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Connect. Collaborate. Contribute.™
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The Austin Forum Technology Impact Advisory Board provides guidance and support in the areas of impact, development, community relations, and programming of future topics and speakers. Their participation helps increase the influence and impact of the Austin Forum for the whole community.
The Advisory Board meets 8-10 times a year and is comprised of voluntary members of partner organizations and at-large community leaders in technology, business, government, and education. Board members provide guidance and support in the areas of impact, development, community relations, and programming.
The Advisory Board meets 8-10 times a year and is comprised of voluntary members of partner organizations and at-large community leaders in technology, business, government, and education. Board members provide guidance and support in the areas of impact, development, community relations, and programming.
Impact Advisory Board
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Amber Allen
DoubleA @DoubleAEvents Amber is the CEO and founder of Double A Labs. She is a fanatic of emerging technologies and gamer when she is not running the company. Fast thinking and always exploring new ideas, she gets her energy from talking to everyone. When you meet her, she wants to learn all about what you love to do. Amber envisions how to make the impossible a reality for her clients. She develops immersive experiences for brands to reach (and keep) gaming, esports and entertainment enthusiasts that get talked about for years. If a brand is interested in exploring the latest in tech, experiential engagement tactics or live streaming an event to reach an entire community, they come to Amber. In the 5 years since founding the company, she and her team have created over 1,000 global events, twice securing a spot on Inc's list of fastest growing companies and has a roster of clients including AT&T, Blizzard, Fox and PUBG. She started Double A to build innovative new experiential experiences after spending time at Disney, Warner Bros. and Riot games. It's not unusual to find her wearing the latest head gear from Magic Leap, toying around with a new approach to AR (check out her business card) or listening to live music on her back patio. |
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Bill Blackstone
Galvanize Austin @Galvanize Bill Blackstone is the General Manager of Galvanize Austin - the learning community for technology and home to several hundred entrepreneurs and students. Since launching its first campus in Denver in October 2012, Galvanize has expanded to eight campuses in Colorado, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, New York, and Austin with 2000 members and over 1000 graduates. Each campus offers industry-focused educational programs and a wealth of community resources for startups and enterprise tech companies. Recently, Galvanize announced the acquisition of long time competitor Hack Reactor and Bill is leading the integration team tasked with stitching the service / delivery of these two companies together. Prior to Galvanize, Bill spent 11 years at Rackspace holding a variety of leadership positions at the company including leading global IT operations, customer support, and the Rackspace Austin office. During his three year tenure as the leader of Rackspace Austin, the office nearly doubled in size to 600+ employees and was listed as a Best Place to Work in Austin three years in a row. With a background in the arts and degree in music, Bill is known to be a creative problem solver and approaches business through the lens of the humanities. Having completed his Executive MBA from University of Texas McCombs School of Business in 2014, Bill has immersed himself in community impact efforts as a mentor with Austin Technology Incubator, adviser to Austin Community College, and an executive board member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas. Bill enjoys boating with his daredevil, wakeboarding wife, reading the Economist with his 20 month old son, and spending time with their two dogs and bunny. |
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Kirk Cesari
Cesari & Reed, LP Kirk A. Cesari is a partner admitted to practice in Texas, Minnesota, and before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Kirk has a background in electrical engineering. |
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Rhonda Dirvin
ARM @RADirvin Rhonda was appointed director of Internet of Things (IoT) verticals at ARM in November 2015. Since joining ARM in 2011, she has worked in several marketing and strategic roles, including digital marketing and alliances. She now drives ARM’s marketing strategy through the lens of IoT vertical markets and is a Founding Board member of the OpenFog Consortium. Rhonda is an experienced electronics-industry veteran, who began her career with Motorola Semiconductor, where she worked for 17 years. She started in the nascent data communications business where she took on increasing responsibility as it grew into a multi-billion dollar business. She moved on to roles in sales, wireless marketing, and operations with P&L responsibility. She holds a BS in electrical engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from the Red McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. |
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Brad Englert
Brad Englert Advisory @EnglertBrad Brad is the CEO and founder of Brad Englert Advisory, a technology planning and consulting services firm, and is an author, advisor, and technologist. Previously, he served as Chief Operating Officer for ITS and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for The University of Texas at Austin, and was a partner with Accenture. Services offered through Brad Englert Advisory include strategy creation, IT governance, organization effectiveness, cloud solution evaluation and selection, career coaching, and career development training. |
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Hugh Forrest
SXSW Interactive @Hugh_W_Forrest Hugh serves as Chief of Programming for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival. This event brings more than 25,000 digital creatives from across the United States and around the world to Austin for five days of panels, brainstorming, networking, deal-making and fun. Forrest graduated from Austin High School in 1980, and then majored in English at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Before joining the SXSW team, he founded a small alternative publication called The Austin Challenger. |
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Amber Gunst
Austin Technology Council @amberjgunst Amber became ATC’s Interim CEO after a 20-year career in sales and business development. A Michigan native, Amber was Allied Waste’s national commercial sales/retention leader before moving to Austin in 2009. Amber is an expert in member association sales and services and spent 4 years at the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, where she was the top sales and retention leader in the State of Texas and ranked in the Top 7 nationally in sales of chambers with revenue over $1.5. Prior to her ATC role, she worked for a global staffing firm where she was responsible for client development and management as well as consulting staff management, which gives her a strong understanding of the talent and staffing needs of our region’s tech companies. Amber joined ATC in the role of Head of Sales and Membership Services and during her time at the company worked as a member of the leadership team to craft a new vision for member engagement and growth which has resulted in the doubling of membership in less than a year and increasing by 18%. In addition to her role at ATC, she serves as a mentor for the Founder Institute’s global accelerator program, and has served on the board of C2 Change. Amber studied English and Creative Writing at Grand Valley State University. |
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Harold Ingersoll
Atchley & Associates @atchleycpas Harold is a partner at Atchley & Associates, LLP. Harold has more than 30 years of leadership experience in consulting, public accounting and the U.S. Air Force. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting from Texas State University. Prior to becoming a partner at Atchley & Associates, LLP in 2005, Harold managed his own accounting practice and later merging with Faske Lay & Co., LLP as a partner. Harold is retired from the Air Force and the Air Force Reserves. Harold centralizes his practice in mergers and acquisitions, business valuations, litigation support, expert witness consulting and forensic accounting. He has extensive expertise in these practice areas in addition to succession planning, taxation, attestation, and general business consulting. As the managing partner of the consulting services group, he has the ability to evaluate and explain complex business transactions as well as see them through to success. |
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Ganesh Padmanabhan
CognitiveScale, Inc @_ganeshp Ganesh Padmanabhan is the Vice President & Head of Global Business Development and Worldwide Marketing at CognitiveScale. He is passionate about bringing disruptive technologies to market and has established a track record of driving growth through corporate strategy, product and business development as well as marketing and sales for startups and Fortune 500 companies. Before CognitiveScale, Ganesh spent more than a decade at Dell, later Dell EMC, where he held several leadership roles in corporate strategy, business development, sales, product management and marketing. Most recently, he served as Dell EMC’s General Manager of Worldwide Converged Solutions where he drove the group’s hyper-growth 5x trajectory, building a billion dollar solutions business in less than five years.Prior to Dell EMC, Ganesh held several engineering leadership roles at Intel and Adaptec, in North America and Asia. Ganesh is a frequent keynote speaker, an evangelist for human machine partnership and an advocate for opportunity. He was recently honored by the Enterprise Management 360 as one of the the top 10 tech experts revolutionizing AI. In addition to his role at CognitiveScale, Ganesh is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Capital Factory in Austin, as well as an advisor to several startups in Austin, Texas. He holds a Masters in Business Administration from McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin as well as a Bachelor degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Calicut in India. |
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Karl Popham
Austin Energy @Austin Energy Karl Popham is the Electric Vehicles & Emerging Technologies Manager at the nation’s 8th largest public power utility, Austin Energy. Karl has been the Principal Investigator on three U.S. Department of Energy grants advancing transportation electrification and smart utility technologies. Karl is co-author of “Smart Cities: Applications, Technologies, Standards & Driving Factors” a book published by Springer in 2017. He has published several articles on emerging trends and is the electrification lead for Austin’s Smart Mobility Roadmap that includes autonomous transportation. Previously he served as Austin Energy’s interim Chief Information Officer and Division Manager of the Program Management Office, a Managing Director at Hewlett-Packard Services, Director at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, and a Captain in the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. |
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Alex Sabatier
NVIDIA @Nvidia Alex Sabatier is a Senior Account Executive based in Austin, Tx serving the NVIDIA Enterprise segment. In this role Alex evangelizes, develops and monitors the adoption of GPU computing in the Enterprise data center of the Fortune 100 companies in south Central US. GPU Computing addresses software techniques that covers the growing fields of HPC, Accelerated Analytics, Artificial Intelligence with Machine Learning and Deep learning. Before joining NVIDIA, Alex ran the North America business operations of a 3GPP wireless start-up named ICERA. When NVIDIA acquired Icera in July 2011, Alex handled customer relationships with US operators, like AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon, then led strategic projects between NVIDIA and Google before moving to his current role. Alex earned his Bachelor of Science in Microelectronics and Robotics from the “Institut des Sciences de l’Ingénieur” in Montpellier, France which explain his wonderful accent. |
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Jason Shepherd
Dell Technologies Jason is the Dell Technologies IoT and Edge Computing CTO and leads a team responsible for market and technology strategy, solution planning and strategic ecosystem development within the Dell Technologies IoT and Edge Computing Solutions Division. His proven track record as a thought leader in the IoT market is evidenced through his leadership building up the award-winning Dell IoT Solutions Partner Program and establishing the vendor-neutral, open source EdgeX Foundry project to facilitate greater interoperability at the IoT edge. In addition to serving as the governing board chair for the EdgeX project Jason is active in the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) and other key industry efforts focused on IoT and edge computing. He was recognized as one of the Top 100 Industrial IoT influencers of 2018. Jason has spent his career at both Dell and tech startups in roles spanning CTO, engineering and marketing. He holds 14 granted and 11 pending US patents. |
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Jay Williams
Agile Stacks Williams Technology Group @pl8to Jay is the founder and managing partner of Williams Technology Group and the Chief Solutions Officer for Agile Stacks, and has been a chief technology officer and consultant to many of the Fortune 500. As a consultant, he developed a highly refined process for managing a company’’s technology infrastructure, including applications, security, and network assets. Jay is a highly sought-after, enterprise systems architect and problem solver. He has advised a number of high profile technology companies on their products and is known for a rare combination of deep technology expertise, expert problem solving ability and business acumen. Jay is widely respected by peers and has influenced many pivotal technology consortia and industry steering groups. He is frequently consulted by venture and capital investors for analyses of new technology strategies. |
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Chelsea Collier
At-Large Member Digi.City @ChelseaMcC Chelsea fosters collaboration between the public and private sectors to solve civic challenges, leveraging her experience in tech, policy, social impact, civic engagement and entrepreneurship. Chelsea is the Founder of Digi.City, Editor-At-Large for Smart City Connect, Senior Advisor for Texans for Economic Progress, and Co-Founder of Impact Hub Austin, one of 84 community spaces around the world committed to social and civic good. She provides consulting services through her firm, Intercambio Group. Chelsea is a Zhi-Xing Eisenhower Fellow (2016) and is a contributor to Inc.com where she writes about innovation and smart cities. |
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Sherri Greenberg
At-Large Member The University of Texas @srgreenberg Sherri is a Clinical Professor and Fellow of the Max Sherman Chair in State and Local Government at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. She is a Vice- Chairperson of the Board of Managers of Central Health, a Member of the City of Austin Regional Affordability Committee, and a Member of the UT Opportunity Forum Steering Committee. Also, she serves on the Texas.Gov Steering Committee, the Austin CityUP Board of Directors, the Austin Forum on Technology & Society Advisory Board, and the City of Austin General Obligation Housing Bond Review Committee. Additionally, she has served as a Senior Advisor to Austin Mayor Steve Adler. Greenberg was a Texas State Representative from 1991 to 2001, and she chaired the House Pensions and Investments Committee and the Select Committee on Teacher Health Insurance. She also served on the House Appropriations,Economic Development, Elections, and Science and Technology Committees. Previously, Greenberg was the City of Austin Capital Finance Manager, and a Public Finance Officer at Standard & Poor’s. Greenberg holds an MSc in Public Administration and Policy from the London School of Economics. Her teaching and research interests include: technology and innovation, urban and state issues, public engagement, housing, transportation, healthcare, public finance, and campaigns and elections. Her recent publications are: Congress and Social Media: Beyond Facebook & Twitter, Using Innovation and Technology to Improve City Services, Austin Anchors & The Innovation Zone: Building Collaborative Capacity, Congressional Committees and Social Media, and Congress + Social Media. |
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Mitch Jacobson
At-Large Member Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) @ATI_UT Mitch has been a leader in bringing together government, industry, academia, utility and community interests to organize and shape the $2.5b economy in Clean Technology and Clean Energy in Central Texas as the Director of the Clean Energy Incubator at ATI. He is now the Director of the Austin Technology Incubator at the University of Texas at Austin, a resource for early stage technology companies in “deep tech” – that is solutions that pertain to energy, water, waste, transportation, agtech and the life sciences. He is also the Executive Director of the UT Blackstone LaunchPad on the UT Campus. Mitch serves on the Board of The Nature Conservancy, The Environmental Sciences Institute at UT Austin, The Texas Foundation of Innovation & Commercialization, EcoRise and The Austin Forum on Technology & Society. Prior to all of this, Mitch was in the Computer / IT industry for 25 years. He founded the Eyes of Texas Partners angel investment group, was the VP of Sales for Tech Data Corporation and Director of Sales, European Expansion and ROW Expansion for Dell for many years. |
