Federal IT Spotlight at AWS Summit 2025

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.

Dr. Neil C. Evans is the acting program executive director (PED) of VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office. Dr. Evans reports to VA’s Deputy Secretary and is responsible for coordinating agency efforts to implement a modernized federal electronic health record (EHR) across the VA enterprise, overseeing the functional, technical, and program management elements of the new EHR program.

Dr. Evans also serves as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Information and Technology and CIO, as well as the Chief Officer for the Office of Connected Care in the Veterans Health Administration, overseeing VA’s expansive telehealth program and Veteran-facing digital health capabilities including VA’s patient portal, mobile program, and other initiatives connecting Veterans with their VA health care teams.

Dr. Evans has over 20 years of experience in VA and remains an active primary care physician, managing a panel of patients in the Primary Care clinic at the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He has served in both clinical and IT-related leadership roles at the Medical Center level and at VA Central Office.

Dr. Evans began his VA career after completing medical school at Johns Hopkins University and training in Internal Medicine through the Osler Medical Residency, also at Johns Hopkins. He is board-certified in both Internal Medicine and Clinical Informatics and holds a faculty appointment as a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Prior to his medical training, he received a B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware.

Yang Guo is a Computer Scientist in the High-Performance Computing Security Working Group at the NIST.

David Rubal is a Principal Specialist Account Executive leading the AWS generative AI and machine learning go-to-market strategy for the U.S. Department of Defense market. David has been with AWS for 5 years and 6 months. He has a long and successful track record of supporting the global missions of U.S. Federal Government for over 35 years. David’s background is in data science, data management, hybrid cloud / tactical edge computing, network infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Prior to joining AWS, David held senior leadership, sales engineering, and strategic technical sales positions with Dell EMC, DLT Solutions, Oracle, Blue Coat Systems, Tableau, EMC and Cisco Systems.

David is passionate about accelerating the U.S. Government’s data-driven, mission decision making capabilities through AI, cloud migration, modernization, automation and digital transformation.

David holds professional certifications in cybersecurity (ISC2 Certified Information Systems Security Professional – CISSP), AWS cloud services (AWS Cloud Practitioner), AWS AI cloud services (AWS AI Practitioner), data science (Dell EMC Data Science Professional), and Cisco networking (Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert – CCIE). David also holds a professional certification and healthcare provider license in emergency medical services (National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians – NREMT-B) and the Virginia Department of Health Office of Emergency Medical Services – EMT-B).

David is a data futurist and speaker regularly offering insight into disruptive technology trends and opportunities to advance governments, society and humanity. He advises government, academia, boards and industry in evolving technologies.

In his spare time and in the community, David volunteers as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), EMS Officer and ambulance driver for Loudoun County Fire and Rescue (Loudoun County, Virginia, USA), he pilots drones as an FAA-licensed drone pilot and volunteers his skills as a data scientist to help non-profits and government organizations solve social problems with data.