Page 87 - FCW, March/April 2020

Louis Uccellini
Director, National Weather Service
Commerce Department
Powering preparedness. Under Uccellini’s directorship, the National Weather Service has embarked on a Weather-Ready Nation initiative to help the country deal with increas- ingly frequent extreme weather incidents. He is leading the way for NWS to reduce the impact of weather, water and climate events by trans- forming the way people receive and act on information and to harness cutting-edge science, technology
and engineering to provide the best forecasts and warnings. Thanks to his leadership, NWS is building a network of organizations that serve as “ambas- sadors” to help the public prepare for such incidents.
Donald Upson
Partner
UpsonTechnology Group
The conversationalist. Upson, who is winning his seventh Federal 100 award this year, has always valued the importance of interactions and the sharing of ideas between govern- ment and technology leaders. His CES Government Conference — part of CES, the largest technology confer- ence in the world — brings together technology leaders from 12 govern- ments around the world, CIOs and executives from 30 federal agen-
cies, and industry change agents for uncommonly candid discussions on innovative ways to solve the problems facing government. Those experts
share solutions that have worked else- where and can be applied to govern- ment challenges, and the partnerships they forge continue well beyond those meetings.
Marc R. Vandeveer
Chief Innovation Officer, Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center Department of the Air Force
Wrangling innovation. With Vande- veer’s oversight, AFIMSC achieved
a remarkable level of innovation
in 2019. He led the creation of the Installation Health Assessment Dashboard, which uncovered and quantified the risks in over $25 bil- lion in deferred maintenance costs, increased the annual infrastructure budget by $1.9 billion for 55,000 facilities and enabled collaboration
on the Air Mobility Command’s C-17 aircraft to save more than $3 billion over its lifespan. He also launched an Innovation Rodeo, which resulted in hundreds of innovative ideas from Air Force personnel. Now Vandeveer and his team are applying their energy and resources to implementing the most promising ideas.
Jonathan Veal
Director, Public Sector
Stardog Union
Cracking the data code. Veal
is passionate about helping the government break down data silos across agencies and programs. He is leading the charge at Stardog to break into the government market and
help senior leaders use data to make
better decisions. In 2019, Veal and
his team collaborated with NASA to help its workforce make better data- driven decisions on mission-critical programs. He is also working with the Air Force to transform how it trains pilots through greater use of artificial intelligence and is helping two Air Force bases connect disparate data across programs.
Peter Villano
Professional Staff Member
House Armed Services Committee
DOD IT’s secret weapon. Although they are almost always out of the spotlight, congressional staffers are essential drivers of legislative initia- tives, and Villano is that engine for most activities related to defense IT. He was instrumental in adding provi- sions to the National Defense Autho- rization Act that will lower barriers to bringing new capabilities into the gov- ernment and was the principal staff author of legislation that created both the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Joint AI Center. Villano also helped legislators monitor and adjust more than $35 bil- lion in IT budgets across the Defense Department and military services.
Louis Uccellini Donald Upson Marc R. Vandeveer
Jonathan Veal
Peter Villano
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