Speakers

Steve is currently leading the web, GIS and data services architecture for the NOAA Industry Proving Ground project.  He is also the U.S. Drought Portal (drought.gov) Program Manager at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) in Asheville, North Carolina. Steve has a background in a variety of GIS, data management, and visualization activities within NOAA, including radar, satellite, and severe weather datasets. He is also the primary author of the NOAA Weather and Climate Toolkit software application.

Dr. Austin Davis currently serves as the Technical Director, Geospatial Research Laboratory at the U.S. Army Engineer Research & Development Center. He directly supports the Geospatial Research & Engineering, Research & Development Area, Civil Works Research & Development Area, as well as other ERDC Research & Development Areas. He works all aspects of programmatic build to modernize and provide technical research and development oversight of geospatial capabilities for the Warfighter. Prior to that, he served as an Associate Technical Director supporting the Military Engineering, Research & Development Area and Geospatial Research & Engineering, Research & Development Area. Early in his career, he served as a Research Geographer and Team Leader for Geospatial Sciences and Environmental Instrumentation Teams in the ERDC Environmental Laboratory. Dr. Davis has numerous awards, patents, and publications. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Mississippi State University and Master of Science degree from the University of Southern California, and doctoral degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Nagaraja Rao Harshadeep (Harsh) is a Global Lead for Disruptive Technology in the Sustainable Development Practice Group. In over 24 years at the World Bank, he has led and supported several environmental, water, and other natural resources operations and analytical support around the world. This includes work on transboundary watersheds, integrated basin planning and management, environment, critical ecosystems, and climate resilience, monitoring systems, public-domain data access, modern earth observation, analytical/decision support tools, and other emerging technologies. He has also been a Global Lead for Watersheds and co-leads the Bank’s HydroInformatics focal area. He also leads a Disruptive KIDS (Knowledge, Information & Data Services) Helpdesk to provide support on emerging technology for operational teams.

Earlier, he worked with other international organizations, academia, and the private sector on water analytics and water conflicts. He holds a Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT-Madras), a Masters in Environmental and Resource Engineering from Syracuse, and a PhD in Water Resources and Environmental Systems Engineering from Harvard University.

As the National Remote Sensing Program Manager for the FS, Everett provides remote sensing policy, oversight and direction to primary agency stakeholders including the Geospatial Technology Applications Center, the National Interagency Fire Center, Law Enforcement and Investigations, Forest Health Protection and regional remote sensing coordinators to ensure that agency remote sensing requirements are understood and needs are met and that new technology is appropriately exploited to match current and evolving agency mission requirements. Within the Washington Office, Everett coordinates with the Geospatial Management Office Leadership Team to develop the annual remote sensing program of work and provide guidance to the field.

Everett serves as the primary remote sensing liaison to NASA, DHS, the BLM, the USGS, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to ensure that the Forest Service is utilizing the most up-to-date data sources, applications and best practices for data exploitation and use. This role promotes collaboration on remote sensing activities which helps to reduce redundant efforts within the federal government.
 

Brian McGarry is a senior intelligence officer with a unique career track blending Emergency Management and Intelligence proficiencies.  Currently leading the National Guard Bureau Division responsible for Incident Awareness, his experience includes working with partners in the national, international, state, local, industry, and academic sectors.  While serving as the lead intelligence officer for Illinois he led the effort to create the state’s first cyber unit and worked with the FBI on a joint operation to capture an ISIS cell outside Chicago three days before the planned attack on a National Guard armory.  His education experiences include graduate programs and degrees from the National Intelligence University, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cranfield School of Management (UK), and the US Army War College.  

Tim Stryker is Chief of the Outreach and Collaboration Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Land Imaging Program. He works closely with internal and external stakeholders to advance the societal benefit of space-based and airborne land imaging systems. Mr. Stryker was previously employed as Director of the U.S. Group on Earth Observations Program at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In this capacity, he coordinated civil Earth observation activities, including systems assessments data management initiatives, and international activities, among multiple Federal agencies and their international partners.
Mr. Stryker’s other previous positions include Executive Officer of the international Committee on Earth Observation Satellites, and Deputy Director of the Office of Policy at the National Reconnaissance Office. He has also served in assignments at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the Office of Management and Budget, the Federal Communications Commission, and the U.S. Information Agency. 
A former Presidential Management Fellow, Mr. Stryker earned his Master’s Degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University and his Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of Michigan.
 

Rebecca Moore directs Google’s geospatial initiatives driving environmental sustainability and social impact, including Google Earth and Google Earth Engine. She initiated the development of Google Earth Engine in 2009 as the first cloud-native, planetary-scale geospatial analytics platform bringing an unprecedented amount of satellite data online, together with petapixel-scale computation, enabling data scientists to easily derive actionable insights about our changing planet. In 2017, Earth Engine received the ASPRS Outstanding Technical Achievement award. Moore’s personal work using Google Earth was instrumental in stopping the logging of more than a thousand acres of redwoods in her Santa Cruz Mountain community. Moore has been honored with the 2013 White House Champion of Change Award for Open Science, the 2013 Zoological Society of London Award for Conservation Innovation, the 2016 Rachel Carson Award from the National Audubon Society and the 2022 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Industry Leader Award.  She received a bachelor’s degree in artificial intelligence with honors from Brown University and a master’s degree from Stanford University.

Valerie Pasquarella is a Research Scientist at Google where she works primarily on the development of foundational geospatial datasets that make Earth Observation imagery more useful and usable to all. Prior to joining Google in 2022, she held Research Faculty positions at Boston University and Harvard University. She also served as a postdoctoral fellow with the Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and holds a PhD in Geography, an MA in Environmental Remote Sensing and GIS, and a BA in Environmental Science from Boston University.

Jeff is a Technical Director, Sustainability in Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO, where he guides technology innovation to accelerate sustainability impact. In this role, he collaborates with technology leaders in Google’s most strategic customers to develop high impact emerging sustainability projects, including approaches to ESG transformation and climate risk and resilience. Previously, Jeff was Senior Vice President, Data Science Engineering at Blackstone, where he helped launch the firm’s data science practice for investment analysis and portfolio company enablement across private equity and real estate. Before Blackstone, Jeff was Director of Data Engineering at Ipreo, a financial technology company, VP Technology at Observer Media, and CTO of an early-stage retail data analytics startup. Before these roles, Jeff was Chief Data Scientist at S&P Global, where he founded the company's first data science team after leading the global content engineering team. Jeff received a bachelor degree in Biology at the University of Virginia.

George Jackson serves as vice president of events at GovExec, the largest and most influential media company in the public sector marketplace. He launched GovExec TV in 2021 and built it
into a multi-million dollar business, receiving GovExec’s first annual Entrepreneurial Spirit Award and a 2024 “B2B Media Rising Star Award” from the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA).

Previously, George produced Capital Insider at WJLA-TV, where he won an Emmy award in 2012. One year later, he developed and recorded the pilot episode of Government Matters, a program about the business of government, which debuted as a weekly show on Sunday, August 4, 2013. He led the show through September 2020, expanded its reach to a daily worldwide audience, and produced its first feature-length documentary, The Dawn of Generation AI.

George’s roots lay in TV, journalism, and storytelling. He spent the first five years of his professional career at WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tenn., where he began as an overnight producer and then became the lead on-air reporter for the station’s 11 p.m. newscast. He covered and investigated 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 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 is from Toledo, Ohio. He lives with his wife, twin daughters, and a pack of rescue dogs in Northern Virginia.