Speakers

Tony Stafford is a technical leader with over 20 years of experience, focusing on emerging technologies such as cloud computing, microservice architectures, DevOps, containers, and 5G cellular. Mr. Stafford is currently the Deputy Technical Director for the Naval Information Warfare Center, Atlantic (NIWC LANT), the Navy’s Technical Authority. Before serving in this position, he was Vice President of Technical Solutions at an open source-focused tech company that serviced over 1,200 clients a year. He is also a veteran of the US Air Force’s Intelligence Community (IC), and served as a technical expert to DoD programs for nine years following his military service. Mr. Stafford is the inventor of SecurePaaS, a multi-tenant, multi-access control cloud security solution and patent holder of Auto-injection of Security Protocols. He is also the co-creator of a handheld Information Warfare platform and patent holder of Low-Power Platform with Modular Sensors.  During his career Mr. Stafford has had the pleasure to work with warfighters, government executives, and many of the top tech companies in the country.

Ryan Bontreger is the lead architect and solution manager for Ansible consulting and services for the public sector. Over the last two decades, Ryan has been the hands-on leader, creating and delivering automation solutions for federal, state and local government agencies. He has personally led the automation adoption efforts at over 20 different state and federal agencies, onboarding thousands of developers to Ansible.

Michael Epley has been helping the US defense and National Security communities use and adopt open source software over the last 2 decades with practical experience as a software developer and enterprise architect. During his tenure at Red Hat, Michael has passionately driven adoption of key technology: cloud and kubernetes, tactical edge/forward deployed systems, data analytics tools and platforms, and disconnected operations -- always in the context of security and compliance concerns unique to this sector. Michael has BS degrees in Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech and a JD from The University of Texas School of Law.

George Jackson is Vice President of events at GovExec – 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.