Speakers

Blake Nelson is vice president of platforms and cloud for SAIC, responsible for the development, sales, and delivery of products and solutions for digital platforms, including networking, data centers, edge computing, 5G, private and public cloud, and platform security. He drives vision and strategy for solutions that enable SAIC’s customers to transform their IT services portfolios into everything-as-a-service in the hyper-scale world.

Nelson is a seasoned cloud solution evangelist and leader with over 20 years of experience in driving innovative technical solutions and business transformation. He has extensive experience in delivering successful outcomes for customers, including the adoption of hybrid and cloud-native capabilities, DevSecOps, big data analytics platforms, advanced analytics visualizations, and cloud-native capabilities.

Nelson joined SAIC in 2021 following his stint at Pragmatics, where he was vice president and general manager for federal solutions. Prior to that, he held various leadership roles in solution development at Accenture Federal Services, Beacon Associates, and iConstituent.

Nelson holds a bachelor of arts in political science and an MBA in management and information systems from West Virginia University. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his three children, Riley, Molly, and Cole, and enjoys spinning and skiing in the wintertime.

Jason “Jay” Meil is the director of data science and chief data scientist for SAIC’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation Factory, where he leads AI technical strategy and solutions that enable rapid decision-making at scale in support of multiple intelligence disciplines.

With two decades of experience in applied mathematics, data science and deep learning, Meil is a recognized expert in analytical tradecraft,, all source intelligence and open source intelligence. He serves as a technical advisor to numerous intelligence organizations within the Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Defense (DOD), applying his tradecraft to the domains of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; targeting; and algorithmic warfare.

Meil has led cross-functional teams in designing, building and deploying deep learning models to support federal government customers in complex missions of national importance, with the ultimate objective of making the nation safe against peer and near-pear threats. In addition to IC and DOD customers, he has supported civilian agencies including the Department of Homeland Security.

As an SAIC research fellow, Meil has focused on two areas:

• integrating multi-modal intelligent decision support systems into command and control operations
• offensive and defensive AI algorithms in identity intelligence, information warfare, information operations and unconventional warfare (I2/IW/IO/UW) operations.

Meil is a frequent participant in research panels and industry discussions on the impact of AI on national security, including with the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; the Center for Security in Politics at UC-Berkeley on behalf of DARPA; CERN’s OpenLab and Quantum Technology Initiative; the European Geosciences Union; the Atlantic Council Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security; the Potomac Officers Club; and AFCEA.

Eric Kritzler (Sr. Program Director) has been with SAIC for over 25 yrs. and is honored to have this opportunity share his knowledge and experience. He is currently the Program Executive on the Technology and Enterprise Support Services contract which maintains technology for the FRTIB (Federal Agency) and has executed the TSP for over 8 yrs, supporting over 7M participants and beneficiaries and over $700B in assets. Eric has had many roles over his carrier, including Business Continuity Management for Treasure for Y2k and Deployment Manager, responsible for defining and directing a bleeding edge implementations of Dev/Ops in 2006.

George Jackson is the VP of events at GovExec Media – the largest and most-influential media company in the public sector marketplace. George joined GovExec in October of 2020 to enhance the scale of their events and audience experiences.

He graduated from The Ohio State University in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in English. In 2006, he earned his master’s in broadcast journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.

George spent the first five years of his journalism career at WJHL-TV in Johnson City Tenn. – beginning as an overnight producer for the station’s 6 a.m. broadcast. He advanced to lead on-air reporter for WJHL’s 11 p.m. newscast.

As a reporter, George examined the earnings of two non-profit hospital systems, felony charges filed against a local sheriff, predatory paving companies, a health benefits backlog for local veterans, and a series of cold-case murder investigations. He received an honorable mention for Best TV Reporter in the 2011 Tennessee AP Broadcast awards and won a Best Investigative Reporting award from Media General in 2010.

George joined DC’s ABC affiliate WJLA-TV in 2012 to produce Capital Insider, which won him an Emmy award. One year later, he developed and recorded the pilot episode of Government Matters – a program about the business of government. It debuted as a weekly show on Sunday, August 4th of 2013. George led Government Matters through September of 2020, expanded its reach to a daily worldwide audience, and produced its first feature-length documentary “The Dawn of Generation AI.”

George is from Toledo, Ohio. He lives with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of rescue dogs in Northern Virginia.