Jeremy Abbott is the User Experience Manager for Texas NIC, a full-service digital partner to the state of Texas. He has worked as a user experience designer and strategist for American Airlines, Texas Instruments, and Pizza Hut during his two decades in the tech industry. He studied computer programming at University of North Texas, but became interested in web design in the late 90s. Keep up with Jeremy's UX, design, and music posts on twitter.com/jabbott

David Bowen is a Managing Director in PricewaterhouseCooper’s Public Sector practice, based in McLean, VA. He works in the Emerging Technology area and specializes in the areas of Cloud computing, Shared Services and Application and Infrastructure Modernization.
Mr. Bowen was the Director of the Health Information Technology (HIT) Directorate for the Defense Health Agency and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Military Health System, retiring in January, 2016.
As the Director of the Health IT Directorate, Mr. Bowen’s primary focus was the consolidation, reengineering, and standardization of the HIT services in order to improve cost structure and deliver a single integrated HIT platform in support of an integrated health system. He worked closely with the Army, Navy, and Air Force Surgeons General to ensure that the transition to the HIT Shared Service operating model was well managed. In its first 2 years, the HIT Directorate achieved over $ 70 Million in savings, earning Mr. Bowen a HIMSS National Federal Leadership award in 2015.
As the MHS CIO, Mr. Bowen was also the principal advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs and to the Department of Defense medical leaders on all matters related to information management and information technology.
In his previous position as Assistant Administrator, Information Services, and CIO at the Federal Aviation Administration, Mr. Bowen, who has a Commercial Pilot’s license, led an information technology enterprise with more than 1,000 staff members and helped oversee a budget of more than $3 billion. Among his many accomplishments at FAA, Mr. Bowen developed and implemented new cyber security and privacy policies and practices to protect systems and data; initiated efforts to position Information Technology as a shared service, and implemented a cyber-defense strategy.
Mr. Bowen’s extensive experience in health care comes from roles as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Blue Shield of California, Senior Vice President, Information Management, and Chief Information Officer at Catholic Healthcare West, and Chief Information Officer at the Baptist Health System and Carilion Health System.
At Catholic Healthcare West (CHW), Mr. Bowen operated information management departments under budget and was responsible for CHW’s information management and telecommunications resources for this 50-hospital system located throughout California, Arizona and Nevada. He also led the System’s Year 2000 program.
Recognized as a Top 50 Public Sector CIO by Information Week in 2010 and 2011, Mr. Bowen has served in leadership roles on several boards, including as a past chairman of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association CIO Roundtable; former board member and chairman of the Coastside Family Medical Center; and past member of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association Interplan Technology Advisory Committee. Mr. Bowen is also a charter member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives.
Mr. Bowen has an undergraduate degree in Economics from Ursinus College and a Master’s Degree in Business with Distinction from the Johnson Graduate School of Business at Cornell University. He is a Certified Public Accountant.

Mary Brooks is the Regional Sales Manager for the State of Texas Account Team in Austin, Texas. Mary has a 38-year career with AT&T and 30 years of that time has been spent managing large scale projects and developing strong customer relationships on State accounts. She leads a team of Sales Executives who work closely with many of the most integral State agencies in Texas, providing technical, sales, and custom solutions in support of those agencies who serve the constituents of the State of Texas.
Mary received her BBA with a concentration in Human Resources and an MBA with a minor in Economics, from Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Mary’s work experiences include the Board of Pardons & Parole Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs, before beginning her lengthy career at AT&T.

Lauren Burnell serves as Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Engineering for PCM-G, where she is responsible for developing and directing government customer related end-to-end security programs and solutions to ensure that PCM-G addresses its customers’ challenges in a dynamic threat environment. She is a thought leader on IT supply chain security and is committed to enabling government mission through technology.
Prior to joining PCM-G, Ms. Burnell served as a U.S. Navy Cryptologic Warfare Officer specializing in cyberspace operations, signals intelligence (SIGINT), electronic warfare (EW) and data analytics. Over Ms. Burnell’s six-year commission in the U.S. Navy, she held numerous leadership roles supporting both Navy and National missions related to advanced tactics in cyber security and electromagnetic maneuver warfare (EMW). Ms. Burnell’s tours included time as a Cyber Lead at the National Security Agency, driving the Navy’s tactical response during its first named cyber security operation, and teaching information warfare curriculum to the Fleet.
Ms. Burnell holds a B.S. Political Science from the United States Naval Academy, as well as a M.A. Government in Politics from the University of Maryland.
Ms. Burnell’s certifications and personal decorations include FireEye, Cisco and Splunk engineer certifications, Certified Ethical Hacker, Security+, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (two awards), NSA/CSS Signals Intelligence Directorate Military Performer of the Quarter (Junior Officer category), and various industry technical certifications and military unit awards.

Richard Calentine is a Sr. Business Value Manager at Adobe Systems Federal team, supporting Federal, Civilian, State & Local, and Canada customers by helping answer the “value” question. He works with customer to understand the current state metrics to calculate the potential future state incremental financial benefit by identifying areas for improvement and performing a functional analysis. Richard has been at Adobe for four years, supporting Public Sector for the last two years. Richard has spent the last 14 years in digital marketing, with 7 of those years as a customer of Adobe. Richard has supported Air Force, New York City, IRS, and Marine Corps.

David Cook is the Director of the Project Management Office at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas where he has been managing the multi-year TRS Enterprise Application Modernization (TEAM) Program. Prior to TRS, David was Director of Applications at The University of Texas at Austin. He has a Masters Degree from the LBJ School of Public Affairs and has over 30 year of IT experience in a variety of roles.

Julien oversees a team of writers/editors responsible for ensuring the information on TxDOT.gov is clear, consistent, timely, accurate and relevant. He will lead a rewrite of TxDOT.gov content and content strategy in 2018. He came to TxDOT from the University of Texas School of Law, where he led the Communications Department, and has more than twenty years of experience in writing and content development for the web, books, magazines and newspapers.

Pete Eichorn is the Director of Technology for Texas NIC, leading the technology teams that provide 1,000+ services to state and local government agencies. He is responsible for overall technology strategy and innovation, including software development, architecture, and technical operations. Prior to joining the Texas.gov team, Pete was IT Director for The Home Depot, leading IT teams focused on e-commerce capabilities. He started his career working at Ernst & Young as an Information Technology management consultant. He holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Joshua began with TxDOT in 2005 as a temporary employee tasked with helping to redesign the department’s website, then held various positions including graphics designer, lead worker, and information architect before becoming branch manager in 2014. Currently he oversees TxDOT.gov and several major project sites and is responsible for website branding and strategy.

Joe has been VP CIO at Capital Metro since August, 2011. He is also a Board Member with Austin CityUP Consortium. He was named one of Computerworld’s 2016 Premier Technology Leaders, and has 18 years of CIO experience in private sector in Apparel Retail, Watch, and Oil industries
MBA and BS in Computer Science.

Travis V. Krischke is a Senior Account Executive with Veritas Technologies. He as a 22-year background in information technology, security, data governance, operational efficiency business strategy.
Before coming to Veritas, Travis held positions at Absolute Software, Symantec and Dell. Throughout his career Travis has focused on helping clients solve problems - from simple to complex and from strategic planning to tactical execution.
Currently Travis is focused on helping Public Sector clients optimize their IT budgets, backup and secure their data, and navigate the complexities of data retention, governance and eDiscovery.

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.

Bijal is a leader in PwC’s Digital and Customer Experience Practice. She has over 14 years experience helping clients leverage digital platforms and emerging technologies to connect with customers and optimize organizational performance. Bijal brings a human-centric design approach to her technology projects and a passion for creating exceptional customer experiences. In her many years of leading Agile-based design and development projects, she has emerged as a specialist in Agile adaption and complex program management (from mobilization to execution). She is experienced in all phases of rapid prototyping and solution development—from ideation and design to launch and execution.

Michael Sledge oversees TxDOT’s Editorial Services, Publishing and Design Services, Media Production Services and Web Services branches. Michael has more than 32 year of experience in state government, excluding four years of services in the United States Air Force, working as webmaster, web manager, interactive services director and media and policy director at various state agencies. When Michael was hired by TxDOT in 2005, the agency’s website held more than 200,000 files/documents in a structure that was difficult to search and navigate. Through at least four redesigns since then, TxDOT has been able to fine tune and better structure the website so users can quickly find the information they seek. A critical part of any state agency website redesign is reaching out to the communities who use the website to get their input.

Todd specializes in automation, data center and routing technologies in his role as an Architect in the US Strategic Verticals team at Juniper Networks. Todd’s real passion is finding unique solutions to business challenges which often involves automation combined with traditional Juniper solutions to create differentiated offerings. As an example, Todd was one of the original authors of Junos Enhanced Automated Provisioning (JEAP) which sought to solve the challenges of large scale automated configuration of network elements. More recently, Todd has focused on building easy to use zero touch provisioning solutions for the Juniper NFX platform.
Todd is a seasoned veteran with 20+ years of experience with progressive roles and responsibilities. He has served in several roles including system engineering on major enterprise accounts and on a major US service provider. Todd also was the Chief Architect on a major US service provider account before joining the US Strategic Verticals team. Before joining Juniper, Todd spent 14 years at Accenture where he was a senior manager with responsibility for network and security architecture for all Accenture locations.
Todd received a B.S. in Physics from Indiana University. Todd has also obtained several industry certifications including JNCIE-SEC and CCIE. Todd lives in the Dallas area with his wife and three kids.