Andrew Johnson

Lead Software Engineer at Fluree, PBC

Andrew Johnson is a lead software engineer at Fluree, PBC, a Winston-Salem-based Public Benefit Corporation focused on transforming data security, ownership, and access with a scalable blockchain database.
He has worked on software development solutions for projects that include university student information systems, patent publication records, consumer data ownership, and federal public housing policy.

Ben Gilman

Principal at Dualboot Partners

Entrepreneur, executive and engineer focused on building innovative software products. I am passionate about finding technical solutions for business problems. I’ve started several companies and enjoy working with organizations of all sizes to build creative software products.

Bobbie Shrivastav

Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Benekiva

Bobbie Shrivastav is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, author, technology and digital transformation expert whose unwavering innovation, customer-centric approach, and continued success have earned her the reputation as an industry leader. Over the course of nearly two decades, she has cultivated extensive knowledge in the information technology space and leading enterprise-level initiatives. Currently, Shrivastav serves as the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of Benekiva, a software company intended to bridge the gap between life insurance companies and their intended beneficiaries, through claims automation, beneficiary and policyholder management, and asset retention. Her team has won several awards and recognition, most recently being part of 2020 MassChallenge FinTech program in Boston.

Shrivastav earned her MBA from Wake Forest University, Masters in Project Management from Western Carolina University and Bachelors in Information Systems and Marketing from Appalachian State University. She has numerous project management certifications from the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Scrum Alliance. She is passionate about helping organizations weather the paper storm through digital and process transformation. She gets invited to speak and share thought leadership about process re-engineering, innovation, digital disruption, and entrepreneurship.

Carl Turner

Founder of Swipeby

Carl founded SWIPEBY during his final semester at Wake Forest University where he graduated with Bachelors in Finance and Computer Science. He was born and lived most of his life in Berlin, Germany and had the honor to gain experience before SWIPEBY working with Google (Hamburg), A.T. Kearney (Dubai) and The Boston Consulting Group (Kuala Lumpur) and co-founding SEON, a startup democratizing access to fast security response, starting with South Africa and neighboring markets.

SWIPEBY is bringing curbside pick up, pioneered by retailers like Walmart & Target to any restaurant, with our fully automated curbside pick platform and aggregator consumer apps – turning any restaurant into a virtual drive thru. We launched summer 2019 and are seeing strong traction in NC and are now expanding fast.

David Muhammad

Director of Digital Solutions at Apex Systems

David Muhammad has over 15 years of experience in the digital space. David has headed up digital, social, content and experience design capabilities of the some of the largest and well respected agencies in the industry. Those agencies include; Moxie(Atlanta), BBDO(Atlanta) Organic (NYC), Uniworld Group (Brooklyn) and GMR Marketing in Charlotte.

David’s currently Director of Digital Solutions at Apex Systems where he overees, Experience Design, Digital Marketing, AI and Digital Transformation solutions for clients like: Wells Fargo, Schwab, Google, Amazon, Uber and Anthem.

Edson Yanaga

Director of Developer Experience at Red Hat

Java Champion & Microsoft MVP. Software Craftsman. Empowering developers all around the world with Red Hat tools & expertise to allow better software delivered faster and safely.

Eric Ellis

Director of Digital Solutions at ettain group

Eric Ellis is the Director of Digital Solutions at ettain group, a staffing solutions company based in Charlotte.  With 15 years of experience in UX, Eric is passionate about applying design thinking to complex problems to create compelling experiences and real value.  He’s applied his craft inside Google, Airbnb, Intuit, and Dropbox, and other successful brands who are all looking to deliver intentional, omni-channel solutions to their customers.

Haldo Spontón

Head of AI Development at Globant

Artificial intelligence is changing the technological scenario as we know it, and the development of data science as a practice is one of the key factors for this evolution. Rooted in this conviction, I belong to the team that leads the practice of Data Science and the Artificial Intelligence Studio, and I lead every AI-related internal initiative within Globant, a world-class company, with more than 8,000 people in 14 countries.

I focus on Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and Artificial Intelligence algorithms, with particular interest in the analysis of unstructured data for later insight discovery and decision making (audio, images and video processing, etc.). All this, without losing sight of the business objectives and strategy, which are key to the successful implementation of these algorithms.

Previously, I worked for 6 years as a teacher and researcher at the Engineering School (Montevideo), as part of the Signal Processing Department and the Audio Processing Group, and at the École Normale Supérieure de Cachán (Paris), as part of of the Center for Applied Mathematics (CMLA).

Always deepening knowledge in entrepreneurship, technology business strategy, and startup ecosystem. Enjoy music, photography, motorbikes, and technological innovation.

Co-author of the book “Embracing the Power of AI: a Gentle CXO Guide” (ISBN: 978-1-944903-52-7). Keynote speaker in events and conferences, spreading the word for a data-driven mindset.

Jeff Whitworth, PhD

Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Infrastructure Architect at University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Jennifer Biggs

CEO at Ampogee

Jennifer Biggs is the CEO of Ampogee, a technology company focused on helping manufacturers engage every front line worker in continuous improvement. She received national recognition as a STEP Ahead Emerging Leader by The Manufacturing Institute for her results at Procter & Gamble. She has a BS in Chemical Engineering from NC State University and an Executive MBA from UNC Chapel Hill.

John Richardson

Technical Manager at Globant

John has been involved at almost every level of the software delivery life cycle, from proof-of-concepts for sales to production delivery of software solutions for enterprise clients’ needs. This experience led him to transition to a Engagement Manager role at Small Footprint, a division of Globant, that is able to leverage knowledge of Agile principles and his background as a software architect into a functional role that can aid the translation of client needs into innovative solutions with a high performance engineering team. He is an advocate for adopting software engineering practices that lead to a high quality, maintainable product and is also a proponent of putting sound process in place that supports that goal.

Jon Boggiano

Co-Founder of Everblue

Marty Balkema

Digital Product Leader at Loft

Prashant Dixit

Senior Digital Strategy Leader

Rob Robless, PhD

VP Technology at Globant and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Software Engineering at Wake Forest University

Rob is the Managing Director of the Triad Digital Technology Conference having founded the event in 2014. The annual conference has been created as a way to foster the Triad’s capabilities and competitiveness in technology and software development. It provides a convenient opportunity for business leaders, entrepreneurs and government officials to learn about our area’s growing technology sector and its potential for continued expansion and innovation.

His day job is as a Vice President of Technology at Globant, where he leads the software engineering efforts of several teams working with leading companies in the Triad and the US. He is also an adjunct professor of software engineering having taught at Wake Forest University, UNCG, and the George Washington University where he obtained his PhD in Information Management and AI. Rob has been a recipient of Infoweek’s Top 25 Most Influential CTOs while he was at United Airlines and came to the Triad to help grow GMAC Insurance.

Scot Whigham

CEO at Function-AI, Inc.

Scot Whigham is CEO and member of the board of advisors for Function-AI, Inc.  He brings more than 20 years of technology industry leadership, managed services, service desk support, network/telecommunications, software development, and data center operations expertise to his role with the company.  His current focus is on artificial intelligence ecosystem technology and its impact on organizational and digital workforce strategy.  He has served in leadership positions at IHG, Aon e-Solutions, and Earthlink.

Scot earned an MBA from The Georgia Institute of Technology focused on strategy and analytics. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt, ITIL Practitioner, and was named Intercontinental Hotel Group CIO’s 2016 Carpe Diem award winner, 2017 Delivery Excellence award winner, Technology Association of Georgia’s 2017 Excalibur award winner for Most Creative Solution, Technology Association of Georgia’s 2017 Product Launch of the Year award winner, and named by CIO Executive Council and CIO Magazine as 2018’s One-To-Watch winner.

Scot currently resides in Atlanta, GA with his wife and 2 sons.

Shawn Fitzgerald

Enterprise Architect at Mack Trucks/Volvo Trucks North America

Shawn started his professional career as a Wildlife Biologist but was quickly absorbed by the promise of Geographic Information Systems and their ability to solve the complex spatial problems unique to habitat management. From there his interest in software development was born and he joined a small Ag SW startup. It’s been 25 years since he transitioned to IT and his experience ranges from small start-ups to large global corporations and spans the Agriculture, Retail, Manufacturing and Business Services domains. With 10+ years as an Enterprise Architect, he’s spent the last one-and-a-half years providing technical and strategic direction for Mack/Volvo’s North American services catalog. The company has, among other strategic goals, the desire to digitalize their customer experience platforms as well as their extensive aftermarket service offerings and supporting business processes. Passionate about preparing the way for AI, Shawn is particularly focused on designing digital platforms and services that leverage digitalization and AI to maximize business agility, enhance the end user experience; and, safely make critical, real time business decisions. The goal of this presentation is help technologist change the way they think about how they design and deliver IT services in preparation for the coming digitalized, Age of Consciousness.

Steve Stone

Founder and CEO, NSU Technologies, LLC

Steve is the founder and CEO of NSU Technologies LLC, an executive advisory firm focused on IT strategy and governance, retail and retail technologies, and advanced analytics. He is the author of Digitally Deaf: Why Organizations Struggle with Digital Transformation ISBN 978-3-030-01833-7. Prior to founding NSU Technologies, Steve was Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer at L Brands. Steve led the Mast Global Technology organization, which supported all aspects of technology for L Brands various consumer brands including Victoria’s Secret, Pink, Bath & Body Works, La Senza, and Henri Bendel. Prior to joining L Brands Steve was EVP, Technical Operations for MicroStrategy, Inc. In this role he was responsible for MicroStrategy’s public cloud product offerings and related technology infrastructure along with serving as the senior executive responsible for all corporate applications and infrastructure. Prior to MicroStrategy Steve was with Lowe’s Companies, Inc. for over 18 years, serving the final eight years as Chief Information Officer. During his tenure at Lowe’s the retailer grew from $3B in annual revenues to nearly $50B. Steve began his career in the computer software industry as a software engineer with Management Science America, before moving to Ernst & Young where he moved through various roles to a Senior Manager level. Steve is a 1983 cum laude graduate of Appalachian State University with a BSBA degree from the Walker College of Business. He holds a CPIM certification from the Association for Operations Management.

Steve Vest

UX Architect at Globant

After 18 years and several roles within the website and application business, Steve claims to know a thing or two about UI design, UX and working with clients and dev teams to build and evolve quality interactive products. He is passionate about delighting end users and enjoys working with teams to provide user experiences that evoke the “I really like how this thing works” rating. As a bit of an extrovert, Steve enjoys getting to know product users and the world in which they live. When he’s not in the user world, you can be found in the mountains on a bicycle or with his family at the beach.

Jason and Greyson

Reception Performers

Jason and Greyson are a fiddle and banjo duo based in the Greensboro area of North Carolina.  They enjoy preserving the traditions of old-time string band music as well as pushing the boundaries of the fiddle and banjo.  They are the core of a larger 5-piece band called The Hothouse Cucumbers.