Gary Brantley is currently the Chief Information Officer of DeKalb County School District in Atlanta Ga. DeKalb County School District has over 118,000 users and is the 26th largest school district in the U.S. and the 3rd largest in the state of Georgia. He has over 20 years technology experience and 14 years of leadership experience.
Gary earned his Bachelor’s degree from Youngstown State University and earned a Master’s Degree from the University of Phoenix. He also obtained a Master’s Degree from Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology in Computer Information Systems and has completed the CIO leadership institute with their Sloan School of Management. Lastly, he is also a recent graduate of Leadership DeKalb and was named one of the “Top Thirty Technologist Trailblazers” by the Center of Digital Education.
Brantley began his career with IBM before moving on to MCIWorldCom as the Regional Operations Director. There he continued to have an impact on technology and took that expertise to the Ohio State Department as the Director of Technology. He later became the Chief Information Officer of one of the largest urban school districts in Ohio.
Mr. Brantley has served on several technology boards throughout the state of Ohio and California. He is an avid runner and enjoys being involved with youth sports. He also enjoys spending quality time with family and friends.

Marquis Cabrera is the Global Leader of Digital Government Transformation in IBM’s government industry Center of Competence and also head of the IBM Agile Government Lab. Marquis leads transformation strategy and asset development across all government industry segments globally. Previously, he worked at the White House and in the GovTech startup community. Marquis can be reached on LinkedIn at bit.ly/MarquisCabrera, on Twitter @MarquisCabrera and via e-mail at mcabrera@us.ibm.com.

Nikhil Deshpande is the Chief Digital Officer for the state and heads the Digital Services Office within the Georgia Technology Authority. The Digital Services Office is responsible for managing the digital experience for Georgia.gov, the official online portal to Georgia state government, and a web-publishing platform for state agencies and elected officials.
Nikhil envisioned and led state government’s transition to an enterprise web-publishing platform based on Drupal, an open source content management system hosting around 80 websites in the cloud. Under his direction, Georgia became the first state in the nation to use Drupal across it's enterprise and meet special needs of constituents with a range of disabilities affecting vision, hearing, motion and cognition making the platform Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 AA compliant.
Nikhil strongly advocated the use of social media for Georgia.gov when using social media for government was not common, and established a presence for the state on Facebook and Twitter to quickly address citizens’ questions and concerns.

Steven Ferguson is a 21-year veteran of the IT industry. As the Chief Information Officer for the Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG), he leads a talented team of IT professionals in support of TCSG’s technical education, adult education and economic development divisions across the 85 campuses of Georgia’s 22 technical colleges. Recently, he spearheaded the adoption and deployment of a system wide Voice over IP system, successfully championed a data center infrastructure consolidation initiative, standardized and expanded enterprise cybersecurity technologies and led the system through the rollout of a new mobile app.
Ferguson holds an M.S. in Information Technology from Southern Polytechnic State
University, a B.S. in Business Administration, Information Technology from Columbia
Southern University, and an A.S. in Engineering from Gainesville State College.
Ferguson is the only Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert employed by the State
of Georgia, becoming CCIE #10202 in September of 2002, adding the coveted
certification to a stable of certifications from CompTIA, Microsoft, Cisco and RedHat.
Beyond his service to the State of Georgia, Ferguson is very active in his local community, currently serving as Treasurer for the Board of Directors of the Development Authority of Lumpkin County, recently as the Communications Chair for Leadership Lumpkin County and as a volunteer for various non-profit and educational organizations.

Mr. Gatewood is Chief Information Security Officer for the state of Georgia. He leads GTA’s Office of Information Security, which unifies information security responsibilities for the state’s IT enterprise, the Georgia Enterprise Technology Services program, and GTA.
He has more than 33 years of experience in cyber security programs for the U.S. military, state and federal governments, higher education, and global corporations. Prior to joining GTA, Mr. Gatewood served as Director of Cyber Workforce Development for Dell Secureworks. He was also Chief Information Security Officer for the University of Georgia, Interim Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer for Albany State University, and Chief Information Security Officer for the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.
Mr. Gatewood is a distinguished fellow at the Ponemon Institute, the widely known research center dedicated to privacy, data protection, and information security policy. He has also received numerous honors for his work in the field of information security, served as an active member of several professional associations, and published articles on information security.

Shawn Kingsberry serves as the global public sector director of digital government for Unisys. He has more than 22 years of experience in the field of information technology and has a diverse background in both federal government and corporate settings, with extensive experience in large-scale information technology transformation, big data analytics, and enterprise computing, as well as secure hybrid cloud implementations. Prior to joining Unisys, Shawn served as director of cloud Solutions from Engility Corporation, where he supported all sectors of the federal civilian government. He led the corporate Information Technology Transformation initiative focusing on 21st-century implementations and stood-up the Fraud Analytic Practice title INSIGHT ™. As the chief information officer for the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board from 2009 – 2014, Shawn led the Recovery Board’s successful effort to host Recovery.gov site to provide transparency on stimulus spending related to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. He received the prestigious FED 100 Award for his leadership and persistence in implementing Federal Reporting.gov and Recovery.gov, which were the first government-wide information system to be fully migrated to a public cloud.

Debra Lam is the Managing Director of Smart Cities and Inclusive innovation for Georgia Tech, a newly created role to drive smart cities and urban innovation work across the university and beyond. Prior to this, she served as Pittsburgh's first ever Chief of Innovation & Performance where she oversaw all technology, sustainability, performance and innovation functions of city government. She crafted the city's first strategic plan for innovation, Inclusive Innovation Roadmap. She has been a receipt of various awards, including one of the top 50 Women in Technology nationally. She has worked and lived in New York, the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and University of California, Berkeley.

John is an innovative IT professional with over 25 years’ experience in the design, implementation, operation, and maintenance of technology products, services, and processes. He is certified in all of the major industry standard process frameworks (CMMI, ITIL, COBIT, 6 Sigma, TQM), and has implemented process improvement programs to increase operational effectiveness and efficiencies in both the Private and Public sector. He received his Baccalaureate degree from the University of Maryland with a BS in Information Systems Management, and a MBA from Wesley College with a concentration in Executive Leadership. In addition, John holds a Software Engineering Process Management Certificate from Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute and was also awarded a Certified Government Chief Information Officer designation from the University of North Carolina. His organizations have been recognized for IT innovation in Georgia in 2012, 2014, 2015. Nationally, Information Week recognized his team’s Georgia Outdoor Map product as one of the Elite projects in the U.S., and Gov Delivery selected it as the national top innovation in state agencies for 2015. He also had the honor of being a finalist for the CIO of the Year in Georgia for 2015 & 2016. He is currently working as the Chief Information Officer for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

As the SVP of Managed Technologies, Stephen has responsibility for cloud environments, 24/7 managed service operations, customer support service delivery, service operations and complex offering development for PCM’s services organization. Also as a brand president, Stephen also oversees compliance and a variety of other commercial responsibilities for the company inclusive of information security.
He spends over 30% of this time with customers to help them improve infrastructure technologies, migrate to digital processes and develop corresponding business strategies. All aimed towards enhancing the customer’s business by working with an imperative level focus on objectives that transform budgets, business approaches and teams.
With his wide array of experiences and expertise in the technology industry, Stephen often starts new practices and offering lines for PCM brand companies. His unique blend of experience across business, engineering and operations domains enables quick assimilation to business and technical objectives.

As Chief Technology Officer for the state of Georgia, Dr. Nichols advises the leadership of the Georgia Technology Authority and state agencies on technology issues. Since joining GTA in 2002, he has played a key role in several important initiatives to modernize the state’s IT infrastructure, including the privatization of the state’s IT infrastructure services and managed network services in 2009.
He is responsible for Georgia’s state portal, including several critical enterprise applications and the webMethods Enterprise Service Bus. He recently led an initiative to redesign www.georgia.gov, and to move from a proprietary content management system to an open-source system hosted in the cloud. Government Technology named Dr. Nichols as one of the nation’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2012 in recognition of his contributions to advancing information technology in government.
Before coming to GTA, he was a principal consultant at Daugherty Business Solutions in Atlanta. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Michele Pearman, GISP, GIS Manager and Cityworks Project Manager for the City of Augusta, GA. With 18 years private sector experience, including 15 years with Environmental Consulting firms, including Haliburton, she produced nuclear and environmental impact technical documents, performing technical writing, spatial analysis, mapping, data collection and inspections for clients such as DOE, DOD, FEMA, Florida Power and Light, and Coors to name a few. In 2004, she transitioned to the public sector joining the Augusta Information Technology GIS Division. To say she is passionate about GIS would be an understatement, she drank the cool aid long ago and continuously promotes GIS to internal colleagues and private sector clients throughout Georgia.

Eric Piscini is a principal with Deloitte Consulting’s financial services practice, with 20 years of experience defining innovative strategies and solutions for his clients. He focuses on digital transformations, fintech, blockchain and innovation, among other areas. Eric serves global financial institutions – particularly with banking and digital payments companies – as well as technology companies and regulators.
Eric is the global leader of Deloitte’s financial services blockchain consulting efforts and co-leads the global blockchain and cryptocurrency team. As part of his global function, Eric develops blockchain strategies and solutions for his clients and leads teams to bring blockchain technologies to reality. In May 2017, Bank Innovation said “Deloitte [is] making sure strides in leading the pack” in blockchain and that financial institutions "should follow Deloitte’s blockchain lead." In August, Constellation Research wrote that “Deloitte has the most comprehensive [blockchain] effort of any of the professional services firms."
Eric regularly speaks and writes on blockchain. He has been quoted on blockchain and cryptocurrencies in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, American Banker and CoinDesk.
He recently co-authored “Taking Blockchain Live: 20 Questions That Must Be Answered to Move Beyond Proofs of Concept,” which is informed by Deloitte's recent conversations with clients. The whitepaper finds that there are 20 essential questions that must be asked – and answered – to help determine whether an effort achieves the status of being a successful new technology innovation or an abandoned proof of concept.
He earned a Masters in Computer Science from University of Paris VI, France and a Masters in Economics from Cergy-Pontoise, France.

Calvin C. Rhodes has served as Chief Information Officer for the state of Georgia and Executive Director of the Georgia Technology Authority since 2011. He has successfully led the state’s public/private partnership to transform state government’s IT enterprise. The initiative has strengthened security, modernized infrastructure and networks, improved reliability, and increased transparency. Under his direction, the state is now evolving its service delivery model to enable state agencies to more easily benefit from changes in the IT marketplace.
Mr. Rhodes chairs Georgia’s Statewide Cybersecurity Board and leads GTA’s oversight of the construction and programming of the Hull McKnight Georgia Cyber Center for Innovation and Training. He is a member of the Georgia CIO Leadership Association and serves on the Technology Association of Georgia’s Science and Technology Executive Committee. He previously served on the Board of the National Association of State CIOs.
The Technology Association of Georgia honored Mr. Rhodes for his technology leadership in 2015, and he was named a Premier 100 Technology Leader in 2016 by Computerworld. In addition, Government Technology included him among the nation’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for 2016.
Mr. Rhodes holds a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems and a Master of Business Administration.

Frank Ruben serves as the IT Director for Data Science & Analytics at the City of Atlanta and has been with the agency for over 10 years serving in a variety of capacities with an emphasis on technology. Frank has a passion for bringing people and data together, especially in the public safety space. As an extension of his role within the police department, Frank also serves on the SmartATL project committee, leading the public safety footprint. Frank also serves as the team leader for Atlanta’s Urban Area Strategic Initiative cybersecurity platform. Frank began his career with APD as a patrol officer and became deeply engaged in bridging data science and law enforcement while leading a small team of criminal investigators focused on intelligence collection and analysis.
Frank’s efforts focus on eliminating data systems lacking interoperability, building a singular enterprise data platform, modernizing aging infrastructure, cognitive analytics, and bringing robust data visualization tools to the law enforcement arena.

Kurt W. Schmitz is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Georgia State University. He holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Samford University, an M.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in Information Systems from University of Texas in Arlington. His research interests involve adaptation and change in the area of IT project management and the IT technologies produced by those projects. He is certified by the Project Management Institute as a Program Management Professional (PgMP) with extensive industry experience having served in multiple global leadership roles in large enterprises including industrial automation at General Electric in the 1980s, networking and eCommerce with Nortel Networks in the 1990s and life sciences with Alcon Laboratories (Novartis) in the 2000s. Kurt has been a full time faculty member at GSU since April 2015.

Mr. Swisher is the Global Practice Lead at CenturyLink for the Smart Solutions Portfolio. In this capacity, he drives pre-sales through delivery activities for CenturyLink's SmartCity and SmartVenue projects. Mr. Swisher has extensive knowledge of the technology market for these solutions and consults with customers on topics such as technology and vendor selection, solution architecture and implementation roadmaps.
Prior to joining CenturyLink, Mr. Swisher held several consulting industry leadership positions serving public and private sector clients. The most notable of these positions is was a 17-year tenure with Accenture in their Federal/State Government and Communications practices.

Gilson Wilson is an leader in the Cyber security, strategy and risk management arena. He regularly advises CIOs and CISOs on their overall corporate IT security posture, cybersecurity strategy, associated risks and provides tactical and strategic recommendations as necessary. He is a strong advocate of simplifying security and adopting a no-nonsense approach to enable companies to focus on their core businesses. He has also co-authored a paper titled “Unified Security Framework” that was accepted and published at the International Symposium on Instrumentation and Control Technology (ISICT).

Bob Zapotocky is an Application Sales Manager with AT&T’s Global Public Sector- Government, Education Solutions organization. Bob is responsible for AT&T’s Unified Communications, Cloud Collaboration and IP Transformation Strategy and Technical Support for our State and Local Government, and Education customers in states east of the Mississippi River. In his years supporting this market, Bob has shared industry trends, critical analysis and strategic insights in presentations for a number of organizations including the International Telecommunications Professional Exchange (IPTX), Tennessee Educational Technology Association (TETA), Ohio Higher Education Computing Council (OHECC) and The University System of Georgia Board of Regents, and Pennsylvania/New Jersey/Delaware Association for Distance Learning (PADLA). He has also participated in and provided content for podcasts, whitepapers and articles published by various industry trade and media outlets.
Bob has 19 years of experience with AT&T in a variety of positions supporting enterprise and public sector clients in their efforts to lead IP transformation within their organizations. He holds an MBA from Suffolk University and is an Alumnus of The Emerging Leaders Program with the Center for Collaborative Leadership at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Publications Listing:
Voice Transformation: The Evolution of Voice Communications; THE Journal and Campus Technology.