CIO & CISO Think Tank

Founded in 1990 and headquartered in London, UK, National Grid is an electricity, natural gas, and clean energy delivery company. National Grid is transforming electricity and natural gas networks with energy solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the UK and the US.

A seasoned professional in security, risk, and privacy.

Merchant is an Executive Technologist, thought leader, Visionary & Chief Architect combining strategic planning with pragmatic approaches to meet enterprise short term and long-term goals with Over 25 years of leadership experience in IT spanning, Health Care, Life Sciences, Pharmacy, Finance, Insurance and Retail industries. While heading Enterprise Architecture for Kaiser Permanente IT, he helped transform EA to proactively drive business outcomes using technology and show concrete value as opposed to being a reactive governance organization. His successfully drove vertical and horizontal technology strategies, digital transformation, technology standardization, rationalization and modernization, platform and cloud architecture, data, AI, innovation, architecture governance, and cross domain technology solutions. He sat on Kaiser Permanente’s core Digital Leadership Team and chaired both the Innovation Budget Sub-committee and Architecture Advisory Board. Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente, Merchant served in IT and strategy leadership roles spanning architecture to product delivery and is adept at leading large-scale efforts from inception to production. He has worked as vice president of Enterprise Architect for FM Global, an international commercial property insurer, vice president and chief architect for Fidelity Investments, and has served as chief architect for CVS Health Retail Pharmacy. He also has worked in leadership roles for MIT startups and large consulting firms such as Deloitte & Touche.  He believes in using technology to solve business problems and at times to lead the business using innovative technology. He encourages pragmatic, agile delivery which yields solid business outcomes in alignment with strategic goals. He is adept at driving architecture transformation to be ‘outcome focused’, ‘action oriented’ and ‘value driven.’ He champions AI driven consumer experiences, modernized, resilient technology and a digital first outlook. Merchant is passionate about human rights and pluralism and has served in leadership roles for several non-profit organizations. He enjoys writing leadership and technology articles, as well as essays, poems, and slogans. He has won the first prize for writing a slogan for a major airline. He received a double bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from Bombay University followed by a Post Graduate diploma in Software Engineering. He then went on to pursue an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. Most recently he graduated from Chief Technology Officer Executive Program at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in Dec 2023.

In a category of its own: TendedBar is an industry-first innovative self-pour automated bar designed to significantly prevent loss and improve service to customers, all while providing a drink-ordering experience that's faster, cleaner and more controlled. The result provides fans with less time waiting in lines, safer access to drinks, less crowding with better social distancing and an overall improved experience that serves drinks in seconds, so fans don't miss a minute.

Avid Technology delivers a media platform, connecting content creation with collaboration, asset protection, distribution, and consumption to their customers. Avid Technology is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Harry Hoffman serves as Northeastern University’s Chief Technology and Security Officer. In that capacity he helps the university adopt new technologies to enhance research, teaching and learning, and its administrative capabilities. Hoffman has spent over 20 years in higher education working to deliver world-class information technology and security programs at several institutions, including Harvard University, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, Drexel University, and the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Throughout his career, Hoffman has identified and built IT programs and services to aid faculty, students, and staff by ensuring the easy adoption of technology and making its use frictionless. This has enabled the community to focus on what matters most to them and to take advantage of IT services to aid in their work.

Jim has focused his career on information technology, cyber security and network management. He has success with systems engineering, enterprise software and applications, and professional services for the Department of Defense and federal agencies in the United States.

Formerly CISO at NetApp, and prior to that a Principal in AWS, heading up Executive Security Advisory. Phillip has also served as the Head of Infrastructure and Chief Information Security Officer at Brooks Brothers, Inc, as well as similar roles at Payless ShoeSource, and Sappi. Phillip has led large enterprise ERP projects, overseen cloud security design for 20 of the Fortune 100, and designed new approaches to achieve compliance with HIPAA, PCI, and FedRAMP. He holds his BA and MA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford.

Hawk Aerospace provides a full range of Aviation & Aerospace related services. The Company is focused on: Aerospace Educational Projects, Specialized Project Management, Pilot Deployment Services for Mapping, Inspection, Surveillance & Delivery systems. Hawk Aerospace has been developing and implementing new technology in the Aviation and Aerospace Sector for more than a decade and in 2020 launched its UAV Division. The UAV Division is rapidly manufacturing and deploying drone technologies and targeting agriculture globally to support crop health with monitoring and deployment of essential elements to support healthy crops. Radha brings to the enterprise double digit years of successfully evaluating and implementing new technologies and teams globally.

Wes founded Delphi Internet Services Corp, "The Company That Popularized The Internet." At the time it was sold to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation in 1993, Delphi had been profitable for years and was among the four largest online services, along with AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy. The companies supported by The Authenticity Institute, an incubator, provide measurably reliable identities of individuals to their target markets in healthcare, finance, critical infrastructure protection, and others where identity reliability is important. The identity credentials take the form of X.509 digital certificates. Member companies and organizations of The Authenticity Alliance deliver accountability and security borne of measurably reliable identities of users. From enrollment services to digital certification services to implementation, each enterprise in the alliance adds to the value of the whole, while adhering to the methods and standards of The Authenticity Infrastructure.

Dr. Mark Maybury is a C-Suite Executive and Board Member with leadership success across public and private sectors and expertise in senior management, innovation commercialization, ventures investment, cybersecurity, AI/ML, IOT, SaaS, data analytics, energy storage, new business models, startup incubation and acceleration, revenue growth, margin expansion, lean manufacturing, global supply chains, and digital marketing. Dr. Maybury is Stanley Black & Decker’s first Chief Technology Officer and Board Director and Nominations and Governance Committee Chair of the Internet Sciences Inc. He serves as a Special Government Employee for the Defense Science Board providing strategy and technology advice to the Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as a director for the boards of the Connecticut Science Center and Mark Twain House and Museum. He is a former board member of the Advanced Cybersecurity Center (ACSC), the Object Management Group (OMG) which oversees the Industrial Internet Consortium, the USAF Scientific Advisory Board, and the Homeland Security S&T Advisory Committee. From 2010 to 2013, Dr. Maybury was Chief Scientist of the USAF serving as chief scientific adviser to the Chief of Staff and Secretary of the USAF. He served on the Steering Committee and Senior Review Group of the AF Scientific Advisory Board. Mark spent 27 years (1990 to 2017) at The MITRE Corporation, including as VP of Intelligence Portfolios and Director of the NIST-sponsored National Cybersecurity FFRDC (NCF) supporting the National Cyber Center of Excellence (NCCoE). He also served as VP and CSO and CTO of MITRE. He is an active Fellow of the IEEE, Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a Fed 100 awardee and the 2019 Veterans Advantage Veteran of the Year. Dr. Maybury is editor of Intelligent Multimedia Interfaces (AAAI/MIT Press 93), Intelligent Multimedia Information Retrieval (AAAI/ MIT Press 97), New Directions in Question Answering (AAAI/ MIT Press 2004), Multimedia Information Extraction (2012), co-editor of Readings on Intelligent User Interfaces (Morgan Kaufmann Press 1998), Advances in Text Summarization (MIT Press 99), Advances in Knowledge Management (MIT Press 2001), Personalized Digital Television (Kluwer Academic 2004), Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (Springer 2005), and co-author of Information Storage and Retrieval (Kluwer Academic 2000). He chaired the 2020 AAAI Spring Symposium on AI and Manufacturing and a frequent author and keynote speaker.