Mitch Christian, CISO, Synergy Global Housing
I was born and raised on a small farm in Wisconsin. I owned my own business at the age of 19. In the early 90’s I went to work for Kimberly Clark as an Electrical Engineering Tech building out Diaper Machines and switched profession into IT starting out as a PC maintenance tech at Kimberly Clark working my way to overseeing the NOC for the corporation. I moved to a position with Grant Thornton starting out as a local IT manager and worked my way to National Director of IT.
In 2008 I started my own company doing Cyber Security Consulting for small businesses and landed John Deere and Jimmy Johns as major clients doing compliance work and hardening systems. In 2016 I started for American Hotel Register as Global IT Security Lead and built out a global security program from scratch. In 2019 I went to work for Kivu Consulting as Director of Cyber Investigations leading more than 100 investigations and remediations of Ransomware incidents and litigation cases.
Currently I am Global IT Security Director for Synergy Global Housing and CISO for Alpha Recon (a startup company making an app for Risk Management). I have a degree in Automated Manufacturing and one in Business Technical Management. I currently hold a CISSP and CISM. My family and I reside in Colorado and I am an active member of Infragard.
Maria Fung, Technical Manager, Darktrace
Maria Fung is the Technical Manager of Canada at Darktrace. Based out of Vancouver, Maria works with leading organizations in Western Canada in a range of industries to deploy Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI. During Maria’s tenure at Darktrace, the company has grown to over 5,500 customers and has been the recipient of numerous achievements, including ‘Security Trailblazer’ at the annual Microsoft Security 20/20 Awards and being named one of TIME Magazine’s ‘Most Influential Companies’ 2021. Maria holds a Bachelor Degree from the University of British Columbia.
Patrick Hannah, Chief Technology Officer, CloudHesive
Patrick Hannah is the CTO and co-founder of CloudHesive, a cloud consulting and managed services provider. At CloudHesive, Mr. Hannah leads CloudHesive’s professional services and SaaS teams. Prior to co-founding CloudHesive, Mr. Hannah held technology management positions in organizations not only well known in South Florida but also nationally and internationally.
In his most recent position, prior to CloudHesive, Mr. Hannah was the senior manager of the cloud engineering team at Pegasystems – an enterprise software company located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mr. Hannah, while at Pega helped grow their cloud platform into a solution capable of supporting the most stringent requirements from enterprise customers in regulated industries.
Prior to Pegasystems, Mr. Hannah spent 8 years at Arise Virtual Solutions – a work-at-home BPO in Miramar, Florida. During his tenure at Arise, Mr. Hannah designed, implemented and managed the companies contact center platform which allowed Arise to not only expand out of the South Florida market to a national presence but expand internationally as well.
Dr. David Rettig, CEO, Synoptus
David Rettig is CEO of Synoptus, delivering IT Operational Excellence and Salesforce architectural services. He holds two masters degrees and finishes his doctorate this January, specializing in business leadership development that results in real behavioral change. He has authored three books on leadership & business-IT alignment. He has over 25 years of hands-on and leadership experience with IT in manufacturing, tier-1 automotive, supply chain, higher education, engineering, and nonprofits.
Annur Sumar, Chief Technology Officer, MaeTech
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.