Small agencies can be more nimble when modernizing IT, moving to the cloud

Howard Spira was named the Chief Information Officer of the Export-Import Bank of the United States in December 2014. He was promoted to Senior Vice President at the Bank in October of 2016.

Howard comes to the Export-Import Bank from the United States Treasury where he led the technology team for the Office of Financial Stability – the team at Treasury that ran the TARP.

Prior to his federal service, Howard was a senior IT executive in the financial services industry with an extensive background in international and domestic commercial finance. He brings to ExIm a wealth of industry technology experience.

Howard’s responsibilities include overseeing the complete information technology portfolio that support’s the Bank's $100 billion portfolio including infrastructure, networks and telecoms, application development, program management, information security, data and reporting, and records management. In addition, his area serves as the agency's representative for Open Data, Privacy and Records.

Mr. Spira holds a BS from Cornell University’s school of Agriculture and Life Sciences and an MBA from Cornell’s Johnson School of Business.

Benjamin Bergersen is an IT executive and cloud security expert. As the first full-time CIO for the U.S. Trade and Development Agency, Mr. Bergersen transforms IT services for the Agency to utilize a hybrid strategy of shared services and cloud services for increased savings and efficiencies. Using IT accelerators and analytic IT systems, Mr. Bergersen supports the Agency’s important mission.

Before joining USTDA Mr. Bergersen, served as the Information Security Officer for MAX.gov Cloud Shared Services Cloud at OMB. In this role, he oversaw the transformation of continuous monitoring and enterprise risk management across software development through to operations. This work led to Mr. Bergersen receiving the Government Information Security Leadership Award (GISLA) from (ISC)2 for best information security business process improvement.

As the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Commerce, Mr. Bergersen provided collaborative nationwide services for mission security and assurance. This included developing technology services to accelerate and enhance the capabilities of special agents, auditors, and attorneys to perform investigations and audits across five operating locations. Mr. Bergersen received a Commerce Bronze medal and a GovTek Executive Collaboration award for his accomplishments in this role.

As the Information Security Program Manager in the U.S. Antarctic Program for the U.S. Navy and the National Science Foundation (NSF), Mr. Bergersen earned A+ FISMA grades two years in a row for information security as rated by U.S. Congress.

Benjamin created the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Executive Education and Graduate Certificate Program at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College, CIO Institute. He holds multiple cyber security and governance certifications including CISSP, ISSAP, and ISSMP from (ISC)2; and CGEIT, CISA, and CISM from ISACA. His education includes an MBA from George Mason University, a Bachelor’s of Science from SUNY Brockport, and is a certified CIO by the U.S. Federal CIO Council / CIO University.

Bill Rowan is Vice President of Federal Sales for VMware's U.S. Public Sector organization. He leads a team of more than 175 sales, engineering, advisory and implementation services professionals who help Federal organizations meet their unique requirements with the application of virtualization, mobility and cloud technology.

Prior to this role, Bill was the Vice President of Sales for VMware's U.S. Department of Defense and Intelligence Community teams. Mr. Rowan has more than 30 years of experience serving as a trusted advisor to the Federal government customers, Federal Valued Added Resellers and Systems Integrator organizations. Prior to VMware, he was the Department of Defense Area Manager at EMC, and held senior management positions at Storage Technology Corporation, MicroStrategy and IBM.

In 2017, Bill was named to both the Fed100 and WASH100

Bill has served as speaker at various government industry forums and panels. He holds an MBA from Averett University and a BS in Finance from Fairfield University. He and his wife Kristin reside in Kensington, Maryland with their two daughters.

Jason Miller is an executive editor and reporter with Federal News Network. As executive editor, Jason helps direct the news coverage of the station and works with reporters to ensure a broad range of coverage of federal technology, procurement, finance and human resource news.As a reporter, Jason focuses mainly on technology and procurement issues, including cybersecurity, e-government and acquisition policies and programs.