Top artificial intelligence practitioners, developers, and visionaries across government and the private sector gathered on Thursday evening at MeriTalk’s Tech Tonic event in Washington, D.C., to honor the 2025 class of AI Honors Award Winners.
Each of the 30 2025 AI Honors Award winners was nominated by their peers for outstanding work in putting AI tech to work for government missions, and Thursday night’s event was a time for celebrating those achievements.
“While we’ve all said in recent years that AI has been evolving, I think now we are past evolution,” said Caroline Boyd, principal, government programs at MeriTalk, at Thursday night’s awards ceremony. “For so many of you here tonight who are doing the hard work on AI, it’s really about a revolution in how the government is serving citizens, and we thank you for all of those efforts.”
Check out the complete list of winners, and here’s what some of them had to tell us at the awards presentation last night:
Jonathan Alboum, Federal chief technology officer at ServiceNow, said, “I feel very honored to receive this award. We all work very hard, and any time that your work gets some recognition and there’s a moment of pause to reflect, it’s a great feeling.”
He continued, “I work, in my opinion, as part of the best team serving the Federal government. From our leadership down to our account teams, everybody I work with is committed to making sure that ServiceNow provides real value and makes a real difference in the agencies that we serve.”
Chris “CT” Thomas, technical director, global defense, artificial intelligence, and data systems, Dell Technologies, said, “It’s a very humbling experience to be recognized with the AI Honors Award.”
“Obviously I didn’t win by myself – I have a lot of teammates and a lot of partners that have contributed to achieving the mission goals and objectives, and I’d love to shout out my leadership team as well as the Federal leadership team,” he said. “I look forward to continuing the success and working with government to actually move the needle and provide value from a mission perspective.”
Taka Ariga, former chief AI officer and chief data officer at the Office of Personnel Management, said, “I actually believe public sector is really driving leadership in AI implementation, especially responsible AI implementation, so I’m glad this is being recognized as a sort of forefront of pushing the boundary on what accountability means. And I want to thank all my colleagues at OPM who have really made this award possible, especially in the technology section and the data section, but also in my previous organization, the Government Accountability Office, who’s really pushing the boundary around what responsible AI looks like. So, I’m very honored.”
Christopher Gordon, vice president of sales at Ask Sage (accepting on behalf of Nicolas Chaillan, CEO and founder of Ask Sage), said, “The award means a lot to us because it validates what we’ve done already with the Federal government, and it validates what we want to continue to do with the government. I mean, being the only FedRAMP High IL4, 5, 6, generative AI platform in the world is a great distinction and a great honor. We just like what we’re doing for efficiencies in the government and the warfighter all together.”
Gordon continued, “Another award recipient, Army CIO Leo Garciga, and Gabe Chiulli, they’ve been great advocates for us in our quest for the government. They gave us a shot, and now that we’re the enterprise large language model for all of the Army, we have them to thank and that has enabled us to do a lot more with the Department of Defense.”
John Dvorak, chief technology officer, public sector, Red Hat, said, “I’m honored to get the award. I think it’s recognizing the shift to AI as a principal part of all architecture today. Chris Smith is here, who’s the head of Federal for Red Hat, and he has been a terrific leader, focused on trying to bring the best of what we have to offer to our Federal customers. Of course, it’s a challenging time in the Federal government, so we’re always looking for ways to help guide our customers to the right solutions. We feel like we’ve been a trusted partner with the Federal government for decades, and that we’ve got a good view of the AI space.”
Matheus Passos, chief architect and responsible AI official at the Department of Commerce, said that having the opportunity to be recognized for work in AI helps put excitement into the field. “This is very special to me, because it shows that Commerce is being recognized as a group, and as an individual I just got lucky enough to be brought over here,” said Passos, who added that he’s looking forward to coming back next year and “cheering on someone else from my team, from Commerce.”
From the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Nael Samha, executive director of the Targeting and Analysis Systems Program Directorate, said that the recognition of his work demonstrates the importance of industry collaboration with government. “It just really shows how much we’re integrated with industry and how industry is very supportive to our mission,” said Samha. “This goes a long way, because it really helps protect the border.”
“This is definitely a team effort, so I appreciate my ManTech folks who actually made this happen,” added Samha.
Brandy Durham, vice president of Data and Artificial Intelligence Practice at ManTech, who was also recognized, added that she and her team were “really thrilled” to see Samha receive the same award. “ManTech is heavily investing in data and AI, and we’re really excited that that’s being recognized in industry,” said Durham.
Josh Slattery, vice president of technology sales at Vertosoft, said his recognition “validates the time investment, resources, and people put behind our AI initiatives as a company,” adding that “it really validates the direction that we’re going.”