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Keynote Speakers
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Nth Generation

Julie Leon | Event Host

Julie consults with clients to establish strategic goals and accelerate business transformation.  Successful change requires continuous innovation. Julie has a well-established ecosystem of technology and security resources for building future state solutions. She helps her clients evaluate current operational processes and develop a roadmap to success. Transformation is a journey. Julie embraces disruptive technology to gain a competitive edge and achieve business outcomes.

She thrives on collaboration and believes that together we can leverage innovation to uplift society! Julie has had the pleasure of interviewing industry leaders to bring to light their approach to affecting global change.

  • Antonio Neri, CEO - Hewlett Packard Enterprise

  • Dr. Eng Lim Goh, Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, High Performance Computing and Artificial Intelligence - Hewlett Packard Enterprise

  • Keerti Melkote, Founder and President - Aruba Networks

  • Nicole Eagan, Founder - Darktrace

  • Phillip Quade, CIO - Fortinet

  • Martin Casado, CTO - VMWare

  • Special Agents - FBI, CIA, CISA

  • Brian NeSmith, Founder and Chair - Arctic Wolf

  • Greg Ernst, GM America Sales - Intel

  • Yaki Faitelson, Cofounder and CEO – Varonis

  • Terry Richardson, Channel Chief – AMD

 

Julie has nurtured her professional and personal growth during her 13-year tenure with Nth Generation. She finds daily inspiration from her community and strives to contribute meaningful support.

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Nth Generation

Dan Molina | Co-President, Chief Technology Officer

Dan has worked in the IT industry since 1989, and has been with Nth Generation since 2000. He is responsible for Nth’s Research and Development initiatives, as well as helping to identify, research, evaluate, and incorporate leading-edge IT technologies into Nth’s solutions and services portfolio.

Dan completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science at UCSD in 1992 and a Master of Science Degree in Executive Leadership at USD in 2009. As part of his Master’s Program, Dan completed multiple research papers and presentations on the emerging Cloud Computing megatrend starting in 2008. He was a business owner for over 5 years, and developed widely adopted ASIC‐testing software while working as a Software Engineer at Hughes Aircraft.

Dan brings extensive design and consulting experience in the areas of Converged and Virtual Infrastructure, Data Protection, Business Continuity, Software Defined Data Center, Mobility, Security, Big Data Analytics, Hybrid Clouds, and other related Enterprise IT solutions. Dan is a multi-year finalist for the San Diego Tech Executive of the Year Award.

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Nth Generation

Todd Burkhardt | Co-President, Client Engagement, and Chief Information Officer

Todd Burkhardt has been with Nth Generation since 1993, and has the dubious distinction of being Nth’s first hired employee. He oversees Nth’s pre-sales engineering team, systems integration, project management, and internal IT. During his time with Nth Generation, Todd has developed the engineering team into a full-service IT organization.

Todd attended Coleman University, where he earned a Degree in Computer Programming. Prior to narrowing his scope to engineering and IT at Nth Generation, Todd was responsible for shipping, receiving, integration, data center build-outs and moves, phones, internet, facilities, security, technical team management, and customer support. As a result, he has a strong understanding of the people and processes required to run the company efficiently.

Todd is a pivotal member of the Strategic Team that charted Nth Generation’s Mission, Vision, Values and Strategy. He currently sits on the Corporate E-team and continues to help drive the strategic direction of the company, while also bringing a “Customer First” approach to our decision-making processes.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Bryan Thompson | Product Strategy, Product Management & GTM, GreenLake Cloud Services

Bryan is responsible for Product Strategy, Product Management and GTM for HPE GreenLake Cloud Services. In his last role, Bryan served as VP of Product Management for Oracle, where he led the global outbound product management organization for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure group. Bryan brings over 20 years of experience across Product Management, Corporate Strategy & Development, Marketing, and Solution incubation.  Previously he has held executive and leadership roles at Rackspace, Limelight Networks and Amazon.com.  Bryan studied Management Information Systems at Washington State University and lives in Carlsbad California with his wife and two children.

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Grossmont Union High School District

Rick Roberts | Executive Director, Educational Technology Services, Grossmont Union High School District

In the course of a 35-year (and counting) career as an IT professional serving the California K-12 community, Rick has been intimately involved in all aspects of his field for multiple organizations.

 

The work of teams or departments he leads focuses on providing the best possible environment for students and teachers. At Grossmont Union High School District, he and his team have built out a districtwide wireless network, issued every student a Chromebook, deployed a state of the art student information system and a learning management system, created educational resources online, and essentially transformed the classroom into one that leverages technology to the greatest extent possible.

 

As a technology leader, Rick’s role is to ensure that each school has easy and permanent access to the electronic systems and tools that support learning so that more time is available for interaction between teachers and students. He collaborates with instructional leaders in the district office and at school sites to ensure that there is no gap between instruction and technology. He has put in place an operational structure that systematically refreshes all technical components at a pace that keeps up with the ever-changing and ever-growing demand.

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Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Mac Avancena Jr. | VP, GreenLake Worldwide Solutions

Mac Avancena is the Vice President of HPE GreenLake Solutions within the worldwide go-to-market organization. In this role, Mac’s experience and leadership with sales and product management develops and aligns customer and industry solutions to HPE GreenLake offerings. Mac and his team work to identify and deliver reference architectures and drive customer requirements into the HPE GreenLake solutions. This includes developing a series of solution playbooks across Cloud, Data, and Edge. 

Mac is an experienced leader with strong industry knowledge and a proven track record of driving strong business results in various industries for the last 30 years. He is a previous HPE customer joining from Kern County, the third-largest county in California, where he led digital transformation initiatives as the Chief Information Technology Officer. Prior to that, he spent 16 years with NBCUniversal overseeing global data and analytics, application rationalization, infrastructure, and program office efforts. 

Mac holds an MBA from Northeastern University; a Bachelor's in Business Management from Fresno Pacific University; and a Certificate in Project Management from the California Institute of Technology. Mac is also a certified PMP, CTBME, Six Sigma, ITIL, and CSAC Credentialed Technology Executive. 

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Nth Generation

Jeromie Jackson | Director Security & Analytics

Since 1994, Jeromie Jackson has demonstrated accomplished executive leadership, in tandem with security and risk management consulting. He is a trusted advisor to senior executives with a focus on strategy development, IT optimization, governance, and risk management. Mr. Jackson engages executives with a consultative approach to enable businesses with innovative opportunities to mitigate and reduce information technology (IT) risks. Mr. Jackson’s deep technical knowledge coupled with a passion for leading-edge security architecture gives his clientele the ability to move quickly from concept into executive decisioning and delivery. Mr. Jackson executes with precision and focus on enabling businesses by wielding the Control Objectives from frameworks, such as Center for Internet Security’s (CIS) Critical Security Controls (CSC), the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, Balanced
Scorecards (BSC) implementations, and Strategy Maps.

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Veeam

Emilee Tellez | Technologist, Product Strategy

Emilee Tellez is a Technologist for Product Strategy at Veeam Software. She has 10 years of IT experience with over eight years working directly for Veeam®. Based in Mesa, AZ, she supported both commercial and public sector customers in the desert region, spanning from New Mexico to Hawaii. She helps customers work on their data protection and disaster recovery strategies for the ever-changing modern datacenter. She is a graduate of Arizona State University, and holds certifications in AWS, VMware and Veeam.

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Arctic Wolf

Con Mallon | VP, Product Marketing

Con Mallon is VP of Product Marketing and is responsible for bringing to market all of Arctic Wolf’s Security Operations offerings. He has a deep and varied background in cybersecurity drawn from a range of product marketing and product management roles. Prior to Arctic Wolf, Con was at CrowdStrike helping form and build the product marketing function. At Symantec he led the worldwide regional product marketing for the consumer business and then took responsibility for product management of the mobile security product offerings.

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Nth Generation

Cameron Matthews | Sr. Security Consultant

Cameron Matthews is an accomplished technology and cybersecurity leader with over 32 years of experience. He specializes in the areas of threat intelligence exchange, rapid vulnerability notification, and situational security awareness across verticals including the U.S. Department of Defense, healthcare, e-commerce, telecommunications, transportation, education, and cybersecurity.

 

Cameron has proven business acumen gained from key positions in organizations ranging from ground floor Internet startups to multi-billion dollar organizations. Mr. Matthews’ vast knowledge of corporate security strategy, risk and threat management, corporate security culture, secure software, systems engineering, and systems integration empower him to be a key advisor for Nth Generation. His tenured portfolio of cutting-edge architected and managed security systems provide a competitive edge for clients.

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FBI

Adam James | Special Agent, San Diego

FBI SA James joined the FBI in 2010 and was assigned to the San Diego field office. SA James has worked Cybercrime investigations for the past twelve years with a focus on national security related computer intrusion activities. Prior to joining the FBI SA James was employed as a computer security analyst and consultant in the healthcare and financial services industry.

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Nth Generation

James Makil | Sr. Security Consultant

James Makil has spent over 15 years in information security which includes professional experience with Realtor.com, Move.com, Redspin Inc, Rapid 7, and Cynergistek before joining Nth Generation. He has helped dozens of institutions understand the risks and threats of Internet security and conducted numerous security assessments in a number of industries. He has completed over 280 different assessments, many using the NIST cybersecurity framework (CSF).  His experience spans the financial sector (FFIEC/GLBA/PCI-DSS), credit unions (NCUA), the gaming industry, the energy sector (NERC), and healthcare (HIPAA).

 

Mr. Makil holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems and an MBA with a focus in Information Assurance. He is currently working towards his CISSP and CISA certifications.

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Nth Generation

Todd Cope | IT Security Engineer

Todd Cope has an extensive background in IT architectures, operating systems, and
networking, which gives him a huge advantage as a penetration tester.  With a Master of Science in Cybersecurity Engineering, he brings a significant academic perspective to ethical hacking.​

Todd B
Bryan Thompson
Dan M
Mac Avancena
Jeromie Jackson
Emilee Tellez
Con Mallon
Camern Matthews
Adam James
Todd C
Julie L
James Makil
Rick Roberts
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