Speakers

Wei Luo currently serves as the Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) and the Enterprise Architect for Federal Election Commission (FEC).  In his role as the DCIO and Enterprise Architect, he leads the agency's strategic technology initiatives and drives technology-based transformation, including cloud migration, agile, and DevOps adoption. Wei led the agency's cloud migration initiative which began in leading a website team, partnered with 18F, a digital services team within GSA, to redesign and migrate the FEC's website and its backend campaign finance database into the cloud in 2014.  Migration of FEC's website and its backend campaign finance database to a cloud environment had numerous collateral benefits from cloud computing to addressing security requirements, combined with a significant reduction in annualized legacy expenses while allowing for exponential growth in data requirements.   Redesign and migration of FEC's website to a cloud environment was the first step of the much larger initiative of FEC's IT modernization and cloud migration efforts.  In 2019, Wei led the IT modernization team to launch the enterprise cloud migration effort to continue migrating additional systems and data to the cloud.  To prepare for the enterprise cloud migration, Wei led the cloud foundation team through organizational, culture and operational changes, including developing and implementing talent management and training plans to ensure the essential and specific core competencies needed to support cloud migration, implementing security controls, and establishing operational processes based on the industry best practice. Wei began his federal career in 2004 after several years in IT consulting. He has numerous professional certificates including MIT Sloan Executive Certificate in Management and Leadership and CIO Executive Certificate from Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a Master of Architecture from the University of Arizona and a Bachelor of Science from Chongqing University. 

Adviser to the CIO in planning and coordination of IT vision, strategy and architecture. 25+ years of experience in Information Technology. Leader in Technology Innovations and large-scale Digital Transformations, Specialist in Emerging Technologies, Data Driven Innovations, Enterprise Modernizations, Cloud Computing, and Business/IT Alignment. Seasoned Information Technology expert in Enterprise Architecture, Solution Architecture, Process Architecture, IT Governance, and IT Operations.

Peter Riebli is an ISV Specialist at Google Cloud, responsible for driving the GTM partnership with Fortinet.  Prior to joining Google, he worked at Palo Alto Networks for 5 years, where he helped build and lead the GTM partnership with Google Cloud.   Peter is passionate about helping security teams enable their organization's cloud migration journey.  

Aidan Walden has served as the Global Director of Public Cloud Architecture and Engineering at Fortinet for the past three years. Prior to Fortinet, he served in various engineering and leadership roles at a tier 1 mobility and global ISP. Throughout his 18-year career, he has navigated the evolving security landscape across mobility, IoT, and service provider infrastructure.

Frank Konkel is Nextgov’s executive editor. He writes about the intersection of government and technology. Frank began covering tech in 2013 upon moving to the Washington, D.C. area after getting his start in journalism working at local and state issues at daily newspapers in his home state of Michigan. Frank was born and raised on a dairy farm and graduated from Michigan State University.

George Jackson is VP of events at GovExec – the largest and most-influential media company in the public sector marketplace. He joined the company in 2020 to enhance the scale of their events and audience experiences. In 2021, George launched GovExec TV (streaming video content) and received the company’s Entrepreneurial Spirit Award, part of their first-annual Icon Awards.

George graduated from The Ohio State University in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in English. In 2006, he earned his master’s in broadcast journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.

George spent the first five years of his journalism career at WJHL-TV in Johnson City Tenn. – beginning as an overnight producer for the station’s 6 a.m. broadcast. He advanced to lead on-air reporter for WJHL’s 11 p.m. newscast.

As a reporter, George examined the earnings of two non-profit hospital systems, felony charges filed against a local sheriff, predatory paving companies, a health benefits backlog for local veterans, and a series of cold-case murder investigations. He received an honorable mention for Best TV Reporter in the 2011 Tennessee AP Broadcast awards and won a Best Investigative Reporting award from Media General in 2010.

George joined DC’s ABC affiliate WJLA-TV in 2012 to produce Capital Insider, which won him an Emmy award. One year later, he developed and recorded the pilot episode of Government Matters – a program about the business of government. It debuted as a weekly show on Sunday, August 4th of 2013. George led Government Matters through September of 2020, expanded its reach to a daily worldwide audience, and produced its first feature-length documentary The Dawn of Generation AI.

George is from Toledo, Ohio. He lives with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of rescue dogs in Northern Virginia.