SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

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.

James Gorman, CTO/CISO, BetterWorld Technology

James is a solutions-driven, results-focused technologist and entrepreneur with experience securing, designing, building, deploying and maintaining large-scale, mission-critical applications and networks. Over the last 15 years he has lead teams through multiple NIST, ISO, PCI, and HITRUST compliance audits. As a consultant, he has helped multiple companies formulate their strategy for compliance and infrastructure scalability.

His previous leadership roles include CISO, VP of Network Operations & Engineering, CTO, VP of Operations, Founder & Principal Consultant, Vice President and CEO at companies such as GE, Epoch Internet, NETtel, Cable and Wireless, SecureNet, and Transaction Network Services.

Some of his other engineering achievements include: Managing the migration of Data Centers developing the technology, methodology, and infrastructure for a turn-key cloud-based system incorporating network administration, disaster recovery, hosting, e-mail, application, and desktop virtualization; virtualizing 50% of the infrastructure for a major payment processor; security improvements for a 30,000-user network; building cloud-based multi-tenant hosting environments; designing the infrastructure for the Unified Communications Center for Washington, DC; and designing, managing and directing several large, complicated data center moves. He started his career as a Cryptographic Technician in the US Navy earning decorations for Humanitarian Service and service in the Gulf War.

Victor Hsiang, CISO, GATX

Victor Hsiang is an accomplished Information Security, Risk and IT Professional with over 19 years of experience working within the Financial Services and Healthcare sectors. He has an established track record of delivering successful IT and Information Security solutions that manages risk while supporting business requirements. His experience includes implementation of technology, security audits, risk assessments, information records management, privacy concerns, compliance and legal issues related to security, forensics, security practices and policy development. He currently leads the Information Security program at GATX Corporation.

Andres Jara, Director of Business Development, Netrality

Andres Jara is a Director of Business Development for Netrality Data Centers in Chicago, IL. He is responsible for developing partnerships, sales, & new acquisitions. Andres brings vast experience in the telecommunications and technology industries having held various positions in sales and leadership over the last decade.

John Jordan, GM, BetterWorld Technology

John comes to BetterWorld with more than 17 years of technology experience in IT operations and IT leadership roles for non-profits and professional service organizations.

John is the General Managers of BetterWorld Technology and previously has held leadership roles in two Chicago-area businesses that completed a comprehensive technology modernization project and a long-term plan to go Cloud first. Prior to those positions, John was the Senior Director of Technology for Easter Seals, one of the largest voluntary health organizations in the US, has worked in the legal and food manufacturing verticals. Outside of work he enjoys golf and spending time with his children.

Chadd Kenney, VP & Chief Technologist, Clumio

Chadd Kenney is a technologist at heart with 20 years of successful experience in high-performance storage and cloud architecture across the data center, cloud and SaaS. At Clumio, he guides the long-term product strategy and roadmap and specializes in helping enterprises understand the right way to leverage the cloud for data protection.

Kevin McGregor, Disaster Recovery Manager – Americas Business & Technology Resilience, AON

Functioned in the financial, insurance and healthcare industries over a 37-year career.
Conducted first full data center failover involving over 5000 servers, 700 databases, 600 participants, and 312 applications, some of which had a global presence.

Migrated entire data center to an alternate facility, including moving the disaster recovery environment with no downtime.

Implemented new DR framework to better utilize current technology.

Dan Olbur, Manager, Crisis Management and Business Continuity, Gallagher

I am a passionate client and community-focused Crisis Management and Business Continuity advocate. Being operationally resilient has been part of my DNA since 2005. Today, I help to manage an award winning business continuity and crisis management program. My team is involved in “around-the-clock” monitoring throughout various parts of the world using an Intelligence Operations Center platform, focused on pro-actively seeking out where incidents can and will take place. In my spare time, normal circumstances or otherwise, I am a father of three teenagers and married going on 20 years. I love theater, which comes in quite handy when doing exercises, and I am “roadie” for my son’s rock and roll cover band, Six On Friday here in Chicagoland.

Dean Sharp, Global Network Architect, Manpower

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.

Dmitry Shub, CISO, City of Evanston

Dmitry Shub is the Chief Information Security Officer for the City of Evanston, IL, a diverse community of over 75,000 residents and home to the BIG10’s Northwestern University. As the City’s first CISO he developed a security program in support of a broad spectrum of external patrons and internal users such as police, fire, 911, library, and other critical infrastructure. Dmitry has spent the last 20 years working in government, higher education, and not-for-profit sectors bringing IT leadership to organizations such as Columbia College Chicago and Chicago Public Radio WBEZ 91.5FM. An alum of Columbia College Chicago, he is also an adjunct instructor of Object Oriented Programming and Audio Production for Game Design at the Columbia College Chicago – School of Interactive Arts and Media.

Annur Sumar, CTO, 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.