Speakers

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.
 

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.