SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Brian Bushong, Senior Account Executive, American Digital Corporation

Brian is a “customer first” sales executive who has been building relationships with Fortune 1000 companies since 2002. Brian’s expertise is working with C-Level executives and their teams to design, deploy and implement IT solutions that leverage the newest technologies including Composable Infrastructure, Intelligent Edge and IoT.

Brian’s passion is working with clients to leverage these technologies to design the ideal enterprise infrastructure to support mission critical applications which include ERP solutions like SAP HANA. As Brian likes to say about his colleagues at American Digital: “ we are Great people, with a Great approach that deliver superior results on high-impact/profile projects”.

Marina Dolinko, Enterprise Architect, VW Credit

Marina is an Enterprise Architect at Volkswagen Credit, Inc. (VCI), a financial services firm providing quality products and expert customer support to the Volkswagen Group for over thirty years.

Marina is a key member of the Enterprise Architecture team, building the Enterprise Architecture (EA) program from the ground up. Her achievements include establishing the current Architecture Governance Framework and introducing new architecture practices. She defined a role of the EA during the initial rollout of the Scaled Agile Framework to significantly change the delivery model and advance modernization. Marina constantly promotes EA services, collaborating on multiple business and technology strategies and roadmaps. This includes enterprise cloud strategy, collaboration strategy and guidelines for using open source software. Quantifiable benefits are evidenced via the transformation of the contact center, optimization of the loan origination process and full digitization of the customer experience. Marina’s technical leadership enables the team to conduct enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation of technical solutions aligned with business strategies.

Marina designed an IT Innovation Program which has been in place for two years. This program yields many great ideas and initiatives by tapping into concepts and designs from all areas of the organization. The best ideas from the IT Innovation Program have been recognized as winners Enterprise-wide.

Prior to VCI, Marina was a Solution Architect with Allstate Insurance Company for 14 years supporting various domains including Marketing, Customer Care, Insurance Claims and Medical Bills management, as well as Customer Relationship Management.

Marina holds Master’s Degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics.

Rick Hornstrom, Director, Modern Data Center Team, Dell EMC

Rick Hornstrom is currently serving as the Director of Sales for Dell Technologies Modern Data Center business unit. Rick leads a team of 20 with a focus on our CI, HCI and block storage portfolio. With revenues of more than $90 billion in and more than 156,000 people worldwide, DELL Technologies is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Through innovative products and services, DELL Technologies accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset – information – in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way.

Rick brings more than (24) years’ experience in technology sales, management and marketing and Rick spent (2) years as the COO and Director of Sales Strategy for the Central Division, (3) years as a District Sales Manager (4) years as Senior Account Executive at Dell Technologies. In his various roles, Rick has been focused on attracting, retaining and expanding corporate customers in the Central US and guiding their Digital, IT, Workforce and Security Transformations. Additionally, he helps to build and shape the sales strategy of the Central Division Field Sales Organization.

Rick received his Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in English from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois
Rick and his wife, Amy, have (3) children and are actively involved with numerous charities, their church, kid’s activities and running marathons.

Matt Johnson, Regional Systems Engineer, Illumio

Matt Johnson is a Regional Systems Engineer at Illumio. He focuses on evangelizing the benefits of micro-segmentation as well as working with Illumio customers to implement successful segmentation projects. Prior to Illumio, Matt was at AHEAD helping partners with enterprise IT organizations to drive cloud adoption and acceleration.

Kevin McGinley, Field CTO, Snowflake Computing

Kevin is currently a Field CTO at Snowflake Computing, focused on advising customers on the best way to integrate Snowflake into their Analytics architecture. He has designed and developed Data Warehouses and Business Intelligence systems for Fortune 500 companies since the mid-1990’s. Kevin also speaks at popular conferences, hosted a data-centric podcast, authored a vlog, wrote many blog posts, and was recognized in the Oracle space with the ACE Director distinction.

Praveen Moturu, Chief Enterprise Architect, Mars, Inc.

Full biography coming soon!

Todd Ruch, Advisory System Engineer, Dell EMC

Todd is currently leading a team of Systems Engineers tasked with helping customers modernize infrastructure and build strategies adapting to cloud and transformational needs. Todd has over 30 years in the IT Industry focused on Infrastructure, Business Continuity and Storage Management. In these 30+ years he has held various roles from establishing a Healthcare Company’s first Disaster Recovery Plan, helping financial organizations recover from the 9/11 World Trade Center Disasters to providing thought leadership and transformational strategies.

Volker Schulmeyer, Director Enterprise Architecture – Global Information Services, Caterpillar

Volker Schulmeyer leads the Global Business and Application Enterprise Architecture team at Caterpillar. His mission at Caterpillar is to drive the organization towards an architecture that provides flexibility at a low cost while enabling business value at speed.

Prior Caterpillar, Volker worked at PepsiCo Inc where he spent 10 years as part of the leadership team of their enterprise transformation effort. PepsiCo’s global transformation included purchasing, manufacturing, sales, planning, finance and HR. In the 10 year journey Volker had leadership roles from leading all development and technology, to building the SAP COE, to leading SAP Architecture globally for PepsiCo.

Prior to PepsiCo Volker worked 5 years at Deloitte Consulting and 5 years at SAP Americas Inc. His functional expertise is in manufacturing and materials management, but Volker quickly moved into SAP transformation leadership roles. Industries Volker consulted to included High Tech, Pharmaceutical, Medical Devices, Building Materials and Aerospace and Defense. By having worked for SAP the software vendor, a big five consulting firm and a fortune 50 company Volker has seen the transformation journey from the perspective of all key stakeholders in the process.

Volker currently lives in a Chicago suburb. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering Physics from UI Champaign/Urbana, a Master’s Degree in Physics from UCSD and an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Volker was born in Germany and spent half his live in the US and half in Europe until his late 20s.

Michael Sisto, Sr. Infrastructure Architect, U.S. Cellular

Full biography coming soon!

Sid Tadiparthi, Solution Architect, Gallagher Bassett

Sid Tadiparthi is an Information Technology professional, experienced in managing multiple complex and large programs/projects that enhanced and had an impact on business growth. He is a technology leader with multiple years of hands on development experience and an excellent track record of architecting, building and delivering highly reliable distributed systems and microservices architectures. Working as a solution architect, he is helping Gallagher Bassett evolve and innovate new products by leading mobile, cloud and API design, and implementation.

Sid has a passion for open source development and holds a Master of Science degree in Information Technology.

Mallikharjuna Valluri, PMP, IEEE Sr. Member, Enterprise Architecture, U.S. Cellular

Mallikharjuna (Arjun) Valluri, PMP, IEEE Senior Member: Mr. Arjun Valluri currently working as Sr. Architect with US Cellular and various areas of focus in the Enterprise Architecture practice within the Business/Operating Support systems. Key interests and involved in the areas of 5G,LTE, VoLTE, IoT, RCS MaaP, Artificial Intelligence, Machine learning, Chatbots, Big data and Blockchain technologies. Extensive experience with corporate/business strategies, process improvements, enterprise/solutions/cloud architectures best practices, standards and digital transformation with disruptive innovations in the ever changing technology domain space. He has hands on experience with enterprise wide business/technology/application architecture/solutions design, development, data modelling, implementation, project planning, scope and budget estimations and delivery methodologies. Arjun has expertise in SCADA/Telecom Service Assurance & Service Fulfilment business strategies and in the past worked for Verizon, Capgemini, Frontier, FairPoint, Telepacific Corp, MWD, CMC and NTPC . In addition he is a volunteer for PMI Chicagoland section in the capacity of “Director of Technology -Infra” serving the technology aspects of the chapter and members support.

Dan Wilson, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Progress

Dan Wilson is the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Mobility technology at Progress. Dan has extensive experience growing technology focused products and services. He got his first taste of fast-moving bleeding edge tech when he joined his first start-up in 1999. Prior to joining Progress, Dan founded and directed a consulting practice for 10 years.