Speakers

Mr. Les Benito currently serves as the Acting Chief of the Product Management Office for the Defense Information System Agency’s (DISA) Hosting and Compute Center (HaCC). In this role, Mr. Benito oversees security, technical, and user engagement specialists for the HaCC and the team responsible for the execution of the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.

Before the HaCC, Mr. Benito was Director of Operations for DISA’s Cloud Computing Program Office (CCPO), where he led cloud capability development and delivery, including for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud program. In 2020, Mr. Benito served as the CCPO team lead for the rapid, Department-wide deployment of the Commercial Virtual Remote environment in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 health emergency; the largest Microsoft Teams deployment ever, servicing over 1.3 million DoD users.

Prior to this role, Mr. Benito served as the Director of Public Web for the Defense Media Activity. In this role, he ran the Public Web program for DoD, which included 680 of DoD's public websites that are still used as primary communication tools by the Secretary of Defense, military service secretaries, and commanders around the world. With over 4.5 million visitors per week, these DoD sites continue to be some of the most popular government sites on the Internet. Mr. Benito was also DoD representative on the Federal Web Manager's Council, an interagency group of senior federal government web managers who collaborate to share common challenges, ideas, best practices, and ways to improve the online delivery of U.S. Government information and services.

Lloyd Granville; Deputy CTO, DoD

Lloyd is new to NetApp, recently retiring as an Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 after 23 Years active duty supporting an array of entities from Military Intelligence to Special Operations. He serves on Kirk Kern’s team of deputy CTOs as the CTO for NetApp Federal's DOD and Intelligence community. Lloyd specializes in military Network Transport, Core Services support, Cloud migrations, and Enterprise Strategy.

Indira Rice Donegan is a 5th generation Oregonian and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the US Army in 1999. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Literature from the University of Oregon, a Master’s of Arts in Organizational Management, and a Fellowship in Political Science and Government Affairs from William & Mary, focused on Interagency Approaches to Combating Chinese Influence.  Indira joins the NetApp Federal team as our newest Strategy & Pursuit Business Dev Manager after 20+ years of service as a US Army Signal Officer

Don Zimmerman is NetApp’s Sales Account Manager for DoD’s Fourth Estate.  He is focused on delivering a unified data experience for the warfighter by proving NetApp cloud data services and data storage, and has done so for nearly 7 years.  A retired Air Force officer, he flew the B-52 and taught at the US Air Force Academy before beginning his IT sales career 15 years ago.  Today, his goal is to serve our nation’s defense by providing “Any Cloud, One Experience.”

Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, The Sun, MIT Technology Review, Wilson Quarterly, The American Legion Magazine, BBC News Magazine, Utne Reader, and elsewhere.