Speakers

Colonel John T. Whelahan enlisted in the Army and served in the 75th Ranger Regiment and attached or assigned to other USSOCOM elements. He attended Officer Candidate School and was commissioned in the Field Artillery in late 1996. He, again, served in Savannah, GA then Fort Jackson, SC as Aide De Camp to the Commanding General.

After completing the Captains Career Course at Fort Sill, OK COL Whelahan attended CAS3 and was then assigned to Fort Bragg, NC. He served in various Fire Support Roles and deployed as a BN and BDE FSO and as a Fires planner and Liaison Officer with the 82nd Airborne Division. He commanded C Battery 3rd BN 319th AFAR and deployed in that role as well. COL Whelahan was selected as the Special Assistant to the Commander then commanded the Advanced Airborne School and the Division Special Troops Battalion (Provisional) during Modularity.

From 2008 until 2011, COL Whelahan attended Command and General Staff College and served as a BN Executive Officer, BDE Operations Officer, and Brigade Executive Officer before moving to 3rd Army, United States Army Central, where he served as the Deputy Fire Support Coordinator, Chief of Targeting, and Chief of Special Programs Effects and Targeting from January, 2012 through June 2014. 

COL Whelahan commanded 1st BN, 290th RGT which went through transformation over his 26 months of command. Originally a Combined Arms Task Force with Artillery Battery, Infantry Company, and an Armored Troop, they transformed to a mixed Battalion of MLRS and HIMARS. The Battalion was finally re-designated as a Brigade Support Battalion for the final 9 months of his command. 

COL Whelahan was selected for the War College but deferred for three years to serve at USSOUTHCOM as the Future Operations and Plans Chief and Current Operations Chief at USSOUTHCOM, then as Deputy Director/Chief of Staff for a Joint and Interagency Counter Network Task Force under a Navy Special Warfare Director. 

In 2019, COL Whelahan served as a transition lead for ADM Craig Fowler before attending the USA War College then served as a Special Assistant to the Commander before moving to 3rd Army again. He served as the Director of Fires and Effects there before moving to Fort Sill, OK and assuming his current role as the Director of the Army Capability Manager for Fires Cells and Targeting.

COL Whelahan has been married to the former Sharon Jones of Key West, FL for 28 years. They have four Children, John (Larissa), Keara, Colin, and Kassidy. John and Larissa provided them with two grandchildren, Ella (3) and Chloe (1).

James Schliesske has supported the U.S. Army in various technology leadership positions over the past twenty years. He started his career in 2003 by being selected for a highly competitive two-year Army CIO/G6 technology internship program that enabled him to obtain a broad range of experience working Army business and tactical programs.  He has supported both PM Mission Command and PM Tactical Network working on system-of-system, logistics, secure tactical wireless and fire support C2 programs. He specializes in the modernization of software intensive legacy tactical programs.

Mr. Schliesske has a B.S in Computer Science from Philadelphia University (now Thomas Jefferson University) and a M.S from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Jeremiah Johnson is a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, helping to lead the firm’s command and control business. He has extensive experience directly executing programs in support of the DOD mission.

A former United States Marine, he has numerous awards and citations from active-duty service, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense. While in the 2nd Marine Division, Jeremiah built the first Enhanced Position Location Reporting System that utilized the USMC Blue Force Tracker system, a beta release of the Command and Control Personal Computer. Jeremiah developed the architecture that modernized the Department of State (DOS)’s Enterprise Patch Management Program, enabling biometric information sharing between DOS and external agencies such as the FBI, NSA, CIA, and DOD.

While at the Army’s Institutional Research and Assessment Division (IRAD), Jeremiah built conceptual product and platform requirements to clean, store, and conflate data at the Army Geospatial Center. This provided Army Geospatial Command expanded functionality through a first of its kind geospatial data lake within a High-Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC).

With more than 25 years of experience in the defense community, Jeremiah’s previous roles include program manager and solutions architect for the Defense Information Systems Agency SIPR-Joint Regional Security Stacks and chief engineer for the U.S. Army’s Blue Force Tracker program for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Jeremiah has a B.S. in Network Engineering and Cyber Security from the University of Maryland Global Campus.

George Jackson is VP of events at GovExec – the largest and most-influential media company in the public sector marketplace. He joined the company in 2020 to enhance the scale of their events and audience experiences. In 2021, George launched GovExec TV (streaming video content) and received the company’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, part of their first-annual Icon Awards.

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 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.