AI Foundations Driving Government Efficiency

For two decades, Ben Cushing has been a leader in emerging technology solutions across multiple industries and is committed to radical innovation in healthcare. Before joining Red Hat, he served as the Chief Technology Officer for MDLogix, a behavioral health IT firm supporting Johns Hopkins Medicine. There he architected and brought to market a behavioral health cloud platform for use with employer, healthcare, and education markets.

In addition to supporting analytics and operations at the National Institutes of Health for 6 years, Cushing had the opportunity to practice a scaled agile framework with Accenture where he led the technical architecture and design for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Electronic Health Management Platform, an industry leading Health Management and Care Coordination platform serving 9 million patients.

His tenure at Accenture began with the acquisition of Agilex, where he designed LSI solutions, developed systems to automate the Post-9/11 GI bill, and supported in-theater data collection and analytics tools. While at Agilex, Ben architected and led the development of a mobile Software Development Kit, still in use today by the VA to produce more than 60 applications.

Jessie Posilkin is the Acting Executive Director of the Technology Modernization Fund, working to help implement IT solutions across the government that improve agency processes and systems. She has previously worked on the Acquisitions Team at 18F, working to improve the way that the government buys technology by developing the use of the Agile BPA. She has also worked in a variety of non-profits as an organizer and technologist, supporting her colleagues to become stronger users of technology and finding ways for online systems to help social workers, lawyers, and food pantry managers help their clients. Jessie has tried many project management systems, and is a firm believer the best system is the one you will use. Jessie graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies.

Gretchen Stewart is a Principal Engineer (PE) who supports Intel’s public sector team as the Chief Data Scientist and is a member of our enterprise HPC and AI solution architect team. Gretchen builds data analytics/AI/ ML practices focused on digital twins, classical ML, GenAI with federal and state governments, research institutions, universities, aerospace, energy, and advanced manufacturing customers. In addition, with her over 25 years’ experience in the technical sector, she collaborates with customers on ethical and responsible AI, building it in and not bolting it on. Her focus ensures governments, educational institutions and enterprise customers advance the future of research, have competitive advantages, build smarter cities and provide enhanced services to citizens and customers.

Mr. Thomson serves as the Chief Information Officer of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He works to provide the information technology support needed by researchers on the NIH campus as well as NHLBI funded researchers around the world. He also serves as the co-lead of the NHLBI DataSTAGE program – a cloud based data commons that provides storage and computational resources to the heart, lung, blood and sleep research community. DataSTAGE currently stores 3.2PB of genomic and clinical data for the TOPMed program along with millions of imaging. Prior to this role he serves as the NHLBI’s Chief Information Security Officer and spent most of his career in the commercial world consulting to pharma, insurance, finance and logistics. He has also spent time working in broadcast television, computer animation and has directed an Applied Research Center at a university. He trained at the University of Otago in Dunedin New Zealand and holds a BSc(Hons) in Psychology and a DipGrad in Computer Science.

Sarah Sybert joined GovCIO Media & Research as a staff writer/researcher in March 2021, where she primarily covers the Department of Health and Human Services. Before Sarah joined the team, she covered defense, industry and information technology reports and events with Executive Mosaic. Her work has helped connect private and public sector leaders and promote awareness of emerging market trends.

When she’s not on the job, you can find her hiking in Shenandoah, checking out the newest “hole-in-the-wall” coffee shop or jamming on the guitar.  Sarah earned her bachelor’s degree in English, with minors in Creative Writing and Film Studies, at Flagler College in St. Augustine, Florida.