Public Sector Lead, Microsoft
Assoc ADM, IM Group
and Deputy CIO, DND
Director Digital Transformation, Canadian Armed Forces
Co-founder
WithYouWithMe
Associate Partner, Consulting Services
Ernst & Young LLP
CTO, Global Governments
ServiceNow
Head of Worldwide Industry Strategy for Public Sector, OpenText
Regional Director, Arctic Programs, Arctic Region, Canadian Coast Guard
Senior System Engineer
Dell Technologies Canada
CISO, Fortinet
Vice President, Communications & External Relations, NDRIO
Director of the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University
CTO, Benchmark Corp
Chief Technology Officer, Regional, Forescout Technologies
Managing Director, Technology Health & Public Service Lead in Canada and Managing Director, Inclusion & Diversity in Canada, Accenture
Consulting Partner, PwC's Workforce of the Future Practice, PwC
PhD Candidate in Political Science, Dalhousie University
Public Servant in Residence in the Dalhousie School of Public Administration
Professor
School of Public Administration, Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University
Director General of Partnerships and Risk Mitigation, Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
Program Director, DevOps
Benchmark Corp.
Vice-President of Innovation and Policy Services
Canada School of Public Service
Heads the Google Public Sector, Healthcare, and Higher Education Customer Engineering teams
Security Solutions Architect
BriteSky
Director of the PSPC Task Force on Anti-Racism, Diversity and Inclusion
PSPC
Account Executive - Federal Government, NetApp
Director of Disclosure and Information Sharing,
Communications Security Establishment
Copyright ©2021 Vanguard Canada Media
Bob Osborn
CTO, Global Governments, ServiceNow
Robert (Bob) Osborn is Chief Technology Officer, Global Governments for ServiceNow. Bob is an accomplished senior executive who has held many high-level IT leadership positions, including Director of Logistics IT for the U.S. Army G4, Deputy J6/CIO for U.S. Transportation Command, and CIO of the National Nuclear Security Administration where he was responsible for the Nation’s nuclear weapons design and manufacturing information.
He has led major IT and organizational transformations throughout his career and is an acknowledged thought leader recognized across the public sector market. As a user of ServiceNow, Bob led ITIL based Enterprise Service Management standardization within the Federal Government. Bob also served as a United States Marine Corps officer for 27 years.
Brian Chidester
Head of Worldwide Industry Strategy for Public Sector
OpenText
Brian Chidester is the Head of Worldwide Industry Strategy for Public Sector at OpenText and the host of "The Government Huddle with Brian Chidester" podcast from Government Marketing University. He is responsible for growing OpenText’s Public Sector practice while also ensuring the success of their public sector customers.
Formerly, Brian served as the Industry Marketing Lead for Public Sector at Appian. He also has held product marketing roles with Monster Worldwide, Arrow ECS and IHS Markit, where he was awarded Best in Show - Lead Generation at the 2014 MarketingSherpa Email Awards.
Brian Chidester
Regional Director, Arctic Programs, Arctic Region, Canadian Coast Guard
Christian is the Regional Director of the Canadian Coast Guard’s new Arctic Region where he has the privilege of working with Inuit & other northerner partners to create a region that serves residents and conducts operations in the North, by the North, for the North.
To play a part in building the Canada of tomorrow, Christian has previously led federal efforts to implement a new whole-of-government model of project assessment and consultation across the North. In March 2016, he chaired a Northern Governance Conference in Yellowknife that offered a view of what successful partnership and collaboration between governments and Indigenous Peoples can be going forward. In 2018, as A/Regional Director of the Canadian Wildlife Service’s Northern Region of Environment and Climate Change Canada, Christian had the honour of serving as Canada’s first Senior Representative on the Edéhzhíe Management Board – the body responsible for managing the first new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in Canada, created in partnership with the Dehcho First Nations.
David Bickle
Senior System Engineer
Dell Technologies Canada
David Bickle is a Senior System Engineer for Dell Technologies Canada. David has over 20 years’ experience in information technology across a diverse field of next-generation technologies including high-speed networking, high performance computing, artificial intelligence, and embedded systems.
He’s based in Ottawa Ontario.
Jim Richberg
CISO, Fortinet
Jim Richberg’s role as a Fortinet CISO leverages his 30+ years’ experience leading and driving innovation in cybersecurity, threat intelligence, and cyber strategy and policy for the US Government and international partners.
Prior to joining Fortinet, he served as the National Intelligence Manager for Cyber, the senior Federal Executive focused on cyber intelligence within the $80B+/100,000 employee US Intelligence Community (IC). He led creation and implementation of cyber strategy for the 17 departments and agencies of the IC, set integrated priorities on cyber threat, and served as Senior Advisor to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on cyber issues. He brings a broad enterprise-level approach to cybersecurity honed as a member of the Executive team which created and oversaw implementation of the multi-billion dollar whole-of-government Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI) that generated new Government cyber capability and enhanced cybersecurity in the private sector and critical infrastructure.
Julie Cafley
Vice President, Communications & External Relations
NDRIO
Dr. Julie Cafley is an accomplished leader and academic with expertise in higher education leadership and governance. Before joining NDRIO, she worked as Executive Vice-President at the Public Policy Forum. Julie built bridges and enhanced the profile and visibility of the PPF while directing its communications, external partnerships, membership and learning teams.
In her previous role as Chief of Staff to two presidents at the University of Ottawa, Julie worked closely with the senior executive team to develop and advance strategic initiatives. Julie holds a PhD in education leadership from the University of Ottawa. Her thesis focused on higher education leadership and governance through the lens of unfinished terms of Canadian university presidents. Julie is an active community leader and a tireless champion for diversity initiatives.
Dr. Lori Turnbull
Director of the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University
Dr. Lori Turnbull is the Director of the School of Public Administration at Dalhousie University and Deputy Editor of Canadian Government Executive.
Shlomo Bielak
CTO, Benchmark Corp
Shlomo, Benchmark Corp’s CTO, is building expertise to shift global markets in understanding how to make a transformational initiative scale without heroics. His experience and thought leadership coupled with his talented
engineering effectiveness department are creating never-before-seen solutions for Multi-Cloud, DevOps, DevSecOps, and enabling continuous deployment to production for the enterprise. A rich and responsive customer experience is the outcome.
Some of the affiliations and contributions of Shlomo includes: DevOps Institute Ambassador – Creating DevSecOps courseware and educating their 35k members, Continuous Delivery Foundation Ambassador – Creating content for the wider CI/CD community, Forbes Technology Council – Publishing leadership content on Forbes, CIO Association of Canada – Chair Leadership and Technology Council, Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, CIO Strategy Council – Cyber Security Technology Council member developing security standards and a new standard for digital transformation, SiberX – Board Advisory Member for the CISO community, Google Cloud – Certified Fellow – Championing Multi-Cloud efforts globally and FDX – Emeritus Member – Creating Open Banking Standards.
Tamer Baker
Chief Technology Officer, Regional
Forescout Technologies
As an accomplished and well-respected Cybersecurity professional, Tamer Baker has been a trusted advisor to Forescout’s customers across the world since joining the Forescout team in 2014. He is sought after for his expertise and success in helping customers with evaluating and minimizing organizational risks, maximizing technology capabilities and providing strategic direction while architecting solutions to meet customer requirements that span the breadth of various cross-functional business-technology challenges.
Tamer has also been instrumental in interpreting and helping customers building strategies and regulatory compliance policies, improving cybersecurity posture and positioning an organization as a best-in-class provider based on NIST, CIS, Zero Trust and other Frameworks. He has specialized in compliance automation strategies in CDM, C2C, Healthcare, Finance/Banking and more.
Tamer also has served as an Officer in the United States Air Force.
Zahra Jadavji
Managing Director, Technology Health & Public Service Lead in Canada and Managing Director, Inclusion & Diversity in Canada, Accenture
Zahra Jadavji leads Accenture’s Technology practice for the Health and Public Service industry in Canada and is also the Managing Director of Inclusion and Diversity in Canada. She holds more than 20 years of progressive experience leading large-scale, complex, business transformation engagements involving integration, alignment and implementation of technology and information systems. Zahra strives to further Accenture’s inclusion and diversity commitments in the workplace which includes fostering an exceptionally inclusive culture, building diverse leadership and client teams, and reaching and sustaining overall gender balance in Canada.
Passionate about community involvement, Zahra has taken on causes close to her heart such as youth development, health and social programs for seniors and various women’s leadership initiatives. In 2017, she was recognized by the province of Ontario with the Leading Women Building Communities award for her contribution in mentoring the diverse population of women within her community.
Kathy Parker
Consulting Partner, PwC's Workforce of the Future Practice
PwC
Kathy Parker is a Consulting Partner and the leader of PwC's Workforce of the Future practice in Toronto. For the past 24 years, she has helped clients to deliver major transformations across a variety of industries by ensuring that people, culture, structures, and HR practices are aligned with changes in business goals and direction. Much of her more recent work focuses on helping clients plan for and build their workforces of the future, with a focus on specific people needs such as new ways to engage employees, understanding needed new skills, and upskilling and reskilling to support digitization.
A frequent speaker, Kathy has presented on topics ranging from engagement strategies for millennials and Gen Zs to harnessing your organizational culture as a competitive advantage, to the hybrid work and the future of work.
Tari Ajadi
PhD Candidate in Political Science
Dalhousie University
Tari Ajadi is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Dalhousie University. His dissertation research compares how Black activists in Halifax, Nova Scotia and London, Ontario strategize to prompt change in policing and in health policy. A British-Nigerian immigrant to Canada, Tari aims to produce research that supports and engages with Black communities across the country.
As a 2014 3M National Student Fellow, Tari has published articles in The Globe and Mail, The Chronicle-Herald, University Affairs, The Coast, Canadian Diversity and The Tyee. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Health Association of African Canadians, as well as with the East Coast Prison Justice Society. He is a Junior Fellow at the MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance.
Sara Filbee
Public Servant in Residence in the Dalhousie School of Public Administration
Dr. Filbee began her career with the law firm McInnes Cooper & Robertson in Halifax, where she practiced for 11 years, the last three as a corporate law partner. She left the practice of law to take up a position with Peat Marwick Stevenson & Kellogg (later KPMG Management Consulting), heading up the Atlantic Canada outplacement and downsizing practice for the firm. She later became President of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council. Following her term with the Council, she spent three and a half years with CIBC, first as Manager, Corporate Development in the field of Public Private Partnerships and then as Director, Commercial Banking. In 2001, she started a strategic consulting practice and later moved to Ottawa to take up the position of Vice-President, Operations for a start-up company providing web-enabled human resources tools.
She joined the Public Service of Canada in Industry Canada's Industry Sector in 2002. In January 2009, she became Assistant Deputy Minister of Lands and Economic Development at Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. In March 2014, she was appointed Assistant Deputy Minister, Atlantic Region, for Service Canada. She is currently on secondment with the Dalhousie School of Public Administration as Public Servant in Residence. She has also been appointed as a Research Fellow with the Institute of Governance, Ottawa, ON.
Jeffrey Roy
Professor, School of Public Administration, Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University
Jeffrey Roy is professor in the School of Public Administration, Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University where he specializes in democratic governance, business and government relations, and digital government reforms. In addition to teaching and research, he has consulted to governments at all levels, the private sector, as well as the United Nations and the OECD.
He is an associate editor of the International Journal of E-Government Research, a featured columnist in Canadian Government Executive, and author of several books (the most recent, From Machinery to Mobility: Democracy and Government in the Participative Age, published by Springer in 2013). His research has been supported by several funding bodies including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Professor Roy is also a member of the Transparency Advisory Group (TAG) for Public Safety Canada.
Frank Currie
Heads the Google Public Sector, Healthcare, and Higher Education Customer Engineering teams
Frank heads the Google Public Sector, Healthcare, and Higher Education Customer Engineering teams in Canada. He works closely with customers around how to help them navigate their path to Cloud Computing.
Prior to Google, Frank spent 17 years working in Security, Orchestration, and Storage Management at Veritas/Symantec culminating in leading ideation and delivery of the industry-first container-based hardware appliance. He covered roles in Engineering, Pre-Sales, and Product Management focusing on industries including Healthcare, Public Sector, Financial Services and Energy. He stated his career working in Government as an
Application Developer and Database Administrator in Australia.
Frank has a degree in Information Systems, majoring in Information Management and Database Design from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
Lisa Carroll
Public Sector Lead, Microsoft Canada
Lisa Carroll is the Public Sector Lead for Microsoft Canada. Her most recent role prior to joining was as the Senior Vice-President, National Capital Region at CGI.
Lisa's 29-year IT career has included leadership roles with other leading Canadian organizations, such as Sierra Systems, University Health Network, Liberty Technology Services and Compugen Systems Ltd. Her passions include supporting a strong Canadian economy by enabling a healthy ICT Sector and helping clients deliver on their commitments to the Citizens of Canada. She is currently co-chair of TECHNATION's Diversity and Inclusion Committee, formerly she was Vice-Chair Director on the National Board and chair of TECHNATION's Ontario Board. She also has participated in many advocacy councils with the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Lisa is a recipient of the Silver Stevie Award - Canadian Female Executive of the Year (2013), TECHNATION's Volunteer of the Year Award (2013), and the Queen's Jubilee Award (2013).
Kardam Tiwari
Program Director, DevOps
Benchmark Corp.
Kardam Tiwari is Program Director for DevOps at Benchmark Corp. Prior to joining Benchmark Corp, Kardam was a Management Consultant in the consulting group at EY where he led technology transformation engagements and has extensive experience in the Financial Services Industry. He has enabled client teams to adopt DevSecOps and its practices from technology to processes and culture to experiences. He brings perspective of cross service lines within EY and various domains for emerging tech.
Kardam started his career by founding his own company and later joining IBM Global Business Services as a Blockchain and DevOps consultant. Kardam's area of experience is Tech strategy(cloud, DevOps etc.), migration, security (cryptography, cloud) and modernization (emerging technologies). He holds a Master’s Degree in computer science from Dalhousie University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Technology from SRM University.
Michèle Mullen
Director General of Partnerships and Risk Mitigation
Canadian Centre for Cyber Security
Michèle is the Director General of Partnerships and Risk Mitigation at the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. The Partnerships and Risk Mitigation directorate is responsible for providing IT security advice, guidance and services to Canadian critical infrastructure organizations and for advancing collaborative relationships with private industry to strengthen cyber security practices in Canada.
Michèle previous roles include serving as the Executive Director of the Canadian Committee on National Security Systems (CCNSS) and External Compliance, Director of the Canadian Special Liaison Office in Washington DC in April 2015. Here, she represented the Communications Security Establishment as the Senior Canadian at the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command. She also represented CSE at the Embassy of Canada as an integral part of the Canadian Security & Intelligence Community abroad, and represented Canada’s cryptologic mission with the US Intelligence Community. She was also the Director, Architecture and Technology Assurance in the IT Security Branch at CSE, and prior to that she served as Director, Program Management in the Chief Information Officer Branch at CSE. Before that, she served for three years as Director, Governance Operations in the Government Operations Sector (GOS) of the Treasury Board Secretariat, and was preceded by five years of consulting work as an IT executive in the private sector. Michèle began her career as a logistics officer in the Canadian Forces, as an Air Transportation and Movements Specialist, and was awarded the Canadian Forces Decoration (CD) in 1999.
Christiana Cavazzoni
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Information Management, and Deputy Chief Information Officer
Department of National Defence
Christiana Cavazzoni joined Canada’s federal government in 2009, after spending a number of years in the telecommunication and surveillance industry with Nortel and MacDonald Dettwiler. In her current role, she provides leadership and support in the delivery and execution of the Defence IM/IT Programme, including enhancing the integration and interoperability of defence capabilities, as well as the alignment of strategies in support of defence priorities, including Strong, Secure, Engaged. In addition, Christiana supports the CAF/DND in advancing and implementing digital transformation and innovation across business lines. As a senior executive with a background in Technology and Business Transformations, her experience in digital and business strategy development and implementation spans both private and public sectors.
David Anderson
Director Digital Transformation, Canadian Armed Forces
Brigadier-General Dave Anderson was born in Bristol, England, and raised in Montreal. He joined the Canadian Forces in 1980 as a Guardsman in the Canadian Grenadier Guards, and in 1988 he transferred to the Regular Force. Since that time he commanded 3 PPCLI, was the Commanding Officer of 1 PPCLI from 2006-2008, and the Commander of 1 CMBG from 2012-2014.
Brigadier-General Anderson's extra-regimental service included the Company Commander in the 1st Battalion The Royal Green Jackets in England, Executive Assistant to the Chief of the Land Staff, and Chief of Staff Land Force Western Area (now 3rd Canadian Division). From 2014 to 2016, he was appointed as the CF Liaison Officer to the Pentagon in Washington, DC. His operational experience includes deployment to Cyprus, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Upon his return from Iraq, he was appointed Chief of Staff Readiness at Canadian Joint Operations Command.
Tom Moore
Co-founder
WithYouWithMe
Tom Moore spent seven years in the Australian Army as an infantry soldier and infantry officer including leading a 60-person combat team in Afghanistan for eight months. Tom suffered a physical injury whilst serving in the defence force, removing him from active duty. He was reassigned to manage a transition and contract termination unit within the Australian Army. Tom worked closely with private-sector transition service providers and in doing so saw first-hand the current transition model employed by the Government. In this role, Tom personally transitioned 370 personnel.
When Tom left the military, he conducted his own transition program and ended up working in digital marketing sales and product development where he quickly grew to become an account executive managing some of their largest clients including HP, before creating WithYouWithMe, which provides job-ready veterans to fill large skill gaps in the tech market.
Jamie O’Hare
Associate Partner, Consulting Services
Ernst & Young LLP
Jamie leads Ottawa’s Cyber Security Practice in Ottawa for Ernst & Young LLP (EY). He also leads the Defence and National Security practice at EY for Canadian Federal Government clients.
Mr. O’Hare has built a reputation for falling in love with the problem to drive innovation and efficiencies through meaningful solutions that stand the test of time. Most recently, he worked with GoC in bridging the tremendous gap between demand for skilled IT resources and the availability of personal. He subsequently developed the CWEP Program in partnership with WYWM for Public Sector whereby Canadian Armed Forces Veterans are upskilled in IT and made available to GoC through the exclusive GoC CWEP contract. In addition to bridging the gap in resource availability, the program is dedicated to solving the under and unemployment challenges CAF veterans face following service.
Neil Bouwer
Vice-President of Innovation and Policy Services
Canada School of Public Service
Neil Bouwer is currently the Vice-President of Innovation and Policy Services at the Canada School
of Public Service. He has also served as an Assistant Deputy Minister at the Treasury Board of
Canada Secretariat, Natural Resources Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the Privy
Council Office of Canada; and in executive positions at the Financial Transactions and Reports
Analysis Centre of Canada, Human Resources and Social Development Canada and the Business
Development Bank of Canada.
He has also worked at the Department of Finance and Western Economic Diversification Canada. Neil actively supports the Government of Canada policy and data communities, the Advanced Policy Analyst Program and the Free Agent HR Program.
Nicholas Rowe
Security Solutions Architect
BriteSky
As a security solutions architect at BriteSky, Nicholas is responsible for the development, deployment, and ongoing management and maintenance of integrated, end-to-end cybersecurity solutions used in the BriteSky Security Operations Center (SOC). In this role, Nicholas works with the security operations team to provide internal and external BriteSky customers with pragmatic security solutions that address the dynamic business needs of today’s threat landscape.
Nicholas has worked in progressively senior positions in the cybersecurity field. Before joining the BriteSky team, he served as security solutions integrator at the Bank of Canada, and previously as a senior security analyst at the Bell Canada SOC. Prior to joining Bell Canada, he worked as a network security engineer at Checkpoint Technologies. Nicholas has extensive experience with on-premises and cloud-based network engineering, design, and deployment and is qualified in a variety of network hardening practices and technologies. He has also been intimately involved in developing a low-cost, open source security detection and telemetry agent based on platform native tools, such as Sysmon and Audit.
Nicholas Rowe
Director of the PSPC Task Force on Anti-Racism, Diversity and Inclusion, PSPC
Marie-Daphné Laguerre was appointed Director of the PSPC Task Force on Anti-Racism, Diversity and Inclusion on November 23, 2020. A career Human Resources practitioner, Marie-Daphné studied Workplace Psychology at Université du Québec en Outaouais and French Literature at University of Ottawa before starting her public service career in October 1999. She begin working various jobs as a clerk and administrative assistant before becoming an HR Advisor in 2001. She is specialised in staffing, labor relation and strategic planning.
Marie-Daphné is also currently a volunteer mentor with the Ottawa Community Immigration Services Organisation (OCISO). She has been mentoring newcomers for the past two years, by helping them integrate within Canadian workplace culture while providing advice and supporting them with their career goals. A proud Canadian of Afro-Caribbean descent, she hopes her contributions to the Task Force will help build a more inclusive and welcoming Canadian society where her two daughters and every citizen can fit in, for generations to come!
Robert Medina
Account Executive - Federal Government, NetApp
Coming soon.
Adam Hatfield
Director of Disclosure and Information Sharing
Communications Security Establishment
Adam is responsible for key aspects of the release and sharing of CSE information in support of CSE’s mission to get the right information to the right people at the right time. This includes ensuring transparency to Canadians through access to information and privacy mechanisms and compliance tracking and reporting.
Adam was previously the Director of Partnerships for the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security within CSE. Prior to the creation of the Cyber Centre in October 2018, he was the Senior Director of the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre at Public Safety Canada, where he led that team through its transition into the Cyber Centre. Adam also held various national security and emergency management positions at Public Safety Canada, and was part of the team that launched Canada’s Cyber Security Strategy in 2010 and updated it with Canada’s National Cyber Security Strategy in 2018. He has worked at Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Canada in spectrum regulation and cyber security. His private sector experience prior to joining government includes product development at enterprise software firm BackWeb, and systems architecture and business continuity consulting with Comdisco Canada.