Speakers

Ron Bewtra is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Department of Justice (DOJ). In this role, Mr. Bewtra drives technology innovation and develops the Department’s technology roadmaps in the areas of AI, Data, Geospatial Data, Cloud, and Networking. Mr. Bewtra serves as the principal technology advisor to the Chief Information Officer and senior leadership of the Department on key technology projects. By engaging with industry leaders, he identifies emerging technologies to accelerate and enhance the missions of DOJ. Mr. Bewtra is a chair of the Department’s AI Community of Interest and Geospatial Community of Interest.

Mr. Bewtra also supports Government-wide activities.  He is a chair of the Federal CIO Council’s Innovation Committee, chair of the Federal CTO Council, and represents DOJ on the Federal Geographic Data Committee and on the CDO Council. Mr. Bewtra also leads the Government’s transition to IPv6-only as the chair of the Federal IPv6 Task Force.

Mr. Bewtra previously served as the CTO of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where he was responsible for the big data partnership initiative with the goal of seeking collaborators to extract value from the data, to launch new businesses, and to create jobs. During his time at NOAA, Mr. Bewtra also led the agency’s research and development high performance computing.

Michael Baker

VP, Chief Information Security Officer

General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT)

Michael Baker is an accomplished cybersecurity executive passionate about building high performing teams and transforming the way cyber risk is managed within the business.  Michael brings nearly 20 years of experience in the field across cyber leadership, talent development, risk management, audit, and compliance serving the aerospace and defense industry as CISO along with a variety of clients across industries as a seasoned consultant.

Michael Baker currently serves as Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for GDIT serving within the Office of the CIO.  As CISO, he manages a team of professionals across all aspects of internal cyber operations, computer network defense, policy, awareness, incident response, threat intelligence, and secure architecture.  In addition, Michael leads the team to identify, assess, and mitigate cyber, IT, and compliance risks for the business. Prior to this role, Mr. Baker worked at EY consulting for a wide variety of clients across the defense, retail, banking, and technology sectors including 11 years for General Dynamics providing cyber and IT services across all GD business units.

Kurt Steege
Chief Technology Officer, ThunderCat Technology

Kurt Steege is the Chief Technology Officer at Thundercat Technology, is a Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business that delivers technology services and solutions to the federal government and Fortune 500 companies.  At Thundercat he is responsible for driving technology value for our clients through evaluation, architecture and outreach.   

Prior to joining Thundercat, Kurt was the Chief Information Officer of MacAndrews and Forbes Inc., a diverse global holding company, based in New York City.  During his time there he led a complete IT transformation and brought the company a modern standardized infrastructure upon which the business can depend.  In the government space, Kurt served as the Chief Enterprise Architect at the FBI.   Under Kurt’s leadership at the FBI the EAPO created roadmaps for IT Transformation, strategic direction for Shared Services, Mobility, Storage, and User Experience.  

Over the rest of his 20+ year career in Information Technology, Kurt has held roles within private industries for technology, financials, and education to help drive value and efficiency into small, medium and large organizations.

Praveen Vunnava is Americas Field CTO & Sr. Distinguished Engineer at Veritas Technologies, an enterprise software & hardware development company based in Santa Clara, California. He has been part of Veritas for the last 23 years starting in Engineering and transitioning between Consulting Services and Field Sales. He is currently part of Americas Field Sales organization, working with Product Engineering on vision and strategy of Veritas for next 12-24 months. His main areas of interest include data/application resiliency, data protection and storage management both on-premises and in the cloud. In addition, Praveen has actively been instrumental in architecting largest & most complex deployments of Veritas solutions across the globe addressing customer’s unique and diverse use cases. Praveen holds a M.S. in Math and Computer Science. Praveen also holds two patents in Data Protection and Data Classification. In his spare time, Praveen enjoys rock climbing and spending time with friends and family.

George Jackson is the director 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.