As VP IS/CIO, Tammy leads the Information Services department at Continental Mills, a privately held Food Manufacturer in the Seattle area which produces several well-known products including Krusteaz Baking mixes, Ghirardelli Brownies, Wild Roots Trail mix, Alpine Cider and Kretschmer Wheat germ.  During the 22 years Tammy has been with Continental Mills, she has been responsible for the successful implementation of many major systems, including the company’s first ERP Application and several large scale manufacturing automation systems.  Also during her time with Continental Mills, she has participated in growing the company from a regional manufacturer servicing the Pacific Northwest, to a national company with an international presence and multiple manufacturing sites across the US.  In this role, Tammy is committed to building high performing teams who are both technically excellent and business savvy, seeing that as the key to her department’s success.  In 2014 Tammy was named one of the “Top 20 Most Innovative Midmarket CIO’s” for her work on implementing Business Intelligence for the organization.

Before joining Continental Mills, Tammy started her career working at The Boeing Company, starting in the Industrial Engineering Department as a Master Scheduler and later working as a Systems Analyst. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of Washington and a Master’s Business Administration with concentrations in Operations Management and Information Systems, also at the UW.

Larry Bonfante has held executive leadership positions over the past 35 years in the Financial, Pharmaceutical, Not for Profit, Consulting, and Sports and Entertainment industries. He has received numerous industry accolades including being nominated for the CIO Hall of Fame, being named as one of CIO Magazine’s CIO 100 and one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders. As Chief Information Officer at the United States Tennis Association, Larry’s team was responsible for all information technology related services supporting the US Open, the most highly attended annual sporting event in the world. Larry is the founder of CIO Bench Coach, LLC and has served as executive coach and trusted business adviser to executives at some of the largest and most prestigious companies in the world helping them transform their technology function, attract, develop and retain key leaders, turn talented individuals into high performing teams, change their organizational culture, leverage diversity as a strategic asset, and build board and C-Level relationships. He is also the author of the book “Lessons in IT Transformation” published by John Wiley & Sons and writes a leadership blog for CIO Insight. He has served as both President and Chairman of the Fairfield-Westchester chapter of SIM and is a founding member of the CIO Executive Council. Larry has been a guest lecturer for the Masters’ Degree programs at Columbia University, NYU, and Polytechnic Institute and is an accomplished public speaker who has delivered keynote presentations at major industry conferences on four continents. 

Larry can be reached at Larry@CIOBenchCoach.com   

You can learn more about his executive coaching practice at www.CIOBenchCoach.com 

Henry, who joined Burns & Levinson in 2003, is responsible for strategic planning for information technology for the firm. Previously, he was the Director of Information Technology at Hutchins, Wheeler & Dittmar in Boston. Henry had been with Hutchins since 1993 and was responsible for the planning, implementation and maintenance of automated systems for the firm. Prior to coming to Hutchins, Henry was with Gaston & Snow for 13 years. Henry has served for the past five years on the Board of Directors of the International Legal Technology Association, formerly known as LawNet, Inc. He has served as Secretary, President and Executive Vice President. Henry frequently speaks at conferences, seminars and events in regards to the use of technology in a law firm.

Mike Cisek is a Research Director focusing on Infrastructure and Operations in Midmarket. Mr. Cisek works with clients on IT budgeting, cost optimization, infrastructure design and operations management solutions tailored to unique needs of the Midmarket. He spent more than 23 years as a technologist with extensive knowledge of servers, storage, networking and virtualization.

Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. Cisek held the title of Director of Emerging Infrastructure & Operations Support for a $300 million transportation company. Under his leadership, his team was honored by CIO Magazine and Midsize Enterprise Summit, and was listed twice on the Information Week 500.

Mr. Cisek directed a team of 17 I&O professionals who provided project and support services for a 24-site enterprise. His areas of responsibility included networks, systems, storage, virtualization, enterprise architecture, service desk, client support, mobility, reporting, and telecommunications.

Mike Dorosh is a Research Director in Gartner's Technology and Service Provider Group. He covers cloud computing, IaaS and cloud-enabled-managed services. Other areas of expertise and interest include service/product development, offering management, startups, managed services, strategic outsourcing, cloud migration and deployment technologies, cloud management platforms, and the Internet of Things.

Previous roles include product and offering management in a service division (infrastructure, managed services and cloud), starting up new lines of business, go-to-market enablement, technical solution management, M&A and corporate development, strategy, identifying and nurturing of startups and small technology companies, customer and partner advisor, market advocate, and evangelist.

Cy Fenton is Senior Vice President and CIO of Books-A-Million, Inc and President of Booksamillion.com. Books-A-Million has over 300 stores across 5 brands: Books-A-Million, Bookland, Books & Company, 2nd & Charles and Yogurt Mountain.

While at Books-A-Million, Cy has held various roles including VP of Store Technology and SVP of Internet Operations. Prior to joining Books-A-Million, Fenton was Founder and Principal Consultant of THS, a technical consulting firm serving the music industry in Nashville. He also co-founded NetCentral, Nashville’s first Internet marketing and development agency, which was acquired by Books-A-Million in 1999.  

Fenton is very active with industry and community groups. He is the Chairman of the National Retail Federation's IT Security Council and serves on the executive committee of the NRF CIO Council. He was named 2014 Public CIO of the Year for Middle Tennessee by the Nashville Business Journal. He was featured in the March 2015 edition of Sync Magazine and has spoken on retail security at a number of conferences including 2015 NRF Big Show and the 2015 IAPP Global Privacy Summit. In March 2016, Cy was one of 8 security professionals representing the Retail industry at the DHS CyberStorm 5 National Cyber Exercise.

Fenton serves on the Advisory Board for Atlanta based non-profit TechBridge.  He is a member of the MIS Advisory Board for University of Alabama - Culverhouse College of Commerce,  the Industrial Advisory Board for the School of Engineering at Vanderbilt University, the Retail Analytics Council at Northwestern University and the Retail Advisory Council for Knowledge@Wharton (University of Pennsylvania). He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University.

Kevin Godinez is a System Engineer with Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, who specializes in Wireless Networking.  Godinez has worked with several Fortune 500 companies, including Autozone, International Paper and FedEx.

Chuck Hooke has been in the IT industry for 30+ years. 19 of those years with HPE. Chuck has held numerous positions within HPE including sales, delivery and support. From a global SAP implementation for a major food conglomerate, to designing and implementing one of the largest Hadoop clusters in the east coast,  Hooke has been involved from floor to ceiling in the datacenter.  His current responsibilities include channel enablement and support for Converged, Hyper-Converged and Cloud solutions for major national partners.

Behavioral scientist and consultant James Kane is considered one of the world’s foremost experts on what makes someone truly loyal—to another person, organization, or cause. Kane has helped some of the largest and most well-known organizations in the world, including Apple, Marriott Hotels and Major League Baseball build unbreakable relationships with customers, members, fans, volunteers, vendors, sponsors and employees.

By combining the latest scientific research from behavioral psychology and neurology with 100,000 years of human evolution, Kane is creating an entirely new understanding of what it means to be loyal and establishing a proven model for individuals and organizations to build and maintain business relationships.

Kane has been featured in leading global and industry outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek, and is a frequent guest on CNN, CNBC and FOX Business. The author of two upcoming books, “The Loyalty Switch” and “Virtually Loyal,” Kane draws from his work advising organizations ranging from Fortune 100 giants to small, regional companies to deliver unprecedented insight on fostering loyalty across business platforms.

John and his team are responsible for the development, planning, commercialization and management of Asurion’s products. John has over 20 years of product, sales and strategy leadership experience in the wireless and technology markets.

Prior to joining Asurion in 2010, John spent twelve years with Alcatel-Lucent. While at Alcatel-Lucent, John held several leadership positions, including head of Global Sales & Operations of the Genesys Contact Center Enterprise Division, General Manager of the Wireless Applications Business Division, and VP of Strategy and Marketing of the Network Infrastructure Business Division.

John holds a bachelor’s degree from Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela and an MBA from the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.

A lifelong technology evangelist with 21 years in IT channels.  A fierce customer advocate with a lifetime of stories from the road to educate and entertain.  A self-professed poet of all things wireless with a deep appreciation of good bourbon.

Lisa MacKenzie is a seasoned executive with expertise in marketing, sales, product management and operations. Lisa was instrumental in The Channel Company's evolution from providing traditional media to offering a full portfolio of solutions and services. She brings her proven expertise to The Channel Company's extensive events portfolio - helping ensure that our events meet the evolving needs of our customers. Thanks to Lisa's leadership, The Channel Company attracts record audiences and receives high customer satisfaction scores. Lisa also repositioned our consulting, research and education offerings, resulting in increased profitability and new product launches.

Jim McGittigan is a Research Vice President within the Gartner CIO Research group, where he focuses on delivering value to Gartner clients through his insight and experience in IT financial management. This includes cost transparency, budgeting, chargeback, service pricing, cost optimization, benchmarking, project financial management and performance metrics.

Prior to joining Gartner, Mr. McGittigan led IT finance functions for five Fortune 500 companies over the past 15 years, ensuring that the funding available for technology spending was effectively managed.

Gina Montgomery (MCSA, MCTS, MCP, V-TSP) blends thought leadership with new growth initiatives as Sr. Director, Microsoft Cloud Services for Connection. Montgomery plays a critical role in identifying and analyzing business development opportunities that build solutions and drive Microsoft Cloud Services opportunities for Connection. Along with driving value-creating insights, making recommendations and bundling solutions across Microsoft technologies, she oversees Connection's Microsoft Cloud Services Practice and consults in the Microsoft Productivity & Collaboration space. Montgomery’s background as a SharePoint and Cloud evangelist coupled with her seasoned speaker experience at technology conferences all over the country make her a trusted leader and adviser for architecting SharePoint, Office 365 and Azure solutions as well as Enterprise Mobility and Security Strategies. As she continues to plan and implement successful cloud offerings and business solutions that maximize an organization’s IT investment, Montgomery also directs her focus on new strategic Cloud initiatives for Connection’s sales team to bring to market.

Dan Negroni, founder and CEO of Launchbox Inc., leverages his bold, authentic, no-nonsense approach and interactive style to challenge your employees and empower them to deliver immediate business results. Offering the solution to today’s critical cross-generational issues, Negroni successfully bridges the gap between managers and their millennial workforce to increase employee engagement, productivity and profits. Negroni is also the author of “Chasing Relevance: 6 Steps to Understand, Engage, and Maximize Next-Generation Leaders in the Workplace.” The book which explores the chasm between older generations and millennials in the workplace attracted national media attention. With a successful 20-year career as a CEO, attorney, senior sales and marketing executive, Negroni’s keynotes, workshops, and coaching sessions are proven to reinvigorate businesses and people on the spot. Negroni is an active philanthropist, serving as board member and development chair to support the efforts of various charities. He resides in Del Mar, Calif., with his wife of 25 years and the youngest of his three children. He is an avid health and fitness nut, running, biking, swimming and doing anything else he can to fight off looking his age.

Mike Parrottino is vice president of U.S. Small & Medium Business (SMB) Sales for HPE Enterprise Group., He is responsible for capturing SMB US MarketShare and driving profitable growth for HPE while closely working with and enabling the Channel. Most recently, Mike served as vice president of Enterprise Group Distribution in the Americas region where he oversaw HP’s selling and go-to-market programs. He was responsible for developing policies and programs that facilitate channel sales execution of HP Servers, Technology Services, Networking and Storage throughout the Americas.  

A 28-year HP veteran with over 30 years of industry experience, Mike has served in a variety of leadership positions at HP, including: • U.S. SMB Sales & Partner Enablement for HP’s Print and Personal Systems (PPS) business. Responsibilities included  driving the SMB go-to-market sales strategy for PPS in the U.S. and overseeing  HP’s partner enablement programs in the Americas region • Vice president and general manager of U.S. Channel Sales and Marketing for the Personal Systems Group (PSG), where he was responsible for go-to market sales strategy across national resellers, distributors and Direct Response Channel partners. • Vice president of Direct Response Channel and Agent Sales for HP.  • Vice president, West Region of the North America Solution Partners Organization, 

Before joining HP as part of the Compaq merger, Mike  served as director of Worldwide Solution Partner Global Alliances at Compaq. Mike holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration – Finance from Western Michigan University.

Brendan Patterson, director of product management at WatchGuard Technologies, with responsibility for the Fireware operating system, security services, and Dimension solution. Patterson is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) with over 15 years of experience in security and networking technologies. Prior to WatchGuard, Patterson was vice president of marketing and product management at The PowerTech Group, the leader in enterprise security solutions for IBM mid-range servers. Patterson has a master's degree in the management of technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the National University of Ireland.

Michael leads the team responsible for developing lead generation programs for ShoreTel Channel Partners . Michael has more than 20 years in the communications industry and prior to joining ShoreTel in 2014, he led Polycom’s go-to-market activities for their IBM alliance.

Brian Reed is Research Director for Data Loss Prevention (DLP), which includes endpoint DLP, network DLP, and data discovery and classification.

Before joining Gartner, Mr. Reed worked in a variety of product management and business development roles. Most recently, he worked at Lastline, where he was responsible for technical alliances and partnerships. Prior to Lastline, he was part of the Advanced Malware team at Sourcefire, which was acquired by Cisco Systems.

John currently serves as the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Woods, which is based in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Woods is a non-profit provider of health and community services for those with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities. Woods and its affiliates provide compassionate care and life-time learning opportunities to children and adults in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware. Services include education, rehabilitation, mental health, developmental (MR), residential, and vocational.  As a member of the senior management team, he provides guidance and leadership in the selection and implementation of innovative information and telecommunications solutions. He has dedicated his entire 30plus-year career to the advancement of healthcare through the effective and efficient use of information. He holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Management from Misericordia University and two undergraduate degrees (Information Systems from the University of Scranton and Computer Science from the Pennsylvania State University). He served as President of the Pennsylvania Healthcare Information Technology Professionals (PHitP), a society of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of PA and served as board chair of NEPARHIO (Northeast Pennsylvania Regional Health Information Organization). Board Service included Northeast Regional Cancer Institute, Catholic Social Services of Scranton, and Leadership Lackawanna. He maintains active involvement, in Northeast Pennsylvania Allied Health Education Council (NEPaAHEC) and local and district Rotary activities.

As the Vice President of the Americas, Marty is responsible for overseeing all sales and go-to-market activities in both North and South America.

Prior to HPE SimpliVity, Marty was the Vice President at EMC where major responsibilities included managing North American sales and support, maintaining executive relationships with EMC’s largest global accounts, and delivering exceptional customer loyalty skills. He was also the CEO for both Chet Holmes International and Going Green Solar where he led the organizations to impressive revenue growth.

Marty holds a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Engineering from Drexel University.

Kurt Schlegel is a Research Vice President at Gartner, studying how organizations apply analytic capabilities to improve performance and optimize decision making.

Mr. Schlegel has been covering the data and analytics space since 2003. During that time, he has served in various roles, including global conference chair, research community leader, agenda manager and lead author of the Magic Quadrant, Hype Cycle and Predicts reports. Key themes of his research include:

1) The emergence of data discovery as a self-service alternative to traditional business intelligence architectures
2) Striking a balance between a centralized and decentralized organizational model for business analytics
3) Making data a key part of your organization's business model with customer-facing analytics
4) Using big data to create more precise analytical systems of measurement and classification
5) Right-sized approaches to BI and analytics for midmarket companies

Joe Sykora is the Vice President of Americas Channels and Enhanced Technologies for Fortinet, Inc. (FTNT), and is responsible for overseeing a channel organization of over 7,400 Americas partners as well as Fortinet's channel sales strategy. Joe and his team work closely with Fortinet’s partners and their mid-enterprise customers to protect themselves from the ever-evolving threat landscape. Joe has over 30 years in IT security, in both the manufacturing sector and as a solution provider, helping customers focus on business priorities while keeping their networks secure.

James is an EG Solution Architect for HPE based in Alpharetta, GA  where he is responsible for enabling channel partners on technology & architecture within HPE across the Southeast.

Brian P. Watson is an author, speaker and contributor to a wide array of business/technology outlets focused on IT leadership and the CIO role. He currently serves as Co-Head, CIO Networks at Metis Strategy, a business and technology strategy consulting firm.

Watson is the author of Confessions of a Successful CIO: How the Best CIOs Tackle Their Toughest Business Challenges (Wiley, March 2014), and writes profiles of elite IT leaders for CIO.com.

Previously, he served as Editor in Chief of CIO Insight. Brian has also contributed analysis and reporting to various IT leadership publications, and has delivered keynotes and moderated panels at various CIO-themed conferences.

Outside of his writing, speaking and IT leadership analysis activities, Brian has also served as Director of Business Outreach for Workforce Opportunity Services, a 501c3 nonprofit that trains talented military veterans and young adults for careers in the private sector. More recently, he was Executive Director at iRise, where he oversaw thought leadership events and programs for IT executives.

Brian earned a Bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and a Master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. He lives in Fairfield County, CT, with his wife and son.

Mary Wyderski is the Senior Director of Information Technology for DSC Logistics, a $500 million logistics firm based out of Chicago. Mary recently joined DSC after serving as the VP of Technology for PSI for 17 years.  Due to her background in accounting and passion for technology, she recognizes the need to drive efficiency while focusing on how automation can increase the organization's bottom line. Mary's desire to streamline processes led to an early adoption of cloud strategy and resulted in the organization's ability to be more agile. Mary led a $5-million-dollar laboratory management system roll-out, encompassing 80 offices nationwide, which resulted in the company receiving a National Engineering Award for mobile technology. Mary attributes her success to working with a great team of leaders, vendors and technologists.