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 20 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 and Global outsourcing 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.

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].

Kevin founded Socrata because he recognized that the massive amounts of data in the world could be put to use in people’s everyday lives to make them better. Kevin had previous successes as an entrepreneur. In 2002 Kevin founded MessageRite, which developed and provided a web-based email archiving service. In 2004, FrontBridge Technologies acquired MessageRite where Kevin functioned as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In 2005, Microsoft acquired FrontBridge. At Microsoft Kevin served as Software Architect and Director of Operations before leaving to found Socrata in 2007. At heart, Kevin is a software entrepreneur with a passion for making customers elated by delivering great software as a service.

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 Director of Strategic Initiatives 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.