UPCOMING EVENTS

Nicholas Barger, Director of Product Engineering, KeHE Distributors

Nicholas Barger is the Director of Product Engineering at KeHE. He has built several large scale applications and products in the industries of e-commerce, insurance, medical, and aviation. His involvement in successful projects include hands on development and architecture as well as recruiting, managing, and helping talented software engineers be successful and work together. Perhaps most importantly, Nicholas has brought engineering culture and change to companies resulting in invigorated growth and development of the individuals working there and the revenue generating products they build. Nicholas is deeply interested in new technologies, continuous improvement, and passionate companies that care about others.

Patrick Emmons, President, 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.

David Koppe, Director of Information Strategy, MongoDB

David Koppe is the Director of Information Strategy at MongoDB for the Eastern region. With over 30 years of experience, David is focused on helping companies derive business value by using the capabilities offered by MongoDB’s technology offerings and the surrounding ecosystem. Application Modernization, Mainframe Offload, Cloud Native applications and Internet of Things are core strategic areas that are top-of-mind for many executives and where the Information Strategy group has made the largest impact. Organizations from startups to large Fortune 500 Companies have benefited from adopting the full power of modern technology stacks to accelerate their time to value by over 20x, build for competitive differentiation, reduce operational risk, and lower their TCO by $10’s of millions annually.

Daniel Magid, Vice President, Rocket Software

Daniel Magid is the Rocket Vice President in charge of Solution Sales. He is responsible for all of Rocket’s IBM i solutions including Rocket’s Modernization, ALM & DevOps and HA/DR solutions. Daniel has been deeply involved in the IBM midrange market for more than 30 years. Through his many articles, speaking engagements and interviews in leading IT publications, he has become a recognized authority on IBM i, enterprise software change management, DevOps and application modernization. Before becoming Vice President of Solution Sales, Daniel ran all of the IBM i R&D labs at Rocket.

Bhavik Modi, Director of Software Development, Wheels, Inc.

Full biography coming soon!

Russell Moss, Vice-President, Divisional Technology Officer – Gov’t & Consumer Solutions, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, of IL, MN, NM, OK, TX

Russell Moss is an experienced information technology executive responsible for transformational change of technology organizations. He has led very large programs and teams delivering enterprise-level capabilities across data-intensive, customer-focused industries like Health Care.

In his current role as a Vice-President, Divisional Technology Officer of Gov’t & Consumer Solutions at Health Care Services Corporation Russell is responsible for Information Technology related to the Medicaid, Medicare and Retail Lines of Business. HCSC, as the largest customer-owned health insurer in the United States, operates as Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) of Illinois, BCBS of New Mexico, BCBS of Oklahoma, BCBS of Oklahoma, BCBS of Montana and BCBS of Texas. Russell leads a highly-acclaimed IT department that has won multiple prestigious honors, including a Stevie Award for “Information Technology Department of the Year” presented by American Business Awards and consecutive “Most Effective IT Team” awards presented by the Association of Information Technology Professionals. He prides himself on building fully engaged, high-performing teams that focus on delivering value to stakeholders.

Prior to joining HCSC, Russell was a Client Principal for a world-class IT consulting firm specializing in use of Agile methodologies to transform organizations.

Dave Swierzynski, Vice President of Business Solutions Architecture, Gallagher Bassett

David Swierzynski is an accomplished Senior IT Executive with 28+ years of Insurance expertise in the areas of Finance, Managed Care, Banking, and E-commerce Portfolios. David is currently the Vice President of Business Solutions Architecture at Gallagher Bassett Services in Rolling Meadows, IL. He has held several key Leadership roles throughout his career and has been responsible and accountable for several Organizations within Gallagher Bassett. Some key positions include the Vice President of Application Development and Maintenance, where Dave guided and lead several Development Teams that primarily focused on Claim payments, Banking, International Banking, Managed Care, E-bill processing, and dotcom development. David also held the position of Vice President of Business Analysis where he guided and lead the Business Analysts to create an environment that standardized Business Requirements documents, created requirements traceability matrixes, and created a Business Analysis Center of Excellence for the Organization. David later took over the Quality Assurance Organization as well as the Vice President of Quality Assurance and Testing. David’s leadership created an environment that cultivated comprehensive testing solutions along with modernized automated testing scripts and the development of regression test case scenario libraries. These key items directly contributed to a reduction in defect density and an increase in defect free software deployment. After establishing the foundation for these Organizations, David became the Vice President of IT Portfolio Management. Under David’s direction and guidance, he established partnerships with the Business Organizations that were previously nonexistent. David assisted individuals and Organizations define and scope their IT Initiatives and Business Priorities by asking insightful questions, scoring intake requests, understanding requirements, and coaching Corporate alignment while building and strengthening Partnerships and Alliances throughout the Organization. David felt that this role awarded his Team and himself to be responsible and accountable for the direction of the Strategic and Tactical Initiatives while ensuring capacity bandwidth and demand constraints were aligned in the most optimal and efficient manner. David’s current role as the Vice President of Business Solutions Architecture has allowed him to have oversight on several key initiatives that allow him to draw from his vast knowledge and expertise and provide proven guidance in the implementation solutions of these Strategic goals. David feels the three pillars of any successful Team can be defined and supported by Attitude, Communication, and Trust. If you demonstrate these traits in a positive way, your Team will take you above and beyond your wildest expectations! David was recently quoted in an article, “It’s not what you ask a person to do for you, it’s how you ask it! I have been so very fortunate and blessed to have had the opportunity to work with such amazingly dedicated professional individuals who I am honored to have as friends! ” 

Sid Tadiparthi, Solution Architect, Gallagher Bassett

Sid Tadiparthi is an Information Technology professional, experienced in managing multiple complex and large programs/projects that enhanced and had an impact on business growth. He is a technology leader with multiple years of hands on development experience and an excellent track record of architecting, building and delivering highly reliable distributed systems and microservices architectures. Working as a solution architect, he is helping Gallagher Bassett evolve and innovate new products by leading mobile, cloud and API design, and implementation.

Sid has a passion for open source development and holds a Master of Science degree in Information Technology.

Laura Vetter, Chief Technologist & Co-Founder, Evolutio

Laura Vetter is the Chief Technologist and co-founder of Evolutio. With over 15 years in federal and commercial software integration and development, Laura provides unique thought leadership to her clients in a collaborative effort to bring their organizations into the increasingly complex and regulated future.

Laura brings with her a tremendous amount of experience in both delivering engineering services and leading teams responsible for integrating some of the most innovative technology on the market. Laura has help dozens of the Fortune 500 get visibility into their environment, notably to detect, monitor and remediate issues, most frequently in the Security and Application space. She is well-versed in IT monitoring tool selection, providing organizations insight into product evaluation criteria and subsequently how to extract the most value from the technology that will be leveraged.

Having achieved extensive certifications, Laura is aligned with several of the most disruptive technologies on the market. Highlighted by her experience with Splunk and AppDynamics, Laura is uniquely equipped to navigate and direct the often overwhelming journey to IT modernization.

Fascinated by the business drivers that depend on the competency and ability of the IT organization, her knack for connecting those business drivers with the right technology and weaving together solutions gives her clients the edge needed to stay ahead of the competition.

Chris White, VP Product and Marketing Strategy, CAST Software

Chris White is a recognized expert in Enterprise Architecture, Application Portfolio Management and IT Modernization. He has almost 20 years experience overseeing, implementing and advising clients on Enterprise Architecture projects and strategy. As VP of Product Strategy & Marketing for CAST, he is responsible for helping CIO’s around the globe understand the game changing significance of Software Intelligence. CAST is empowering data-driven IT Organizations to thrive in today’s software driven world by providing visibility into the otherwise invisible world of software health, complexity, dependency & risk. With software intelligence, CIO’s make better investment decisions, avoid catastrophic failures, and become business leaders in the digital age.