CIO & CISO STRATEGY MEETING

Facilitators Include:

Steven C. Michaels, Vice President, Chief Technology Officer
SCL Health

Steven Michaels is currently serving as the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Broomfield, Colorado based SCL Health. SCL Health is a faith-based, nonprofit healthcare organization dedicated to improving the health of the people and communities they serve, especially those who are poor and vulnerable. Steven is responsible for advancing technology strategies for SCL Health, including growing and optimizing the ministry through the use of digital and technological resources. Steven has 25 years of senior-level experience in global IT leadership, organizational transformation, and strategic planning. He served Fortune 500 and non-profit organizations spanning from healthcare to supply chain, telecommunications and government. Steven earned his MBA from the University of Phoenix, an Executive Leadership Certification with the University of Notre Dame and a Master Certificate in Six Sigma Black Belt with Villanova University He received his BBA in CIS from Campbell University.

Amy Nichols, Head of Technology Integrity
Wells Fargo 

Amy Nichols is head of the Head of Secure Development with Technology Remediation Program, one of the world’s largest and most innovative information technology groups with more than 22,000 talented team members who help keep Wells Fargo at the forefront of America’s diversified financial services companies.

Amy is responsible for providing strategic thought leadership to critical major initiatives.  Currently she is driving the Secure Development program to implement cybersecurity requirements for development into the full application portfolio.

She previously served as head of Technology Program Delivery and Governance, focused on the overall strategy and management of multiple teams, including Framework and Process Oversight, Solutions Lifecycle, Asset and Configuration Management, Cyber Security initiatives, and Risk.

Rick Doten, Vice President of Information Security, Centene Corporation
Chief Information Security Officer, Carolina Complete Health

Rick is CISO of Carolina Complete Health, a state healthcare plan for Centene Corporate. Rick has run ethical hacking, application security, incident response & forensics, and risk management teams throughout his 25 years in IT Security.  Rick has been the first CISO for two companies. He has also consulted as a virtual CISO for many industries and companies around the world. Notable roles over the last 20 years have been as a Risk Management consultant at Gartner, Chief Scientist for Lockheed Martin’s Center for Cyber Security Innovation, and Managing Principal in the Professional Security Services practice at Verizon.

Taylor Erickson, Chief Information Officer
Safeguard Medical

Taylor Erickson is the CIO of Safeguard Medical, a global provider of life-saving products and services to first responders. He is a technology strategist driving digital transformation, optimizations, mergers & acquisitions, and integrations in high growth environments. His tenure has included Fortune 500 companies, Big 4 consulting, turnarounds, high growth environments, and start-up organizations. Taylor has an MBA in Business Strategy and Operations from Vanderbilt University and a BA in Business Administration and Computer Science from Whittier College.

Pierre Arbajian, Artificial Intelligence Architect
Wells Fargo

Pierre Arbajian has a broad range of experiences in the areas Artificial Intelligence, Strategy Building, Data and computer engineering, Business and IT architecture.  Pierre has been actively developing and leading AI and machine learning solutions for the last five years in speech processing, CRM and banking. He holds a BS from GA Tech, a MS from the University of Tennessee and a PhD from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. He has numerous patents and has many papers and publications in data security, AI and Quantum Computing.

Michael Seymour, Vice President of Technology
Allegacy Federal Credit Union

Michael Seymour is currently Vice President of Technology at Allegacy Federal Credit Union in Winston Salem, North Carolina. Previously he served for over ten years as Vice President of Information Technology at Pike Electric Corporation. During his tenure, he has led multiple technology transformation initiatives involving public cloud migration, core processing, and ERP migrations, mobile computing, field technologies, cybersecurity, and strategic outsourcing. He has also been directly involved in multiple M&A exercises and has extensive public, private, and private equity experience. Most recently he has been a key member of Allegacy’s Pandemic Response Team and leading its remote work efforts.

Robert Gingras, Digital Transformation Strategist, and Digital Enablement
Carestream

Robert Gingras is currently working at Carestream Health leading a Digital Transformation Strategy and operational transition. His achievements in process innovation and technology enablement have been documented and presented in various industry forums and publications and have generated numerous benefits to the companies he has worked with.

Before his current role, he has had executive VP roles at Digitas and Razorfish, Digital lead at Infosys, VP of Enterprise Architecture, CRM and Process Management at Acquity Group (now Accenture Digital), CIO at Muzak, CIO and Director of Process Design for Cequent, a Trimas Company responsible for business system consolidation and process alignment; and Global Process Information Officer and Director of E-Commerce, at General Motors Corporation’s Global Customer Experience Group. Also, he has held leadership positions for Snap-on Tools Incorporated, Allendale Insurance, Citizen’s Bank, and Payco American Corporation.

Brandon Champion, Vice President, and Chief Information Security Officer
Syneos Health

Brandon Champion has over 20 industry experience and joined Syneos Health, as VP, CISO in 2018. He previously worked in the semiconductor, insurance, finance, and defense verticals.

Additionally, he serves as the Senior Signal Chief Warrant Officer in the North Carolina Army National Guard and is assigned to the State’s Defensive Cyber Operations Team. He is also an adjunct professor for several universities.

Mr. Champion has earned an MBA from North Carolina State University, an M.S. in Information Technology from the University of Maryland University College, and a B.S. in Applied Information Technology (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Baltimore.

Mike Brannon, Director, Infrastructure and Security
National Gypsum Company

Mike Brannon leads National Gypsum’s infrastructure and security efforts today after a long IT career at the building product manufacturing company.

NGC makes gypsum drywall, finishing products, and cement board in facilities located across North America and is headquartered in Charlotte NC.  NGC has shifted off an IBM mainframe running a custom, in house developed ERP-light system and many other custom apps into a very robust SAP Hana ERP system hosted at a partner, SaaS applications and platforms, and a few custom applications hosted in Azure.  Our Microsoft workloads like Office, email, and the like have been deployed on an enterprise version of Windows 10 via a Microsoft 365 services setup. We shifted our plant and corporate office phone systems into RingCentral at the end of 2019.  After first building a large data center at the Charlotte HQ office in the late 1970’s we are now moving toward exiting it as we look forward, running in a hybrid mode across partner data centers for SAP, servers and ‘edge workloads’ at our plants and a small footprint at Charlotte HQ.  As networking becomes more affordable we plan to shift ever more workload into the cloud.  

NGC is a private company and not subject to heavy regulations, but we find ourselves dealing with various privacy rules going forward.  I am looking forward to discussing common issues we all face during our meeting.

I am also deeply committed to peer networking and supporting the local IT community. I serve on the board of Ballantyne IT professionals, a Charlotte-based charity/networking group, and I lead their CISO/Security Leader roundtable group, and I am engaged with other local groups.

Marcio Saito, Chief Technology Officer
Opengear

Marcio is responsible for product and technology strategy for Opengear. He is based in the San Francisco Bay Area and has previously held executive-level positions in global technology companies. At the Cyclades, he was a pioneer in the Open Source Software movement and helped to establish the concept of out-of-band management for Data Center Infrastructure. Later, as the VP of Strategy for Avocent, he managed product and engineering teams and led the development of one of the first DCIM solutions in the market. He holds a BSEE degree from the University of São Paulo.

David Matlack, Director of Sales, East
Opengear

Dave is responsible for product sales from states covering the entire East Coast and the Mid-West for Opengear. He is based in the Atlanta area and has previously held sales positions in global technology companies. At Opengear he managed the East Coast and then the Southeast to record highs. Dave has been selling out-of-band solutions for over 20 years with manufacturers and top resellers and has been involved with some of Opengear’s largest deployments.

Jim Parker, Senior Vice President, and Chief Information Officer
North Carolina Community College System

Jim is a senior technology executive who enjoys developing, coaching, and facilitating high-impact, high-performing teams. Over the past 25 years he has guided private and public organizations to deliver secure, strategically aligned, and solution-oriented capabilities that measurably improve business outcomes.

He currently serves as the strategic IT leader for the third largest Community College system in U.S. with over 700,000 students, 14,000 apprentices, 1,100 industry partners, and over 30,000 staff. He has succeeded in improving student success and economic development by modernizing the system’s business processes and IT portfolio and implementing innovative solutions system-wide.

Tara Caste, Regional Manager
Darktrace

Tara Caste is a Regional Manager at Darktrace, the world’s leading AI company for cyber defense. At Darktrace, Tara works with leading organizations in a range of industries from private equity to media and entertainment to deploy and operationalize cutting edge technologies. During Tara’s tenure at Darktrace, the company has grown to over 3500 customers and has been the recipient of numerous achievements, including Forbes Cloud and CNBC Disruptor 50. Tara holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and is based in Darktrace’s Reston, VA office.