Federal IT Spotlight at 2025 AWS re:Invent

Richard Breakiron is Commvault’s Senior Director, Strategic Initiatives, Americas Public Sector focused on the Federal community. He gained his extensive experience in developing, deploying and operating critical network IT and large data management systems while serving as an officer the Army, senior government civilian with the Army and DISA and U.S. security agencies.

A leader on many major IT program initiatives throughout his career, Richard oversaw the largest Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) effort comprising over $3 billion in IT systems to support a $16 billion transformation of Army infrastructure. He further led the effort to realign the DoD’s Top-Level Architecture, by building a partnership with the DoD CIO and AFSPACECOM. While at the Pentagon with HQDA CIO/G-6, he served in leadership roles for strategic initiatives managing an Army-wide IT reform and network modernization effort.

Richard works alongside his Strategic Initiatives counterpart, Dave DeVries, where they both bring their close to 80 years of collective experience and insights from the DoD and Federal agencies to the states and local government as well as higher education. Since leaving government service, Mr. Breakiron has held positions as Executive VP, Public sector, root9B, an advanced Cyber security company; Senior Director, Cyber solutions for ViON Corporation; and initiated the standup of Ascolta, LLC, a data analytics subsidiary of ViON, as their General Manager and served on the board of Ascolta.

Richard and his wife are fortunate to enjoy a great rural life in Aiken, SC. They relax by gardening, do-it-yourself projects, playing tennis, an occasional Top Golf, and are learning sailing and scuba to enjoy their regular travel to SC beaches with their three ‘launched’ children.

Joshua Nickell brings almost two decades of experience driving technology innovation and mission success across the U.S. public sector. His career spans service provider environments, enterprise modernization, and strategic alliance development, with deep expertise in partnering with Federal System Integrators (FSIs) to deliver secure, scalable solutions.

Joshua began his journey at SAIC, where he spent nearly a decade as Chief Solutions Architect, advising Federal Civilian, Defense, and Intelligence programs on IT strategy and mission-aligned delivery. He later joined NetApp as Business Development Manager, leading engagements with Tier-1 Federal Integrators to advance data-centric architectures and cloud adoption.

Most recently, Joshua supported the IRS Tier1 Processing and Enterprise Server Division Modernization Program Office, spearheading initiatives in cloud migration, mainframe transformation, and secure data frameworks.

Today, Joshua leads Commvault’s Federal Partnerships and Alliances strategy, helping agencies and integrators strengthen cyber resiliency and safeguard mission-critical data in an era of evolving threats. His focus: enabling data-driven missions through trusted partnerships and next-generation solutions.

Bryana Tucci is the Lead of the Intelligence Community Marketplace (ICMP) and a Principal Technical Business Development Manager at Amazon Web Services (AWS) where she helps government agencies procure and deploy solutions (like Zero Trust and Gen AI) in their cloud environments. Prior to AWS, Bryana worked at In-Q-Tel and overseas as a Foreign Service Officer. She graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and earned a Master in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School where she was a Pickering Fellow. Bryana received her MBA and Master of Science in Information Systems Technology from The George Washington University where she was a Forte Fellow.