Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the biggest trends in the world today, from generative AI to sophisticated cybersecurity, with a promise to transform the industry and society. While 84% of chief executives recognize AI’s importance in achieving their growth objective, most organizations are lagging behind the curve regarding AI and machine learning. Here, you will get to know the most influential artificial intelligence leaders making an impact in 2023 and beyond.
Table of Contents
What Makes an Artificial Intelligence Leader?
AI leaders face the unknown, understand new technologies, and translate them into real-world applications. They inspire society toward an envisioned future. Anna Patterson makes a great example, having invented Google’s search serving system that increased the index size by 10-fold during its release. This enabled people to access a limitless amount of information in a fraction of a second. Following this lead, here are some more AI Leaders of different organizations to watch out for.
1. Michael Adams, Sales Director at Carahsoft
Michael Adams is a Sales Director at Carahsoft, a Reston-based government IT solutions provider across the local, state, and federal government. He has held the position since June 2014.
Michael Adams is responsible for the company’s portfolio of machine learning, cognitive technology, and AI vendors in this role. The AI leader also provides IT leadership to Artificial Intelligence vendors like Big Data, analytics vendors like Tableau and Cloudera, and various government agencies.
Michael Adams joined Carahsoft in September 2007 as an Account Manager. Since then, he has been instrumental in the company’s annual growth, culminating in $6.95 billion in 2019 bookings.
What’s Next for Michael Adams
In 2023, you can catch valuable discussions with Michael Adams about the evolving AI, government use cases, and Carahsoft’s progress in uniting government requirements and best-in-class technology.
Carahsoft is currently focusing on NVIDIA’s Inception Program, which uses cloud-based GPU computing technology to accelerate government digital transformation and AI workload. Carahsoft has helped NVIDIA’s inception partners by bringing software manufacturers to go from computer vision to natural language processing and cybersecurity to the program.
2. Todd Borkey, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Huntington Ingalls Industries
Todd Borkey is the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Huntington Ingalls Industries, the largest shipbuilding company in the U.S. and the Department of Defense’s main source of support and new technology. He has held the position since September 2022.
Todd Borkey oversees HII’s technology strategies that improve the company’s existing products and services. He advocates new capabilities driving future market growth. He also led HII’s Artificial Intelligence campaign to create AI/ML solutions for the defense and intelligence markets.
Before joining HII, Todd Borkey was a Chief Technology Officer at Alion Science and Technology, Thales Defense and Security, and DRS Defense Solutions. Alion Science and Technology was a company that HII acquired in August 2021 to complement HII’s existing capabilities in the federal solutions and technology-driven defense space.
What’s Next for Todd Borkey
Todd Borkey’s team has been advancing HII’s business portfolio of technologies, including AI and machine learning, C5ISR, nuclear, electronic warfare, and cyber services, that will further advance the progress of warfare in the next decade.
Aware of the increasing demands on national security resources, his team is working hard to give the military an edge with new technologies through analytic processes and new data systems.
3. Ro Dhanda, Vice President of the Public Sector at H2O.ai
Ro Dhanda is the Vice President of the Public Sector at H2O.ai, a trusted and leading AI cloud company that helps organizations operate AI across departments. He has held the position since February 2021.
Ro Dhanda leverages his strong sales leadership and skills in go-to-market strategy, strategic partnership management, and enterprise software. Before joining H2O.ai, the AI leader was a Regional Vice President of the U.S. Federal Business of Snowflake Computing.
What’s Next for Ro Dhanda
This year, Rho Danda seeks to increase the workforce for the company’s growth in the federal market and build its presence in the state and local markets.
Rho Dhanda’s team realized that several agencies and federal system integrators know about H2O.ai’s Open Source platform. This year and moving forward, Dhanda’s team will build around their business powered by trust, familiarity, and positive responses from the community by discovering more of its use cases.
Dhanda’s team focuses on staying relevant, providing thought leadership within the public sector, and prioritizing agencies’ needs to help them leverage AI for their missions. They do this by democratizing AI through H2O AI Cloud, bringing AI capabilities into the customer’s hands, focusing on Research and Product Development, and strengthening Sales, Marketing, and Product Engineering teams.
4. Greg Forrest, Director of AI Foundations at Lockheed Martin
Greg Forrest is the Director of Artificial Intelligence Foundations at Lockheed Martin, a top defense contractor and a global aerospace company headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. He has held the position since December 2020.
As the director of AI Foundations, Greg Forrest oversees Lockheed’s AI strategy and enterprise AI system development. He leads AI and machine learning teams that develop transformative capabilities for the company and its clients.
Greg Forrest brings experience in research and development programs, communications and skills development, and military production and development. The AI leader has expertise in systems engineering, strategic thinking, strategy development, team leadership, and project management.
What’s Next for Greg Forrest
This 2023, Greg Forrest’s team implemented a security strategy for Lockheed to partner with other companies like Red Hat. The partnership streamlines the delivery of the best commercial offerings for the military members and the Defense Department, such as Red Hat’s Microshift, to save lives.
5. Anthony Robbins, Vice President of the North American Public Sector Business at NVIDIA
Anthony Robbins is the Vice President of the North American Public Sector Business at NVIDIA, the company’s federal arm helping governments implement national AI strategies. He has held the position since October 2017.
As the VP of the North American Public Sector Business, Anthony Robbins helps the U.S. federal, local, and state governments, research universities, and higher education institutions reach their enterprise goals.
The AI leader is also responsible for navigating the areas of AI across the Public Sector. Before joining NVIDIA, he was AT&T’s Global Public Sector Vice President.
Anthony Robbins made productive social networking efforts and promoted the spirit of continuous learning in the marketplace. This positioned NVIDIA as the pioneer of AI, cloud enablement, edge processing, and algorithm development.
Anthony Robbins was a Wash100 winner in 2016 and consecutively from 2019 to 2022.
What’s Next for Anthony Robbins
In 2021, NVIDIA saw $20 billion in damage due to unforeseen wildfire ignitions, mostly occurring in Eastern and Western states. This 2023, Anthony Robbins and his team are focusing on data analysis, simulation, and technology adoption for the community. In collaboration with Lockheed, NVIDIA works on the Rothermel model and CMM algorithms to predict fire and compare its progression according to the models’ predictions.
6. Kristen Summers, Operating Unit Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Federal
Kristen Summers is the Operating Unit Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft Federal, a division dedicated to serving the U.S. Government by offering hardware, software, and online products, consulting, and services.
Kristen Summers is an AI leader with more than 20 years of experience in AI and Data Science. She is also experienced in leading projects on question answering, machine translation, entity co-reference, entity recognition, and Optical Character Recognition.
Before joining Microsoft Federal, she served in different roles at IBM, including Technical Delivery Leader, AI Chief Technology Officer, and Distinguished Engineer in Cloud. She spent many years at CACI as a Technical Director in the company’s Knowledge and Information Management Division Group.
What’s Next for Kristen Summers
Kristen Summers has been working on educating the public about how the government can securely run classified processing using Microsoft Azure. This classified cloud solution can empower federal missions in innovative, secure, and compliant ways. The classified cloud has tools to make the intelligence life cycle more efficient such as Cosmos DB and Data Explorer.
