Nimrod Bareket, Senior Enterprise Architect, U.S. Cellular
Nimrod Bareket is a Senior Enterprise Architecture at U.S. Cellular, the fifth-largest wireless carrier in the United States. He drives the company’s technology strategies for customer and associate engagement channels, digital transformation and core business support systems, and empowers business partners across the enterprise to execute on their respective tactics and achieve business objectives. Prior to his time at U.S. Cellular, Nimrod held a number of architecture positions for Amdocs, a global leader in customer care and billing solutions for the telecommunications industry, where he helped some of the world’s largest wireless carriers to modernize their IT systems and enabled them to engage their customers with the newest wireless technologies.
Steven Bramson, Enterprise Architect, Motorola Solutions
Steven is an infrastructure architect within Motorola Solutions IT and is responsible for directories, messaging, Windows, Microsoft technologies and Google. Steven is currently working with one of our product teams on security aspects for a new radio product.
Steven has worked with Microsoft products for many years and been successful in submitting many bug reports and enhancement requests, which have been fixed and implemented and newer product versions.
Steven is a graduate of the University of Manchester in England with a BSc in Physics. He became a full time IT professional in 1989. He joined Motorola in the UK in 1995 and went on to work for Motorola ( now Motorola Solutions ) in the US in 1999. Steven is a very keen photographer and has been fortunate to photograph many Motorola Solutions internal events.
Sudha Dhar, Director, Enterprise Architecture, Cummins
Sudha Dhar is Director enterprise architecture at Cummins. She and her team leads the strategy to leverage technology opportunities to realize business outcomes and laying the right architectural foundations to enable the next technology wave for the business transformational programs.
Prior to working with Cummins, Sudha’s experience has been across many global markets, based out of middle-east. Her specialization in Business solutions management spans across business domains like Manufacturing, retail, airlines, Banking, FMCG etc.
Patrick Emmons, CEO DragonSpears
Patrick Emmons is a graduate of St. Norbert College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Patrick co-founded Adage Technologies in 2001 and in 2015, founded DragonSpears as a spin-off dedicated to developing custom applications that improve speed, compliance and scalability of clients’ internal and customer-facing workflow processes.
When he is not learning about new technology, running a better business, or becoming a stronger leader, he can be found coaching his kids’ (FIVE of them) baseball and lacrosse teams and praising his ever-so-patient wife for all her support.
Jeff Fraleigh, Global Head, CAST Highlight-CAST Software
Jeff is a software executive with a 15+ year proven track record of delivering above target revenue and profitability objectives through visionary strategic planning, focused execution, motivating and managing multi-national teams, partners, customers and cross functional colleagues. During his career, Jeff has been involved in Enterprise Architecture, Application Portfolio Management and Data Management, helping hundreds clients drive value and tangible results in EA and APM initiatives. He recently joined CAST to manage specific solutions that focus on risk and complexity in application portfolios.
Firasat Hussain, Vice President of Enterprise Architecture, RRD
Firasat Hussain is a business-minded technology executive who is currently the Vice President of Enterprise Architecture for RRD. He had established the Enterprise Architecture group and is responsible for determining the company’s technology strategies and implementations. He also leads the Agile and DevOps transformation effort across the Corporate IT group consisting of development, operations, and infrastructure teams in order to evolve RRD’s delivery model and advance modernization efforts.
Prior to RRD, Firasat held different roles focused on delivering compelling customer experiences, creating high performing teams, and core technology initiatives in support of top line business objectives. He has been a leader and practitioner for more than 20 years in industries such as retail, travel and hospitality, healthcare, and e-commerce.
Sumit Sarkar, Chief Research Officer, Progress
Sumit Sarkar is a technology evangelist, thought leader and speaker working to enable enterprises to rapidly adopt new technologies that are adaptive, connected, and cognitive. He has been working in the data access infrastructure field for over 10 years, serving web/mobile developers, data engineers, and data scientists. At Progress, his primary area of focus is NativeScript for application development and supporting open standards for data access.
Dean Sharp, Global Network Architect, Manpower; CTO of Lakeside Information Systems
I’m the CTO of Lakeside Information Systems – a company that specializes in D.R. and BCP solutions as well as data center migrations and global network architecture.
At present I’m the Global Network Architect for Manpowergroup.
Recently I was the Enterprise Architect and Disaster Recovery Architect for Manpower North America – a role I still play with some frequency.
I have worked in over 48 countries around the world, have two beautiful Pharaoh Hounds named Ptah and Fubis and currently reside in Racine, WI.
Annur Sumar, Chief Technical Officer, MaeTech, Microsoft MVP, Former Vice President of IT D&P
Annur Sumar is a Microsoft Cloud and Datacenter MVP and technology consultant in the areas of Infrastructure Design, Enterprise Content Management, CRM, Microsoft Azure, System Center and Cloud Technologies. Annur is an industry recognized leader and independent speaker around strategic service automation, technology driven process improvements, IT service alignment, engineering best practices and operations management. All of which are targeted in his presentations to helping businesses with complex IT environments lower Total Cost of Ownership and raising Return On Investments.
Prior to joining a Microsoft Partner Consulting firm, Annur served as a Vice President of Technology for Duff & Phelps. One of the world’s leading independent financial advisory firms serving client needs in the areas of valuation, investment banking, transaction advice, and dispute consulting. During his tenure at Duff & Phelps, Annur worked closely with Microsoft product teams and case study managers in providing invaluable feedback around how businesses such as his were able to benefit from cloud technologies that were molded into business solutions. As a Microsoft MVP and industry expert, Annur brings 10 years of experience to work actively with other MVPs and Microsoft Partners to provide industry insight and strategic direction.
Jason Urban, Principal Consultant, SparkSynergy
Jason is an IT industry veteran who has worked for top technology and financial services companies such as Dell, HP, BMC, OutSystems, Citi, and Morgan Stanley. Jason currently serves as a Principal Consultant with Spark Synergy, a Low Code solutions provider.
Throughout his career, Jason has been focused on the intersection of strategic business process and the latest enabling technologies. Jason’s current focus is on the dramatic paradigm shift that Low Code and No Code solutions are having on global business and delivering solutions based on these new technologies to meet the rapidly changing demands of business.
Yabing Wang, VP, Chief Security Architect, Alight Solutions
Yabing just started her new role with Alight Solutions (previously called Aon-Hewitt) as VP, Chief Security Architect in Dec, 2017. She is responsible for establishing a new practice to focus on security strategy and roadmaps, as well as security architectures and governance. Her team works with other security professionals and helps build trust partnership with all teams across the enterprise to securely deliver services to clients and customers and truly make security an enabler not road-blocker for the business.
Prior to Alight, Yabing has been with Allstate Insurance Company for 15 years and also headed the Security Architecture team as the Chief Security Architect. Her accomplishments varied from building company’s security framework, strategies and architectures, to establishing most of Allstate’ security capabilities and services.
Yabing was awarded with Allstate’s highest award Chairman’s award in 2012 for her significant contribution to the company. Yabing has also worked for Netscape Communications, 1st internet company in United States, for 5 years, after she obtained her Master’s Degree in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Yabing has been an advocate for women in technology and women in cyber security. She has been playing active role in Alight and Allstate as well as in security industry to encourage women to join and grow in technology and cyber security.