Speakers

Joel Krooswyk is the Federal CTO at GitLab. He has been involved in many Agile and digital transformations, modernizing process, tooling and workflows in scaled environments. His deep end-to-end knowledge of software development lifecycles drive his focus on iterative change, test automation, and built-in security. Joel is also an advocate for servant leadership and remote work.

Jennifer Rostami (she/her) is currently serving as the Assistant Commissioner of Office of TTS Consulting which oversees technical and programmatic experts from 18F and the Centers of Excellence focused on IT modernization across government. Prior to this role, Ms. Rostami served as the CoE Director and is committed to helping government agencies accelerate their modernization initiatives. She has over 15 years of experience working in the public and private
sector with a background in finance and a specialization in transformation. She joined the GSA in 2019 and spearheaded Agency Partnerships by helping to grow the reach of the CoE across the federal government.

Through those agency partnerships, Rostami has gained experience in project leadership, strategy creation, contracting, team leadership, and budgeting. She has worked with federal agencies to modernize in the areas of Cloud Adoption, Customer Experience, and Data Analytics. Rostami helps create organizational alignment for buy-in and change through stakeholder management, financial planning, and communication. Rostami is also responsible for business development, and centralizes efforts to balance staffing to meet customer/engagement demand.

Prior to joining GSA, Jennifer served as the Director of Finance and Operations at a marketing technology company, where she helped reduce costs, increase new revenue streams, and prepare the company for acquisition. Her previous experience also includes working as a management consultant in public sector and private sector Fortune 100 firms focused on improving operations, and managing and growing a $31M sales territory for a luxury goods manufacturer.

While earning her M.B.A, Rostami founded a non-profit to help middle school kids learn about their dream careers and connect with professionals for mentoring.

Adam Mazmanian is executive editor of Nextgov/FCW. Before joining the editing team, Mazmanian was an FCW staff writer covering Congress, governmentwide technology policy and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Prior to joining FCW, Mazmanian was technology correspondent for National Journal and served in a variety of editorial roles at B2B news service SmartBrief. Mazmanian has contributed reviews and articles to the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper, Newsday, New York Press, Architect Magazine and other publications.