit into their IT strategies.

Previously, Apurva served as director of product marketing for Fast Forward Networks and Inktomi. Areas of technology expertise include WAN optimization, application acceleration, cloud performance, content delivery, caching and streaming media. Apurva holds an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and Computer Science degree from Brown University.

Apurva has spoken at events such as COMDEX and the annual Chief Information and Technology Officer's Forum, and has appeared in well-known industry magazines such as Information World and Byte and Switch.

Erik Hopkins

Professional Staff, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, Federal Financial Management Subcommittee

Erik Hopkins received his Master of Public Administration degree with a focus in Economic Development and Financial Management in 2007. While attending the University of Delaware and serving as a Research Assistant for the Institute for Public Administration, Mr. Hopkins focused his academic research on developing strategic economic development policies for the state of Delaware that enhanced workforce development and invested in emerging biotechnology industries.

In his current capacity, Mr. Hopkins serves as a Professional Staff member on the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Federal Financial Management Subcommittee with responsibility for overseeing the effective implementation of information technology throughout the Federal government. Mr. Hopkins has been the lead staff member for numerous Subcommittee hearings that exposed wasteful IT investments and inadequate cyber security policies and practices within agencies. He is also the author of both S.921, the United States Information and Communications Enhancement Act of 2009 and the Information Technology Oversight and Waste Prevention Act of 2009.

Michael Mestrovich

Senior Technology Officer for Innovation within the Directorate for Information Management and Chief Information Officer, Defense Intelligence Agency

Mr. Michael Mestrovich was appointed to the Defense Intelligence Senior Level position of senior technology officer for innovation within the Directorate for Information Management and Chief Information Officer on 18 August 2008. As such, he leads the research and evaluation of next-generation information technology (IT) solutions for the Department of Defense (DoD) Intelligence Information System enterprise to identify IT products, tools, environments, systems, and methodologies for their applicability to improve the analytic process.

Prior to his present appointment, Mr. Mestrovich worked as a systems engineer for Cisco Systems, Inc., for 11 years. He provided network design and architectural support for various DoD entities in Europe, Southwest Asia, and Africa, to include European Command, Africa Command, Central Command, U.S. Army Forces Europe, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, U.S. Army Forces Central Command, and Multinational Forces-Iraq. He helped to author various design and deployment guides on such topics as Voice over Internet Protocol, virtual private networks, quality of service, and campus and wide area network (WAN) architectures for various organizations. He was the lead systems engineer for numerous networking projects: asynchronous transfer mode migrations to Gigabit Ethernet in support of the Combat Information Transport System, datacenter consolidations, WAN optimizations and application accelerations, and network security and optical network implementations.

Mr. Mestrovich is an active Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert (CCIE) in routing and switching, having achieved his certification in 2000. He obtained his bachelor's of science degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1990 while on an Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship. He then attended Creighton University. where he received his master's of science in atmospheric science in 1994.

Mr. Mestrovich served in the U.S. Air Force from 1991 - 1997. After completing Basic Communication Officer Training at Keesler Air Force Base, he was assigned to Strategic Command (STRATCOM) at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, from 1991 - 1994. He worked as a software engineer at STRATCOM developing targeting software for the Single Integrated Operation Plan. He was then assigned to HQ EUCOM, where he served as a communications engineer for the EUCOM J2 from 1994 to 1997.

Alan Murdoch

Vice President, Solutions, Enterprise IT and Network Services, CACI

Mr. Murdoch holds the position of Vice President - Solutions, Enterprise Information Technology (IT) and Network Services, at CACI. In this role he and his team are responsible for identifying, developing and leveraging expertise, innovations, and best practices in the Enterprise IT and Network (EITN) services domains from across the breadth of CACI, industry, academia and government, to the benefit of CACI's multiple Federal customers.

Mr. Murdoch brings over 20 years of matrix and line management experience to CACI, in a wide diversity of technologies and services. Such experience includes systems and technology development, program operations and business development in support of multiple domestic and international government customers. Mr. Murdoch has held additional leadership position in the domains of network centric operations, aerospace technologies and scientific research, involving leading-edge technical disciplines ranging from enterprise IT and command and control (C2) systems, to fusion energy, to radio frequency (RF), electro-optic (EO) and laser technologies.

Prior to joining CACI, Mr. Murdoch held the positions of Senior Vice President at TKC Communications - a privately (Alaskan native) owned, Federally focused, IT Company - and Director, Network Centric Operations at Northrop Grumman Corporation (NGC) - a leading developer, manufacturer, and integrator of advanced electronic systems for US and international customers. In the latter role, he was also elected to be the inaugural Technical Chair and of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC). Prior positions at NGC included the Director, Egypt programs and Director, Civilian, Commercial and International Space programs. Additionally, and prior to joining NGC, Mr. Murdoch held a number of increasingly responsible roles over 15 years at AlliedSignal / Honeywell where he initially helped build NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and which culminated in his role as Director, Earth Sciences and Laser Technologies.

Mr. Murdoch immigrated from the United Kingdom (UK) to the US in 1982. He was born and educated in the UK, and attended Oxford University, England, where he gained a Bachelors Degree in Physics and two Masters Degrees in Physics and Engineering. He now possesses US citizenship and resides in Maryland.

Charles De Sanno

Executive Director, Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary of VA Enterprise Technology Infrastructure Engineering and Operations, Department of Veterans Affairs

Charles J. De Sanno currently serves as Executive Director for Enterprise Technology and Infrastructure Engineering and Enterprise Systems Operations and Field Development for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). VA is the second largest of the 15 United States of America Cabinet departments and has an operating budget of over $75 billion. VA manages nationwide programs for health care, financial assistance, and burial benefits for our nation's veterans. Information Technology is a critical enabler in the realization of VA's mission. De Sanno directs the enterprise technology engineering efforts for systems solutions across the Department, utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to requirements management, design synthesis, iterative testing and the planning and continued analytical support of the lifecycle. VA Enterprise Systems Engineering promotes cost and operating efficiencies by producing standard solutions to the agency that cut across application organizational boundaries. De Sanno is also responsible for the Department's field and enterprise operations organizations - operating and managing one of the world's largest IT installed base of systems and IT staff. Responsible for over 6,300 employees in total - including 400,000 desktop computers, thousands of servers, over 175 data centers, as well as telecommunications infrastructure including mobile devices. The United States Government equivalent of a Fortune 10 IT organization.

Previous career accomplishments demonstrate his strong blend of technology expertise and business acumen. Serving as Chief Information Officer for the VA's NY and NJ Veteran's Integrated Service Network (VISN) and then, as Deputy Executive Director of Enterprise Infrastructure Engineering, Mr. De Sanno was one of the primary architects and driving forces behind the departments reorganization and centralization of information technology staff and IT governance. He played, and continues to play, an instrumental role in IT strategic and tactical planning, organization, operations and IT infrastructure development and normalization.

Most notably, De Sanno oversaw IT systems and business startup operations in VA's Northeast Region - Regional Data Processing Center (RDPC), serving nearly one million veterans annually through 42 VA medical centers and close to two hundred community based outpatient clinics in the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, as well as in the District of Columbia. Under De Sanno's leadership, Northeast Region hospitals have been a recipient of Hospitals & Health Networks' "Most Wired" award for six of the last seven years.

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Mr. De Sanno began his VA career at the Department's Brooklyn Medical Center in 1989 as Director of Healthcare Information Systems and Operations. He was immediately charged with migrating VA's Decentralized Hospital Computer Program (DHCP) from a PDP-11 platform to Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX platform. In 1990 he was named Director of Systems Operations and Networks for the Brooklyn Medical Center and was appointed lead technical liaison to EDS and Booz Allen Hamilton for the Congressional mandated IHS (Integrated Hospital System) project at Brooklyn. The interfacing of commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies to DHCP that was undertaken with the IHS project contributed greatly to the evolution of VHA's current Veterans Integrated Systems Technology Architecture (VistA). VistA is recognized as the largest and most integrated healthcare management system in the world, featuring one of the most comprehensive Electronic Health Records (EHR).

De Sanno was appointed Associate Director of Information Technology (IT) of the New York VA in 1992 and then Director IT in 1994. In 1996, shortly after the formation of the VISNs, De Sanno was appointed Chief Information Officer for NY/NJ VISN 3. During his tenure as CIO, he developed and deployed a Microsoft Windows NT domain strategy framework that was shortly thereafter adopted by the Agency for nationwide deployment. This model is still the basis, in many ways, for the Department's current Active Directory architecture. De Sanno - in VISN 3 - was the first to design and deploy a network-wide implementation of a robust commercial off the shelf (COTS) messaging solution (Microsoft Exchange) and under his leadership, commencing in 2002 VISN 3 launched consolidation of the network's VistA and messaging systems along with introduction of a robust continuity of operations (COOP) strategy around dual Tier III data centers. Today, this model is the foundation of the organization's newly announced Regional Data Processing (RDP) initiative which will collapse and harden VA's data center infrastructure. To date, this data center collapsing model has reduced the Department's data center portfolio by approximately 80 centers, with an end state of less than 15 data centers for the Department.

De Sanno serves on the VA Executive Operations Council (EOC), as well as many other national strategic IT steering and business policy committees including the Technology Infrastructure Subcommittee (TIS). De Sanno sits on the Board of Directors as President of Brooklyn Child Care, Inc., a not-for-profit day care facility at the Brooklyn VA campus. Additionally, De Sanno holds the Chairman position of the Marlboro Baseball Travel Club, and sits as the Executive Vice President of the Marlboro Little League. De Sanno attended New York University and Polytechnic University, majoring in computer science and systems engineering and currently resides in Marlboro New Jersey, married to Karon and has two sons, Charles Jr. and Nicholas De Sanno.

Lisa Schlosser

Director, Office of Information Collection, Office of Environmental Information, Environmental Protection Agency

Ms. Lisa Schlosser currently serves as the Director, Office of Information Collection, Office of Environmental Information, for the Environmental Protection Agency.

She previously served as the Chief Information Officer (CIO), U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as the Associate Chief Information Officer/Chief Information Security Officer, at the US Department of Transportation (US DOT), and as the Associate CIO for IT Security for the US DOT.

Before joining the Federal Government, Lisa served as Vice-President, Business Operations and Response Services, for Global Integrity, and as a Senior Manager for Ernst & Young LLP.

Before entering the commercial sector, Lisa served as a Military Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Army, and continues to serve as a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserves. She recently completed a year long mobilization with the US Army Reserves, to include a deployment to the Middle East, where she served as the Operations Officer for the Regional Computer Emergency Response Team, Southwest Asia, supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom.

Lisa holds a B.A. degree in Political Science from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and an M.S. degree in Administration from Central Michigan University.