Featured Speaker(s)

DEBRA CURTISS
Vice President/GM
Peak 10 Data Center Solutions
2010 Business Women of the Year - Tampa Bay Business Journal
Debra Curtiss is the vice president and general manager for the Tampa operations of Peak 10, managed services company with world-class data centers. Ms. Curtiss has more than 20 years experience in information technology as a business leader working internationally and domestically. She is known for her work in local business and charitable organizations.

She is often asked to speak on such topics as cloud computing, disaster recovery/business continuity as well as leadership, women’s issues, and sales approach. Ms. Curtiss is responsible for the fiscal well being and day-to-day management of the Tampa data center including operations, engineering, sales and business development.

Patricia K. Gehant, M.A.
Director of Information Technology
JWB Children's Services Council of Pinellas County
Patricia Gehant directs the agency wide strategic planning aligning the business functions with technology infrastructure. Recommends technical projects to the Board technical in support of the organizational goals. Manages the daily operations of the IT infrastructure for with a 5.5 staff supporting 55 onsite users. Designed and manages a six county custom SAaS contract compliance system delivered through a private cloud to over 2,800 users in 785 locations in Florida. The system manages $300 million annually in public funds, with over $1 billion since 2001. Three new customers are currently negotiating membership. The fees from participating counties support 85% of the cost of operation for JWB.

Laura N. Ellis
Cloud Computing Solutions Executive
IBM
Laura Ellis is currently a Cloud Computing Solutions Executive, focused on helping clients from Baltimore to Puerto Rico with strategic cloud solutions for their business to enable flexibility to address today’s environment and provide revenue growth, cost reduction and managed risk. Laura works with clients and IBM teams to determine how best to leverage cloud solutions as part of an optimized IT environment, operating with an efficient dynamic infrastructure to address the incredible pace of change.

Laura began her career when she was recruited to IBM right out of college in San Antonio, TX as a Systems Engineer in late 1983 working with IBM’s mainframe and enterprise storage solutions. She moved to Tampa in 1989 and after working with clients on enterprise IT solutions, she joined the IBM management team in 1997. Her prior role to Cloud Computing Solutions Executive was as a Territory Executive for the 3000 clients in the Central Florida geography, responsible for client satisfaction with the full portfolio of IBM solutions.

Moderator - Tracy Bentley Jagiello
IBM Technical Sales Manager