Speakers

Come hear from the experts below and engage in conversation around data governance, data sharing, analytics and intelligence, data integrity and security, and data ethics that can ultimately deliver the data-driven outcomes to establish the Commonwealth of Virginia as a national leader in evidence-based decision making and outcome-based performance management. You’ll hear practical knowledge, inspiring analytics use-cases, and other innovative information about how data powers the Commonwealth and the potential for what it can do in the future.

Margaret "Lyn" McDermid

Secretary of Administration
Commonwealth of Virginia

Lyn McDermid brings vast knowledge and experience to the administration. At a young age, Lyn was the first woman accepted to the Apprentice School at Newport News Shipbuilding. She received a B.A. from Mary Baldwin College and an MBA from the University of Richmond.

From 2013-2020, Lyn worked at the Federal Reserve System as Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of Federal Reserve Information Technology (FRIT). There, she oversaw the Federal Reserve System IT strategy, IT investment and spending, and enterprise cyber security. She also directed the management of national IT operations, project services, and enterprise architecture and standards. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve, she served as senior vice president and chief information officer at Richmond-based Fortune 500 company.

Lyn has served on several boards including Chair of the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Chair of the Board of Trustees of Mary Baldwin College, Chair of the Board of the Greater Richmond Technology Council, and currently Chair of the ChildFund International Board.

Her commitment to education is reflected in long-standing support of Reynolds Community College, University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth University. She also serves on the IT visiting committee for Harvard University.

Lyn was named to the Computerworld’s list of Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2004, received the 2008 Executive Women in Business Achievement Award, was recognized as one of the Richmond YWCA’s 2010 Outstanding Women, and was honored with the RichTech Chairman’s Award in 2013. She co-founded the Richmond Women in Technology group and is honored with the naming of their annual recognition of women technologists as the Margaret “Lyn” McDermid awards.

Ken Pfeil

Chief Data Officer
Commonwealth of Virginia

Ken is a security and finance industry veteran, formerly serving as VP and Managing Director of Data Protection and Governance at OneMain Financial. Prior to OneMain, he served as Chief Security Officer for TechDemocracy LLC, MFS Investments, and before served as CISO for Pioneer Global Asset Management SpA (Including Pioneer Investments and all operating subsidiaries in 26 countries).

Ken’s Information Technology and Security experience spans over three decades, with strategic, technical, and executive experience at companies such as Microsoft, Dell, Capital IQ, Miradiant Global Network, Avaya, and Merrill Lynch. Ken coauthored Microsoft's “Best Practices for Enterprise Security” white papers and participated on the Information Systems Security Association's International Privacy Advisory Board covering the initial implementation of GLBA. He reported on security risks and performed vulnerability analysis for Windows IT Pro Magazine’s “Security Administrator” publication for four years, and has been a contributing expert for Information Security, CIO and CSO Magazines, and is a Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Institute.

Marcus Thornton

Deputy Chief Data Officer
Commonwealth of Virginia

Marcus Thornton serves as the Deputy Chief Data Officer (CDO) for the Commonwealth and is from Danville, Virginia. He has worked in software engineering for the last 20 years. Before becoming the Deputy CDO, he worked for a data company that specializes in the collection of retail pricing data across all of North America. As the Deputy CDO, he serves as the Chief Operating Officer to the Chief Data Officer and the CDO’s technical adviser. He creates new partnerships between the Office of Data Governance and Analytics and Commonwealth agencies and shows them how sharing data across the Commonwealth can be leveraged to make more informed decisions and increase their own efficiencies.

Monica Chiarini Tremblay

Dorman family Professor of Business
Raymond A. Mason School of Business, William & Mary

Monica Chiarini Tremblay is the Dorman Family Professor of Business at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business, William and Mary. Her research focuses on business analytics in the healthcare context, the business value of IT, and design science research. Her publications appear in MIS Quarterly, Journal of the AIS, Journal of American Medical Informatics, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, ACM Journal of Data and Information Quality, and Communications of the AIS and is funded by federal, state and foundation grants. She holds a Ph.D. and Master of Science in business from the University of South Florida and a Bachelor of Science in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Florida.

Wade Baker, PhD

Collegiate Professor
Virginia Tech

@wadebaker

Dr. Wade Baker is a professor in Virginia Tech’s College of Business, teaching cybersecurity courses for the MBA and MS of IT programs. He’s also a Co-Founder of the Cyentia Institute, a cybersecurity data science and research firm based in Virginia. Prior to this, Wade held positions as the VP of Strategy and Analytics at ThreatConnect (Arlington) and was the CTO of Security Solutions at Verizon (Ashburn), where he had the great privilege of leading Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) for 8 years. A happy Virginian for the last 20 years, Wade currently resides in Leesburg with his wife and 5 kids.

Saundra "Sandy" Jack

Assistant Commissioner for Data Management
Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles

Sandy is the Assistant Commissioner for Data Management (DM) at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The DM administration is responsible for implementing the agency’s data governance program. Prior to this position, Sandy served as the Director of Data Management Services (DMS), which is tasked with ensuring the release of DMV data complies with the applicable federal and state laws, processing customer use agreements and renewals, and managing data integrity initiatives. Sandy began her DMV career as an analyst in the Legal Services Department. Before joining DMV, Sandy worked for the Supreme Court of Virginia for nine years, including six years in the Chief Staff Attorney’s office, and three years working directly for the late Chief Justice Hassell as his counsel and administrative director. Sandy began her career working at a private firm as an insurance defense litigator.

Lewis Broome

Chief Executive Officer
Merakata

Lewis started his career working for some of the biggest banks on Wall Street, Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley. Having developed global systems requiring complex operational integration, in real-time, Lewis quickly learned the power of data, when managed well. Lewis was the enterprise data architect for Deutsche Bank’s equity back-office and was Global Head of Cross Product Services at Morgan Stanley, responsible for a portfolio of data-driven IT programs. Over the last 14 years, Lewis has been leading specialized, niche consulting companies focused on solving business problems leveraging data. Lewis has worked across a broad range of industries including state and federal government, banking, insurance, healthcare, and life sciences.

Jaime Lees

Chief Data Officer
Arlington County, Virginia

Jaime Lees is the Chief Data Officer at Arlington County Government, where she leads the County’s effective and ethical collection, storage, use and sharing of data assets. Jaime launched and oversees the County’s open data and data analytics programs and has led numerous large-scale analysis, development and implementation initiatives. In her 14-year tenure with Arlington, Jaime has managed large-scale technology development and implementation projects, and received recognition for making real property data actionable and freely available to constituents, for using data to bolster the County’s response to the opioid crisis, for creating the County’s public COVID dashboards and other timely contributions. Jaime helps government agencies launch and govern self-service analytics, allowing those agencies to leverage their data assets for operational efficiencies, performance management and planning. Currently, Jaime is working to ensure the County’s handling of sensitive information meets the highest standards of information privacy protections while also leveraging administrative data for maximum re-use for public good initiatives. Jaime lives in Falls Church, VA and enjoys volunteering, gardening and family adventures.

Peter Aiken

Founding Director
VCU/Anything Awesome

Peter Aiken, PhD is an acknowledged Data Management (DM) authority, an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, President of DAMA International, and Associate Director of the MIT International Society of Chief Data Officers. For more than 35 years, Peter has learned from working with hundreds of data management practices in 30 countries including some of the world's most important. Among his 12 books are the first on CDOs (the case for data leadership), focusing on data monetization, on modern strategic data thinking and objectively specifying what it means to be data literate. International recognition has resulted in an intensive schedule of events worldwide (pre-Covid). Peter also hosts the longest running data management webinar series hosted by our partners at Dataversity. Starting before Google, before data was big, and before data science, Peter has founded several organizations that have helped more than 200 organizations leverage data–specific savings have been measured at more than $1.5B USD. His latest is Anything Awesome.