Demek Adams is a Practice Director in Grant Thornton’s Global Public Sector (GPS). He leads the Financial Management Operations practice, which delivers a portfolio of services to the federal government, such as accounting transformation, audit remediation and financial reporting. 

Mr. Adams has over 10 years of experience serving federal clients in both the executive and judicial branches of government. With extensive financial management expertise, He delivers transformative solutions to address the government’s toughest audit and operational challenges. In addition to providing excellent client service, Mr. Adams is dedicated to developing accountants and consultants through mentorship and training within the financial management community.

Mr. Adams is a graduate of American University, where he earned his B.S in Accounting and Computer Information Systems.

Craig Clay has been with Donnelley Financial Solutions for 23 years and is the President of Global Capital Markets. Craig’s responsibilities include customer satisfaction and retention, owning the vision, strategy and goals for the Capital Markets business and aligning regional market strategies with the overall strategy. He is also responsible for delivering superior service distinctiveness to customers and delivery technology solutions to answer client needs. Craig has demonstrated leadership, a customer focus, and commitment to results throughout his career with Donnelley and its corporate predecessor, RR Donnelley.

Prior to joining RR Donnelley, Craig was with American Eurocopter a subsidiary of Aerospatiale. Craig received a BBA in Finance and International Business from Baylor University and MBA from Southern Methodist University.

Frank Landefeld helps clients build and execute strategies to modernize and innovate the technologies they employ. With more than 20 years of technology strategy, business and requirements analysis, and modernization experience, he serves clients around the world in a variety of industries and government through alignment of technology investments with mission execution and business needs.

Working across industries, Frank has executed complex technology advisory and consulting services for clients in North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. He has deep experience planning and delivering IT strategy, technology modernization, enterprise applications selection and implementation, and CIO/CTO advisory services. Over the past decade, Frank has focused on serving the missions of the departments of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) through delivery and leadership across numerous focused and large-scale transformation efforts for emergency management, cargo screening, maritime operations, transportation and border security, and intelligence information sharing.

Prior to joining MorganFranklin, Frank served as the lead for Strategic Technology & Innovation within Booz Allen Hamilton’s Justice and Homeland Security practice. In that role, he provided leadership, subject matter expertise, program management, and career development for more than 100 people nationwide focused on enabling critical homeland security and law enforcement missions through the application of engineering and architecture disciplines. Previously, he served at Voxiva Inc., BearingPoint/KPMG, Blue Martini Software, and Oracle Corporation.

Hudson Hollister founded the Data Coalition in 2012 to serve as the leading industry advocacy group for open data in government. He has helped to craft landmark U.S. government data reforms, including the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) and the Financial Transparency Act.

In early 2016, Hudson founded the Data Foundation, a nonprofit research organization, to work alongside the Data Coalition and partner with government to deliver insights, education, and programming supporting open data transformations.

Prior to founding the Data Coalition and the Data Foundation, Hudson served as counsel to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the U.S. House of Representatives and as an attorney fellow in the Office of Interactive Disclosure at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Before his government service, he was a securities litigator in the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins LLP.

Hudson received his Juris Doctor from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in 2005 and a bachelor’s degree in political science and mass communication from theUniversity of St. Francis in 2002. He is a native of Joliet, Illinois.

Brett is the CEO and Co-founder of data.world, which is building the most meaningful, collaborative, and abundant data resource in the world.  He is also a seed-stage investor at Hurt Family Investments (HFI) in partnership with his wife, Debra. HFI are involved in 45 startups and 11 VC funds. HFI has directly made 34 startup investments, and Brett has also joined the Advisory Board of 11 additional companies. Prior to HFI, Brett founded Bazaarvoice (NASDAQ: BV) and served as CEO and President for 7½ years, leading the company from bootstrapped concept to almost 2,000 clients worldwide and through its successful IPO. He subsequently guided the company through a successful follow-on offering and two acquisitions, PowerReviews and Longboard Media. Prior to Bazaarvoice, Brett founded Coremetrics and helped grow the company into a global, leading marketing analytics solution for the eCommerce industry before its acquisition by IBM.

Brett holds an MBA in High-Tech Entrepreneurship from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Texas at Austin. He serves as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Wharton School. Brett previously served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the McCombs School of Business and also served on the Board of Directors of Shop.org for six years. Brett established the Bazaarvoice Foundation and is very active in the philanthropic arena. He received the Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation’s Community Leadership Award in 2012. Brett is entrepreneur empowerment group RISE’s Serial Entrepreneur of the year for 2012. He was named by E&Y as Entrepreneur of the Year for Austin in 2009 and is a member of the Austin chapter of the international Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO). Brett was named CEO of the Year for large companies by the Austin Business Journal in 2012 and received the Joseph Wharton Award for Young Leadership in 2013. Brett and Debra received the LBJ Humanitarian Award in 2014 for their dedication to public service, philanthropy, and the Austin community. Brett was awarded the Henry Crown Fellowship from The Aspen Institute and joined the 2015 XIX class, named "Dare, Greatly".

To help support Austin's entrepreneurs, Brett serves as a Partner at Capital Factory and Mentor at Techstars Austin; invests in early-stage companies, funds, and philanthropic endeavors with Hurt Family Investments; serves as the Chairman of the Board at Edgecase (formerly named Compare Metrics); and blogs at Lucky7.io. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Entrepreneurs Foundation of Central Texas as well as Conscious Capitalism, both of which are non-profits designed to bring out the best in business in the way it can serve society at large. Brett can be followed on Twitter at @databrett.

Joseph Kull is a Director in PwC’s Washington Federal Practice focusing on public sector budget, grants, and financial management and performance.

He retired after 32 years of Federal service, including 20 years in the SES.  His last four years were at OMB as the Deputy Controller for federal financial management, responsible for accounting, auditing, financial systems, internal controls and grant management for all Federal agencies.

Prior to OMB, he spent over 15 years as the CFO and Budget Director at the National Science Foundation, and 11 years as Comptroller and Budget Director of the Civil Aeronautics Board. He began his career as an auditor with Arthur Andersen & Co.

Mr. Kull has an MBA, CPA, CFGM [Certified Government Financial Manager] and CGMA [Certified Global Management Accountant]. He is a member of the AICPA, AGA, and serves on a number of professional and advisory boards and committees. He has testified before Congress, taught accounting at the college and graduate level for 25 years, and was a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Board [FASAB].

Steven Meizanis is a senior executive with nearly 25 years of experience in the financial industry. Steven graduated summa cum laude from Rider University with a bachelor’s degree in finance. Steven is currently the global head of Bloomberg LEI Services and Entity Management. He also manages Open Symbology and the FIGI standard and Bloomberg’s Regulatory Content. With a focus on industry standards, Steven most recently led an effort through the GLEIF accreditation process, allowing Bloomberg to become a Local Operating Unit (LOU) and issuer of the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI).

Steven joined Bloomberg in 1994 and quickly became an expert in fixed income products, covering fixed income calculations and structured notes. Steven has held multiple positions over the years within the Global Data division, including manager of the Fixed Income department and Quality Assurance. Steven was also responsible for overseeing business development for Bloomberg Data License, which combines the resources of the Bloomberg Professional Service - the world’s most trusted source of information, analytics, data and news - with end of day reference data services.

Bryce Pippert is a leader in Data Solutions and Machine Intelligence at Booz Allen Hamilton, helping drive the firm’s innovation strategy. He focuses on leveraging open data, open standards and open source solutions to help clients capture value and gain efficiency through business model innovation, better use of data assets, analytics, automation and more effective use of technology. 

Since joining Booz Allen in 2006, Bryce has led diverse teams supporting commercial and government clients in the analysis, strategy, planning and implementation of major organizational, process and systems modernizations. He has helped clients implement major reform agendas and significant legislative changes, e.g., Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA Act), Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the Pension Protection Act.

Prior to joining Booz Allen, Bryce served in various leadership capacities for UBmatrix, Inc. (now part of Donnelley Financial Solutions (NYSE: DFIN)) and as CEO of XBRL Solutions, Inc. 

Bryce has a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Wheaton College and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Adam Roth is the founder and CEO of StreamLink Software, a privately held company in Cleveland, OH that develops web-based grant and board management software products for nonprofit and public sector organizations. AmpliFund, the grants management solution manufactured by StreamLink Software, is at the forefront of automating grant compliance in the public sector. Adam created AmpliFund in response to personally encountering a need for greater process efficiencies and less IT overhead during a 15 year career in the nonprofit sector. Under Adam’s leadership, StreamLink Software has grown revenue over 200% each year and increased its customer base to over 450 to date.

J.W. Mike Starr is the Vice President of Governmental and Regulatory Affairs at Workiva and is a subject matter expert for financial and regulatory reporting using structured data.  Starr joined the Workiva team in September 2012.  He previously served as an advisor to the SEC Chief Accountant focusing on the information needs of investors and the use of structured data to meet those needs.  Prior to joining the SEC, he was a partner at Grant Thornton for 30 years where he served as Chief Operating for Grant Thornton International Ltd. overseeing global strategy development and implementation and public policy.  Active in professional activities, he was recognized as distinguished accounting alumnus of Oklahoma State University and inducted into the School of Accounting Hall of Fame.

Stephan Wolf was appointed by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) Board as the CEO of GLEIF.

Since January 2017, Mr. Wolf is Co-convener of the International Organization for Standardization Technical Committee 68 FinTech Technical Advisory Group (ISO TC 68 FinTech TAG). The group acts as an advisory sounding board to support and engage with the Fintech community on standards requirements, for the effective and efficient use and development of standards to support FinTechs and the broader financial services industry, delivered using a cooperative relationship approach. The focus of the FinTech TAG will be on the following areas: Financial messaging, semantic technologies, blockchain / distributed ledger technology, mobile / digital wallets, digital currencies as well as security considerations related to these topics and interoperability with existing bank-channels.

In January 2017, Mr. Wolf was named one of the Top 100 Leaders in Identity by One World Identity.

Mr. Wolf has extensive experience in establishing data operations and global implementation strategy. He has led the advancement of key business and product development strategies throughout his career. Mr. Wolf co-founded IS Innovative Software GmbH in 1989 and served first as its managing director. He was later named spokesman of the executive board of its successor IS.Teledata AG. This company ultimately became part of Interactive Data Corporation where Mr. Wolf held the role of CTO until 2010 with development teams in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. He has a proven ability to build and to manage large organizations and partnerships, both globally as well as regionally with the ability to deliver complex solutions to the financial services industry.

Mr. Wolf holds a university degree in business administration from J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main.