Pat Cannon, Vice President, Technical Solutions, US Signal

Pat Cannon is currently the Vice President of Technical Sales at US Signal and brings over 15 years of IT Consulting and Leadership experience to the US Signal team. A seasoned professional, Pat has extensive experience architecting scalable, secure and resilient solutions for customers within a wide variety of industries. Pat’s experience as an IT consultant allows him to look at business objectives and technology options producing solutions that have a meaningful impact for customer operation.

Sergey Chernov, VP, Information Technology & Enterprise Architecture, Enson

Sergey Chernov, VP, Information Technology & Enterprise Architecture at Ensono – a global IT Outsourcing and Managed Services provider – where he is currently leading integration and consolidation programs to combine and optimize processes, technology, and operational structures of legacy Acxiom IT, Wipro Data Center Services, and Attenda into new Ensono. Previously, Sergey led Global IT Delivery for Hollister, a medical device manufacturer in 23 countries. Before Hollister, Sergey worked at NiSource a F500 gas and electric utility where he drove establishment of EA practice. Sergey started his career at Emerson Electric where he led implementation of e-commerce systems and infrastructure support for global manufacturing sites.

Kirby McCord, Senior Manager Infrastructure Architecture, U.S. Cellular

Kirby McCord is currently the Leader of the Infrastructure Architecture Team at USCellular, a super-regional Wireless Carrier headquartered in Chicago. He has over 20+ years of Infrastructure experience in Telecommunications in a variety of roles from Operations, Delivery and Architecture.

Kirby has experience Architecting Solutions using Traditional Infrastructures, Big Data Systems, Cloud Natives Infrastructure on premise and public clouds. Kirby has Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from Purdue University, Master’s Degree in Engineering from Purdue University and a MBA from Keller Graduate School of Management.

Irene Oh, Vice President, IT Services and Operations, Reyes Holdings

Irene currently serves as VP of Infrastructure Services and Operations at Reyes Holdings, LLC, a global leader in the production and distribution of food and beverage products. Reyes Holdings, LLC is the holding company for Reyes Beer Division, Martin Brower, Great Lakes Coca-Cola Bottling, and Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling. Prior to Reyes Holdings, Irene served as Head of Information Technology at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago where she led all IT related functions including Infrastructure, Service Desk, Cyber Security, Application Development, & Performance Metrics. Prior to that, she held various roles within Infrastructure and Information Security at Health Care Service Corporation, the parent company of Blue Cross and Blue Shield in IL, MT, NM, OK, and TX.

Irene earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is currently pursuing an MBA at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. She serves on the board for the Cloud Security Alliance Chicagoland chapter and spent the summer as a coach for interns participating in the Driving Forward virtual internship program.

Jens Rieskamp, Director Product Inception, LeanIX

Certified Scrum Product Owner with over 8 years experience. Using my technical background I enjoy working withthe stakeholders and team in an iterative, agile process to deliver great solutions. In addition, I work with others togrow the agile mindset in the company.

Jeffrey Siegrist, Senior Manager, Development & Analytics, Life Fitness

Jeffrey Siegrist serves as Senior Manager, Development and Analytics and Life Fitness.  Jeff most recently concluded a two-year cloud migration project, where he oversaw the planning and migration of all Life Fitness applications. Successful execution was made possible from resolute leadership, extensive experience with custom systems, and business acumen acquired from BI roles.

Prior to the cloud migration project Jeff spent 10+ years in the Business Intelligence and Analytics space providing expertise and guidance in technical and management domains.  Notable accomplishments were Brunswick’s first data lake, a unified long-term strategy across multiple BI teams, and implementing changes that significantly improved team efficiency.

Nisar Syed, Director Operations & Infrastructure, IT, The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

Nisar Syed is the Director of Operations & Infrastructure for the Booth School of Business, University of Chicago. Founded in 1898, Booth is one of the oldest schools in the United States. Nine Booth faculty members and alums have won the Nobel Prize in economics since 1982.

Nisar has over 20 years of experience in the IT industry, majority of which has been in the Healthcare & Life Sciences area. Nisar manages teams with responsibility for Mission Critical Infrastructure with responsibility both in traditional on-prem Data Centers and in the cloud (AWS & Azure).

Annur Sumar, CTO, 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.

Ian Willoughby, Chief Architect, Cloud Solutions, 2nd Watch

Technologist with extensive experience in cloud strategy and deployment. Implementer of DevOps environments. Over 20 years of product development and go to market strategy. Driven by continuous improvement and operating high availability services. Skilled communicator and fast-learner with the ability to understand, translate and mediate between business and technology.