Mackenzie is the Global Startup Evangelist at AWS. His days are spent traveling the globe to meet startups, share their stories, and connect engineering teams together. Every day there are a large number of startups launching on AWS across every imaginable industry. It’s Mackenzie’s mission to find stories of startups that are helping to improve the world and share these stories with a wide audience.
- Hear announcements from AWS re:Invent 2023 that are critical for federal leaders.
- Enjoy mission-focused topics - generative AI, resilience, zero trust, and strategies for multi-cloud environments.
- Meet 1:1 with AWS leaders and executive strategists.
- Connect with your executive peers in Amazon’s new HQ2 in Arlington, VA.Seven times out of ten, the experiences people remember most in life happen at events.
Kristen Johnson, Digital Innovation, Amazon Web Services
Amazon’s approach to innovation has remained consistent since the company first launched: Start with the customer and work backwards. In this session, you will learn valuable insights, lessons learned, and best practices from Amazon’s cultural mechanisms and our innovation journey, and how to apply these methodologies to designing and delivery better services to constituents.
Hugh Miller, Executive Government Advisor, Amazon Web Services
This session will provide both real-world and art-of-the-possible examples from across the whole of government about how to achieve a data-driven government. Our discussion will not stop at technology; it will also cover people and process—the key to any successful data-driven government approach.
Doug Gartner, Principal Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services
Enterprise data strategies continue to evolve for public safety organizations. From making sure teams have the right governance and access models, to building performant solutions to get value from data, we’ll discuss high-level approaches to solving data challenges within the public safety domain. Some examples of the material we’ll cover include: building a centralized data repository for constituent data, optimizing data ingest approaches to fit the required access patterns, and modeling data to disseminate actionable intelligence quickly.Â
Hugh Miller, Executive Government Advisor, Amazon Web Services
Over the last several years organizations have focused on designing business systems that manage, process, and interpret big data that allow them to become more effective at informed and critical decision-making. Moving forward to the next level of data value, it’s very important that organizations analyze, learn, and forecast data trends with Artificial Intelligence that leverages Machine Learning.
Maria Thompson, Executive Government Advisor, Amazon Web Services
In this session, attendees will hear trends in the cyber insurance market and the impact to customers impacted by ransomware. Additionally, attendees will leave with best practices and what they should consider as it relates to making their data more resilient to reduce disruptions.
Kristen started her path with Amazon in the Kindle organization, leading strategy for digital comics – deep within Amazon’s culture of customer obsession. Kristen transferred to AWS because she loves sharing Amazon’s peculiar ways with others! Prior to moving to the Public Sector Digital Innovation Team, she led a Global Specialty Practice that helped organizations transform into product-driven structures built on innovative customer-centric principles. Kristen has worked across multiple industries, including Financial Services, Retail, Energy, Oil and Gas, Gaming, and Manufacturing. She spent over a decade with Accenture’s Strategy Practice, and she has held executive leadership roles at Bank of America Merchant Services, Wells Fargo, and Fannie Mae. Immediately prior to Amazon, she was the Futurist for Lowe’s Home Improvement, using data insights and market trends as a crystal ball to anticipate consumer and home needs in 2030. Kristin has a dual PhD in communication and statistics from Northwestern University.
Hugh has over 30 years of leadership experience in IT Innovation and Strategy, Digital Transformation, and Cybersecurity. He has held senior leadership positions in several industries, including government, technology startups, dotcom, insurance, utility, higher education, and hospitality. Most recently he was the Head of Innovation and Strategy for Netsync Solutions, a consultative and collaborative provider of products and services. During Hugh’s time at Netsync, Hugh helped build their AWS practice. Hugh previously served as the CIO for the City of Dallas, where he transformed the organization with creative, innovative, and cybersecurity focused leadership. Hugh also served as the CIO and CTO for the City of San Antonio, where he pioneered many Smart City initiatives, including various IoT solutions, and acted as the innovation and cybersecurity leader for the city’s government. Hugh’s leadership has been recognized by ComputerWorld as one of its Premier 100 IT Leaders, as the San Antonio IT Leader of the Year, and by Tech Titan as Top Tech Executive.
Matt is a Senior Manager at Amazon Prime Air bringing nearly two decades of software engineering experience to the autonomous delivery drone project. He first joined Amazon in 2016, managing a supply chain optimization team in Austin, before rotating to Prime Air in 2019, marrying his hobby as a private pilot with his career. His engineering teams own and develop the on-drone software that powers the drone during flight, enabling successful customer deliveries today in College Station, TX and California. Prior to joining Amazon, Matt was VP of Engineering for KaliedaCare, an Austin-based child care and foster care software company, and Director of Engineering for A Place For Mom, a senior living referral agency where he built and led highly productive engineering teams delivering several new products and business lines. Matt holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from University of Texas at Austin and a BS in Computer Science from Texas State University.
Doug Gartner is a Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services with over a decade of software engineering experience with a focus on large-scale distributed systems. He has designed and implemented many enterprise data architectures within the public sector; with a focus on public safety. His passion is in the data engineering space, where he optimizes systems that rely on a wide variety of data. He has a B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park and was previously an instructor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Maria S. Thompson is the State and Local Government Cybersecurity Lead for Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this role, she brings over 20 years of experience in information technology, strategic planning, computer network defense and risk management. Prior to her role with AWS, Maria served as North Carolina’s first State Chief Risk and Security Officer. There she was instrumental in establishing the Whole of State Approach to Cyber. This included the development and implementation of the state’s first Cyber Disruption Plan, and the Joint Cyber Task Force (JCTF). Maria also served 20 years in the United States Marine Corps and retired as the cybersecurity chief/information assurance chief for the Marine Corps. Other security roles held includes certification and accreditation (C&A) lead for the Multi-National Forces – Iraq and senior security engineer in a joint military organization and Security Operations Center lead for a federal agency.
Privacy | Site Terms |Â