Speakers

Mitch Landrieu is Senior Advisor to the President and Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator. Landrieu served as the 61st Mayor of New Orleans (2010–2018). When he took office, the city was still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and in the midst of the BP Oil Spill.

Under Landrieu’s leadership, New Orleans is widely recognized as one of the nation’s great comeback stories. In 2015, Landrieu was named “Public Official of the Year” by Governing, and in 2016 was voted “America’s top turnaround mayor” in a Politico survey of mayors. He also served as President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Landrieu gained national prominence for his powerful decision to take down four Confederate monuments in New Orleans, which also earned him the prestigious John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. In his book, In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History, Landrieu recounts his personal journey confronting the issue of race and institutional racism that still plagues America.

In 2018, he launched E Pluribus Unum, an initiative in the South created to fulfill America’s promise of justice and opportunity for all by breaking down the barriers that divide us by race and class. Prior to serving as Mayor, Landrieu served two terms as lieutenant governor and 16 years in the state legislature. He and his wife Cheryl live in New Orleans, where they raised their five children.

Dan Vock is a senior reporter who covers transportation, infrastructure and state politics for Route Fifty. His reporting has taken him to study dirt roads in Utah, runways in Pittsburgh, rail tunnels in New York and port facilities in Los Angeles. Dan's work has appeared in Politico, Crain's Chicago Business, MotherJones, Bloomberg Businessweek, Governing and Stateline. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Jennifer Chronis is the Vice President for Public Sector at VMware, where she has responsibility for all of VMware’s business with Federal, State, Local, and Education customers across the United States. She joined VMware in March 2022 from Verizon. At Verizon, Jennifer led both the Public Sector and Federal teams during her tenure there from 2020 through February 2022. She spent 4.5 years at Amazon Web Services (AWS) where she led the growth of cloud computing in the Department of Defense as the AWS General Manager for DoD. She also spent 15 years at IBM and a total of 21 years in the US Army.

At IBM, Jennifer served in various roles to include Vice President for DoD, Vice President for Federal Growth Initiatives, and Director for Smarter Analytics in the US East serving IBM’s largest commercial customers. Jennifer also led the Army account, the IBM Power Systems brand for the Federal Government, and the Systems & Technology sales organization for Federal Civilian agencies.

Jennifer also served for 21 years as a US Army officer. She was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1989 through the University of Virginia ROTC program, and spent 11 years on active duty performing during combat operations in Desert Shield/Storm in Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Enduring Freedom in Bosnia. In 2001, Jennifer joined the US Army Reserve and was mobilized from 2004 through 2006 to serve as the Director of Resources for the Joint IED Defeat Organization. She retired from the US Army Reserve as a Lieutenant Colonel in 2010.

Jennifer is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. She is an American Council for Technology – Industry Advisory Council (ACT-IAC) IT Fellow, and previously served on the Board of Directors for the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the USO Metro, and the Washington DC Chapter of AFCEA. She also serves on the Advisory Board for the Center for Business Analytics at the University of Virginia.

Alisha Powell Gillis is the senior editor at Route Fifty where she is responsible for programming live and online events content, moderating panel discussions, soliciting, editing and writing analytical pieces and overseeing the annual Navigator Awards program. Before joining Route Fifty, Alisha was the director for community impact at the Urban Libraries Council (ULC) where she worked to connect urban public libraries to critical issues in state and local government and led event programming. Prior to ULC, Alisha served the nation's governors for nearly a decade at the National Governors Association where she specialized in homeland security, emergency management and cybersecurity issues. Alisha holds a master's degree in global security studies from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor's degree in political science from Hofstra University.

George Jackson is the director of events at GovExec Media – the largest and most-influential media company in the public sector marketplace. George joined GovExec in October of 2020 to enhance the scale of their events and audience experiences.

He graduated from The Ohio State University in 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in English. In 2006, he earned his master’s in broadcast journalism from the University of Maryland, College Park.

George spent the first five years of his journalism career at WJHL-TV in Johnson City Tenn. – beginning as an overnight producer for the station’s 6 a.m. broadcast. He advanced to lead on-air reporter for WJHL’s 11 p.m. newscast.

As a reporter, George examined the earnings of two non-profit hospital systems, felony charges filed against a local sheriff, predatory paving companies, a health benefits backlog for local veterans, and a series of cold-case murder investigations. He received an honorable mention for Best TV Reporter in the 2011 Tennessee AP Broadcast awards and won a Best Investigative Reporting award from Media General in 2010.

George joined DC’s ABC affiliate WJLA-TV in 2012 to produce Capital Insider, which won him an Emmy award. One year later, he developed and recorded the pilot episode of Government Matters – a program about the business of government. It debuted as a weekly show on Sunday, August 4th of 2013. George led Government Matters through September of 2020, expanded its reach to a daily worldwide audience, and produced its first feature-length documentary “The Dawn of Generation AI.”

George is from Toledo, Ohio. He lives with his wife, twin daughters, and a pair of rescue dogs in Northern Virginia.