While consensus is mounting that there is no greater change agent set to reshape the government IT arena than the application of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, it’s often much less clear who are the rising stars in government and industry that are leading the AI transformation.
That’s why MeriTalk is delighted to honor the 2024 inaugural class of AI Honors Award Winners – the 48 women and men working across government and industry right now to bring responsible AI tech to bear for the next revolution in government IT services.
Each of the AI Honors Award winners was nominated by their peers for the important work they are doing to advance how the government uses AI technologies now and into the future. Some may be familiar names, but many more are emerging – and all of the winners are the people we need to know better as the government AI landscape continues to take shape.
“These innovators are leading the charge in harnessing AI’s potential for government agencies,” said Caroline Boyd, principal, government programs at MeriTalk. “We’re proud to celebrate their work integrating and promoting this transformative technology to improve the future of government.”
MeriTalk will recognize the inaugural class of AI Honors Award winners – along with this year’s cohort of Cyber Defender Award winners – on October 3 at Planet Word in downtown Washington, D.C.
From the government ranks, here are the 31 AI Honors Award winners for 2024:
- Christopher Alvares, Chief Data and AI Officer, Department of Agriculture;
- Austin Bazydlo, Branch Chief, Data Science and AI Applications Branch, National Institutes of Health;
- Luis Betancourt, Branch Chief, Nuclear Regulatory Commission;
- Alexis Bonnell, Chief Information Officer and head of Digital Capabilities Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL);
- Erika Botts, Chief Technology Officer, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security;
- Michael Boyce, Director, AI Corps, Department of Homeland Security ;
- Amanda Bullock, AI Lead, AFRL;
- David Carroll, Associate Director, Mission Engineering, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA);
- Ntina Cooper, Deputy Executive Assistant Commissioner, Enterprise Services, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP);
- Ivo Djoubrailov, Responsible AI Official, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD);
- Brian Erickson, Captain, U.S. Coast Guard;
- Bryan Fossi, Chief Data Officer, Naval Supply Systems Command, U.S. Navy;
- Lynne Graves, Chief, AI Division, Chief Data and AI Office, Department of the Air Force
- Jonathan Hart, Data Scientist, Department of State;
- Samantha Hubner, Director, AI Policy (Acting), Office of Management and Budget;
- Nathan Manzotti, Director, General Services Administration (GSA), AI Community of Practice;
- Kathryn Marchesini, Chief Privacy Officer, Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services;
- Anderson Monken, Chief AI Officer, Federal Reserve Board of Governors;
- Ola Olude-Afolabi, AI Program Manager, Department of Commerce;
- Udaya Patnaik, Chief Innovation Officer, Federal Acquisition Service, Information Technology Category, GSA
- John (Erik) Peterson, Product Lead, Department of State;
- Brian Post, Deputy Chief Data Officer, Sandia National Laboratories;
- Collen Roller, Senior Computer Scientist, AFRL;
- Kim Sablon, Principal Director, Trusted AI & Autonomy, Department of Defense (DoD);
- Alicia Scott, Technical Director and Enterprise Data, Analytics, and AI Services Lead, Chief Data and AI Officer, Department of the Navy;
- Erin Seghesio, Senior Legislative Affairs Advisor, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, Fisheries West Coast Region;
- Vinay Singh, Chief Financial Officer and Chief AI Officer, HUD;
- Samuel Stehle, Data Scientist, Department of State, Center for Analytics;
- Mario Stylianou, Deputy Chief, Production, CISA;
- Commander Jonathan White, Cloud Data & AI Branch Chief, U.S. Coast Guard; and
- Alan Zavala, Artificial Intelligence Lead, Social Security Administration.
And from industry, the 17 AI Honors Award winners are:
- Michael Adams, AI Programs Executive, Carahsoft;
- Brian Bird, Vice President, Voyatek;
- Cameron Chehreh, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Public Sector;
- Greg Forrest, Director, AI Foundations, Lockheed Martin;
- Sidney Gillen, Director, Geospatial AI Development, ECS;
- Corey Hulen, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder, Mattermost;
- Zak Kidd, Founder, AskHumans;
- Aparna Kumar, Managing Director of Public Sector Advisory Services, World Wide Technology;
- Martin Lucero, Owner, Bright Star Solutions;
- Pete Luongo, Vice President, Solution Consulting, Public Sector, ServiceNow;
- Matthew McDonald, Director of Technical Operations, ECS;
- Jay Meil, Vice President, Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics, SAIC;
- Felipe Millon, Public Sector Sales Lead, OpenAI;
- Allen Scales, Digital Simulation Analyst, Torch Technologies;
- Jim Smid, Field Chief Technology Officer, DoD/Intel, Palo Alto Networks;
- Neal Soni, Co-founder, Prepared 911; and
- Eric Velte, Chief Technology Officer, ASRC Federal.