Brad Shimmin is Vice President, Practice Lead, Data Intelligence, Analytics, & Infrastructure at Futurum, where he provides strategic direction and market analysis to help organizations maximize their investments in data and analytics. Currently, Brad is focused on helping companies establish an AI-first data strategy.

Dion Hinchcliffe is a distinguished thought leader, IT expert, and enterprise architect, celebrated for his strategic advisory with Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies. With over 25 years of experience, Dion works with the leadership teams of top enterprises, as well as leading tech companies, in bridging the gap between business and technology, focusing on enterprise AI, IT management, cloud computing, and digital business. He is a sought-after keynote speaker, industry analyst, and author, known for his insightful and in-depth contributions to digital strategy, IT topics, and digital transformation. Dion’s influence is particularly notable in the CIO community, where he engages actively with CIO roundtables and has been ranked numerous times as one of the top global influencers of Chief Information Officers. He also serves as an executive fellow at the SDA Bocconi Center for Digital Strategies.

Fernando Montenegro serves as the Vice President & Practice Lead for Cybersecurity & Resilience at The Futurum Group. In this role, he leads the development and execution of the Cybersecurity research agenda, working closely with the team to drive the practice’s growth. His research focuses on addressing critical topics in modern cybersecurity. These include the multifaceted role of AI in cybersecurity, strategies for managing an ever-expanding attack surface, and the evolution of cybersecurity architectures toward more platform-oriented solutions.

Before joining The Futurum Group, Fernando held senior industry analyst roles at Omdia, S&P Global, and 451 Research. His career also includes diverse roles in customer support, security, IT operations, professional services, and sales engineering. He has worked with pioneering Internet Service Providers, established security vendors, and startups across North and South America.

Fernando holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and various industry certifications. Although he is originally from Brazil, he has been based in Toronto, Canada, for many years.

Keith Kirkpatrick is a Research Director, Enterprise Software & Digital Workflows with The Futurum Group. His coverage area encompasses enterprise applications, platforms, and tools, and the technologies and tools that underpin them, including artificial intelligence, automation, and integration technologies. He has more than 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields, and is frequently sought out by the vendor community and trade media for his insights and commentary.

Mitch Ashley is Vice President and Practice Lead, Software Lifecycle Engineering for The Futurum Group. Mitch has over 30+ years of experience as an entrepreneur, industry analyst, product development and IT leader, with expertise in software engineering, cybersecurity, DevOps, DevSecOps, cloud, and AI. Mitch comes to The Futurum Group through the acquisition of Techstrong Group (devops.com, securityboulevard.com, and techstrong.tv), where he serves as CTO and founder of Techstrong Research.

As a Chief Technology Advisor, CTO, CIO, and head of engineering, Mitch led the creation of award-winning cybersecurity products utilized in the private and public sectors, including the U.S. Department of Defense and all military branches. Mitch also led managed PKI services for broadband, Wi-Fi, IoT, energy management, and 5G industries, product certification test labs, an online SaaS (93m transactions annually), the development of video-on-demand and Internet cable services, and a national broadband network. He began his career creating large banking and telecom applications and building AI expert systems.

Having led his first of three introductions of DevOps in 2014 and the modernization of three IT organizations, Mitch shares his experiences as an analyst, keynote and conference speaker, panelist, host, moderator, and expert interviewer. His talks cover some of the most in-demand topics, including CIO/CTO leadership, product and software development, DevOps, DevSecOps, containerization, container orchestration, AI/ML/GenAI, platform engineering, SRE, and cybersecurity. He publishes his research on futurumgroup.com/ and TechstrongResearch.com/resources. He hosts multiple award-winning video and podcast series, including DevOps Unbound, CISO Talk, and Techstrong Gang.

Nick is Vice President & Practice Lead, AI Platforms. He is a thought leader on the development, deployment, and adoption of AI — an area he has been researching for 25 years. Prior to joining Futurum, Nick was a Managing Analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence, responsible for 451 Research’s coverage of Data, AI, Analytics, Information Security, and Risk. Nick became part of S&P Global through its 2019 acquisition of 451 Research, a pioneering analyst firm that Nick co-founded in 1999. He is a sought-after speaker and advisor, known for his expertise in the drivers of AI adoption, industry use cases, and the infrastructure behind its development and deployment. Nick also spent three years as a product marketing lead at Recommind (now part of OpenText), a machine learning-driven eDiscovery software company. Nick is based in London.