Speakers,

IIoT World Energy Day 2025

Balaji Palani is InfluxData’s Vice President of Product Marketing, overseeing the company’s product messaging and technical marketing. Balaji has an extensive background in monitoring, observability and developer technologies and bringing them to market. He previously served as InfluxData’s Senior Director of Product Management, and before that, held Product Management and Engineering positions at BMC, HP, and Mercury.

Technology Evangelist. Bit of a story teller & influencer on #EnergyTransition technologies. An advisor, speaker, podcast host & technology consultant. A member of the Siemens Influencer Community #SIEx and #InnowattsInfluencer.

Being a bit of a storyteller, Kevin has been evangelizing how new technologies can transform the way we do things through-out his career. Kevin has a proven track record of ‘bridging the gap’ between the capabilities a new technology can bring and the practicalities of bringing that technology to market.

Kevin is the founder of the boutique technology consultancy company, A Bit of This & That, focused on the intersection of technology and the Energy Industry, delivering innovative technology consultations, sales advisory, speaker & B2B Influencer services.

He has held senior leadership Technical Sales & Sales Management roles at Compaq, HP and most recently at Intel, where he was Intel’s Worldwide Sales Director for the Energy Industry.

Hamish has his been running his international consulting practice from Munich, Germany since 2006. A former IDC analyst, he helps small and midsized industrial software vendors in Europe and the US dramatically improve their growth efficiency, based on the principle that “Better Builds Bigger". His consulting expertise covers sales, marketing, customer success, talent recruitment and development, and individual and team productivity. Hamish is married with 3 almost grown-up children and splits his time between homes in Munich and Austria. Outside of work you’ll find him hiking or indulging his passion for fast cars, French red wine and Japanese whisky - but not all at the same time.

Jon Morgan is a highly experienced professional currently serving as the COO/VP and Strategic Advisor at Jay Bee Oil & Gas. Jon is also a Board Member at Clean Energy Services and an Angel Squad Member at Hustle Fund. With a background in investing and advising various startups, Jon has also held positions such as Partner at Hickory Family Office and Investor at VC Fuel. Additionally, Jon has been a Featured Speaker at Product School and Group Product Manager at Google, where Jon led the Google Health Studies initiative. Jon's educational background includes a Master of Business Administration from Babson F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business and degrees in Robotics and Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Munish Walther-Puri (he/him) is a seasoned security strategist and risk advisor, having worked on cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, geopolitics, supply chain, terrorism, and fraud. He is the former Director of Cyber Risk for New York City Cyber Command. He also teaches a graduate course on cyber resilience and critical infrastructure at NYU.

Prior to working for the City of New York, he led analysis and intelligence for a dark web monitoring company, advised startups in corporate investigations, encrypted communications, and political risk, and consulted independently on applying technology and analytics to geopolitical analysis, forecasting, and open-source intelligence analysis. He also spent time at a large American bank, working on the intersection of fraud, cyber investigations, and terrorism, and at a leading think tank, focused on nuclear policy and international security with a focus on Asia.

Munish is a Life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a co-founder and advisor to the Fletcher Political Risk Group. He is an active member of the analyst and intelligence community and has served on the Program Committees for GSX and USENIX Enigma, OSAC’s Women in Security Committee, and as a Yale Cyber Leadership Forum Fellow. He is an ally for the #ShareTheMicInCyber campaign and an Eagle Scout.

Zainab is an Associate, Energy & Power at Cleantech Group and is based in the U.S. She is focused on emerging innovation and trends in Energy & Power and has experience across all Cleantech Group sectors. ​

Zainab has experience working on circular economy solutions including evaluating recycling challenges and reuse systems, identifying collection strategies for marine plastics, and collaborating with informal waste worker collectives. ​

Zainab earned her Bachelor’s degrees in Physics and English from Binghamton University.

Dr. Williams is a serial entrepreneur and founder of 3 technology startups over the last 25 years, two of which have been sold to public companies. He is currently the founder and CEO of BlackFog, Inc. a global cybersecurity company focusing on ransomware prevention and cyber warfare. Dr. Williams is responsible for strategic direction and leads global expansion for BlackFog and has pioneered anti data exfiltration (ADX) technology for the prevention of cyber attacks across the globe. He is a dual citizen of both Australia and the United States where he now resides.

Ann Dunkin is a distinguished technology leader with extensive experience in both public and private sectors. She served as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the U.S. Department of Energy, where she managed the Department's information technology portfolio, spearheaded modernization initiatives, and led cybersecurity efforts. Prior to this role, Ms. Dunkin was the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer for State and Local Government at Dell Technologies. Her public sector experience includes serving as CIO for the County of Santa Clara, California, and as CIO of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the Obama Administration. Earlier in her career, she held various leadership positions at Hewlett-Packard, focusing on engineering, research and development, IT, manufacturing engineering, software quality, and operations.

Ann is a published author, most recently of the book Industrial Digital Transformation, and a frequent speaker on topics such as government technology modernization, digital transformation, and organizational development. Ann was recently named to the Forbes CIO Next list 2024. She also received the 2024 Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE) Captains of Industry Award and the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology’s 2024 Pinnacle Award. She has been given a range of previous awards, including a 2024 Fed 100 Award, the 2022 Capital CIO Large Enterprise ORBIE Award, DC’s Top 50 Women in Technology for 2015 and 2016, ComputerWorld’s Premier 100 Technology Leaders for 2016, StateScoop’s Top 50 Women in Technology list for 2017, FedScoop’s Golden Gov Executive of the Year in 2016, 2021, 2022, 2023,and 2024 and FedScoop’s Best Bosses in Federal IT 2022. She was also named to Washington Exec’s Ones to Watch list for 2023.

Ms. Dunkin holds a Master of Science degree and a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering degree, both from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is a licensed professional engineer in the states of California and Washington and an IISE Fellow. In 2018, she was inducted into Georgia Tech’s Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni and in 2024.

Ray Lillback is the Senior Director of IoT Strategy at Keyfactor, where he leads initiatives to secure internet-connected devices through the implementation of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Certificate Lifecycle Automation (CLA), and signing solutions. Since joining Keyfactor in 2019, he has advanced from Principal IoT Solution Architect to Director of IoT Solution Architecture, culminating in his current role since March 2024.
Before his tenure at Keyfactor, Ray founded 3E Controls in June 2018, offering comprehensive design services for embedded systems with a focus on security. He also served as Engineering Manager at Tangent Company LLC, leading the development of innovative water reuse systems. Earlier, at Kinetico Incorporated, he held various roles over 23 years, including Research and Development Project Engineer and Sustaining Engineering Manager, contributing to the design of flagship commercial products and the company's entry into the IoT market.

Rich Springer is the Marketing Director of OT Solutions at Fortinet. In this role, Rich works alongside regional marketing teams, OT product management and OT threat researchers to promote the Fortinet Fabric of OT Solutions including network security, zero-trust, security operations and AI-powered threat intelligence for IT/OT converged and OT market segments. Previously, Rich was the Head of Industrial Cyber Strategy & Development for Tripwire managing the Industrial cyber product business for Belden, including the Hirschmann and Tripwire product lines. While evolving in the business of cyber security software and hardware development, Rich provides an operational background as a prior global head of SCADA in wind energy and across various roles in the semiconductor industry and the submarine nuclear Navy. He has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Oregon State University and resides in Portland, Oregon. Rich is excited to lead, educate, and develop network and cyber security solutions for his customers and global cyber community.

Jason D. Christopher is the Vice President of Cybersecurity and Digital Transformation for Research & Innovation at Energy Impact Partners (EIP), a $4 billion global investment firm custom-built to invest in the energy transition. EIP brings together forward-thinking industrials and climate innovators to help decarbonize the global economy. In his role at EIP, Mr. Christopher actively explores the cybersecurity problems facing utilities and industrial organizations and links them to innovative technology solutions and best practices. He leads research activities, supports strategic partners on strengthening their cybersecurity posture, and collaborates across EIP’s portfolio companies on commercialization efforts.

Over the past two decades, Jason has been a trusted leader in critical infrastructure protection and industrial cybersecurity. While he started in utility operations, his career has spanned several unique roles, including as a former cybersecurity regulator for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the technical lead for cybersecurity capabilities and incident response at the US Department of Energy (DOE), and a security researcher for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Mr. Christopher has also served as a former cybersecurity start-up executive and a senior leader for at Dragos, Inc., a $1 billion industrial security company.

Mr. Christopher hold a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Binghamton University and a master’s degree in electric engineering from Cornell University. He currently serves as a certified instructor and course author for the SANS Institute, the world leader in cybersecurity education, and maintains active certifications as a Global Industrial Cyber Security Professional (GICSP) and GIAC Critical Infrastructure Protection Certification (GCIP) professional. He was awarded as the Cybersecurity Leader of the Year in 2019 by the Energy Sector Security Consortium and currently serves on the board of several industrial security conference committees, providing continuing education opportunities to the larger community.

Katherine is Product Manager, OT Cybersecurity for Fluence, a global market leader in energy storage products and services. Her current work focuses on developing solutions to provide cybersecurity capabilities across Fluence’s operational technology products and digital products by staying up to date on changing threats and global regulatory requirements for critical infrastructure asset owners, operators, and vendors in the renewable energy market.

Prior to Fluence, Katherine was a Senior Strategy Consultant at StealthPath, Business Data Analyst at Schneider Electric in the Global Product & Systems Security Office, Research Associate at the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, Cybersecurity Analyst at Kearney in the Public Sector & Defense Services, Research Scientist at the Army Cyber Institute, and a Special Advisor at the United States Secret Service in the Office of the Director. Before moving into cybersecurity, Katherine was a consultant in technology-based economic development. Katherine holds an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a Master’s in Cybersecurity Strategy and Information Management from George Washington University. She is a current non-resident fellow of the Veterans Advanced Energy Project at the Atlantic Council and a board member of the Women in Cybersecurity (WiCyS) UK & Ireland Affiliate. She is an active volunteer with the ISA Global Cybersecurity Alliance and former committee chair of the Incident Command System for Industrial Control Systems (ICS4ICS) outreach and awareness initiative. She is an active board member of the Duke University UK regional board and outgoing chair of the Duke UK/Europe Women’s Forum.

Daniel Young is the Senior Manager of Digital Innovation Strategy at Toshiba America, Inc., where he spearheads initiatives to integrate cutting-edge Industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions across various sectors. With over two decades of experience in digital innovation, product standards, and software development, Daniel has significantly contributed to Toshiba's global transformation strategies. His leadership extends to industry bodies like the Industry IoT Consortium (IIC), where he serves as a Steering Committee Member and Co-Chair of the Technology Working Group. Holding a PMP certification and a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Tennessee Technological University, Daniel continues to drive innovation, promote best practices, and enhance operational efficiency in the IIoT landscape.

Calvin Hamus currently serves as the Director of Software Development at A&E Engineering and has over ten-year experience developing innovative software solutions in the Industrial Manufacturing space. Calvin has built a reputation for his creative approach to solving complex challenges, whether behind the keyboard or on the shop floor. He prides himself on working to spearhead transformative initiatives that deliver sustainable growth.

Mr. Juergen Sutterlueti leads the Energy Business Segment and Cloud platform development within the Gantner Instruments Group. He focuses on monitoring and controlling energy assets with Edge computing devices and cloud-based post-processing. Juergen is leading the product development for GI.cloud, Gantner's high-performance data backend with easy Edge computing connectivity, data-driven analytics, and control and visualization features.
He drives the development of application-specific services for PV, Asset monitoring, test setups, and structural health monitoring with a clear focus on scalability and the lowest running cost, as well as new data logging and control systems for energy applications, e.g., batteries. Data-driven decision-making with mechanistic and machine learning-based modeling is the latest competence he established at Gantner Group, with a wide implementation at different company segments. He also leads the marketing activities and strategy and establishes inbound marketing across all global sales teams. The investment and optimization of marketing campaigns are data-driven to achieve the best investment return.

Before joining Gantner Instruments in 2014, he was responsible at Oerlikon Solar and Tokyo Electron Solar for optimizing PV power plants to enable the most efficient transformation from "Wp to kWh." He led the PV Systems Group, which executed global Outdoor Performance assessments, BoS cost reductions, and LCoE analysis. One of his focuses was on Balance of Systems (BoS) modeling and identifying BoS cost reduction potentials, including market implementation. Also, his work included the performance optimization and characterization of PV modules in different climates and the related long-term behavior, including technology benchmarking. These findings were implemented in optimizing simulation and performance prediction tools for PV Modules and PV power plants, as well as LCoE sensitivity assessments.
Mr. Juergen Sutterlueti studied Power Electronics and Systems Engineering in Austria and Switzerland. He also holds an MBA in Entrepreneurship from the University of Liechtenstein and HSG St. Gallen.

Jay Gignac is a cyber security leader with over 20 years of experience, currently serving as a Global Leader for Framatome Cyber Security and VP of Sales for Foxguard, a Framatome Company. Jay focuses on helping industry leaders and customers raise awareness of OT cybersecurity and driving innovation to secure OT environments. He leverages his extensive expertise to guide organizations in building resilient security frameworks that address emerging security challenges and compliance. A passionate and recognized thought leader, Jay actively participates in seminars, speaking engagements, and webinars and frequently shares his expertise and insights. He is dedicated to advancing cybersecurity practices and influencing strategic initiatives that strengthen critical infrastructure.

Dr. Dominique E. Meyer is the Founder and CEO of Looq AI, a California based AI company building 3D capture technology to power infrastructure diagnostics. Dr. Meyer earned his B.S. in Physics in 2013, his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering in 2021 and his technology MBA certificate in 2021, from the University of California San Diego. He has served as business and technology consultant to companies in the fields of robotics, AI and geospatial intelligence including NV5 (NASDAQ:NVEE), EPIImaging, Comhear and ESA. Prior to founding Looq AI, Dr. Meyer was CTO of the market leading pool AI company, CamerEye and Computer Vision Strategist at a public diagnostic wound imaging company, SpectralAI (NASDAQ:MDAI).

Vivek Ponnada is an OT industry veteran with global experience and serves as SVP Growth & Strategy at Frenos, the world's first Autonomous OT Security Assessment Platform guaranteed to have zero impact on your operations. Throughout his career, Vivek held multiple roles including Sales, Marketing & Business Development and Services covering Control systems & Cybersecurity solutions for Critical Infrastructure industries. He is a co-lead for the Top 20 Secure PLC Coding Practices Project and frequently speaks at various Industry conferences. Vivek has C.Eng from I.E (India), MBA from The University of Texas at Austin and GICSP certification from GIAC. Further, he is a member of Public Safety Canada ICS Security Symposium Advisory Committee, ISACA and ISA, and is a CS2AI Fellow.

Todd Slind, a 30-year engineering and technology professional, specializes in implementing emerging technologies across a diverse set of industries. In his various roles as innovation leader, program manager, and client advocate, Todd has delivered results for major corporations and small organizations alike. Currently, he serves as AI Competency Leader for TRC’s Intelligent Grid Solutions sector where he is helping customers start their journey to AI adoption through development of digital twins, intelligent automation, and transformational user experience. Todd holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Energy Systems from The Evergreen State College and a Masters in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington.

With an exciting career dedicated to advancing sustainable and clean energy initiatives on a global scale, I bring extensive expertise in leading international teams and forging strategic partnerships that drive profitable business growth. My leadership spans navigating complex regulatory landscapes, integrating cutting-edge technologies, and championing business excellence.

I am passionate about inclusion, collaboration, and inspiring teams to deliver something bigger together than any one of us can deliver on our own. My approach blends international perspective with hands-on leadership to navigate challenges, seize opportunities, and drive transformative change as an executive global leader in the energy sector.