Speakers

Paul Burka
Texas Monthly
Paul Burka joined the staff of TEXAS MONTHLY one year after the magazine's founding. A lifelong Texan, he was born in Galveston , graduated from Rice University with a B.A. in history, and received a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law.

Burka is a member of the State Bar of Texas and spent five years as an attorney with the Texas Legislature, where he served as counsel to the Senate Natural Resources Committee.

Burka won a National Magazine award for reporting excellence in 1985 and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and teaches at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin . He is also a frequent guest discussing politics on national news programs on MSNBC, Fox, NBC, and CNN.

Ron George
Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi
Ron George is a writer by profession and a lay theologian by choice, a doctoral candidate at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and since September 2006, the "word guy" for Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Ron did newsroom stints at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Dallas Morning News  and Houston Chronicle before taking on The Battalion student newspaper at Texas A&M University in College Station as an adviser in 1999. He also taught university newswriting and editing courses.

He returned to his hometown in 2006 to join the A&M-Corpus Christi staff in the Office of Special Projects.

Ron is an award-winning journalist in features and fine arts criticism, but his special-interest coverage of religion and faith issues brought him the most professional satisfaction. He has pounded the police beat, covered sensational trials, plied the political hustings, corresponded from Central America and Mexico and hung out with a notorious street gang said to have converted en masse to Christianity. (Fortunately, they had.) His "big stories" include Apollo moon missions 11, 12 and 13 (the one that nearly didn't make it back) and the murder and funeral of Tejano music queen Selena Quintanilla-Perez. He had been advising The Battalion less than a year when the Aggie Bonfire collapsed, killing 12 and marking forever a generation of student news writers and photographers - and their adviser.

He is married, the father of five and grandfather of four with one on the way.

John McCumber
Strategic Programs Manager, Symantec Corporation
John McCumber is the Strategic Programs Manager in the Public Sector group of Symantec Corporation. He is currently involved in research and development activities in support of leading edge government information assurance initiatives. John is a retired US Air Force officer and former Cryptologic Fellow of the National Security Agency. During his military career, John also served in the Defense
Information Systems Agency and on the Joint Staff at the Pentagon as Information Warfare Officer during the Persian Gulf War.

Mark Milliron
President and CEO, Catalyze Learning International
Dr. Mark David Milliron is an award-winning leader, author, speaker, and consultant best known for exploring leadership development, future trends, learning strategies, and the human side of technology change. Mark works with universities, community colleges, K-12 schools, corporations, associations, and government agencies across the country and around the world. In addition to his work, Mark serves on numerous corporate, nonprofit, and education boards and advisory groups and guest lectures for educational institutions nationally and internationally.

Frank Modruson
Chief Information Officer, Accenture
Frank Modruson, in this fifth year as CIO, leads a high-performance IT organization that supports Accenture's global organization. He oversees all business applications and technology infrastructure, supporting Accenture's 170,000 people to work anytime, anywhere worldwide.  Modruson and his team have transformed IT into a strategic asset for Accenture.

William Morrow
CEO and Chairman, CSIdentity Corporation
Bill Morrow was appointed chairman of Texas ' $175 million Emerging Technology Fund Advisory Committee, and serves as Chairman of Fusion Mobile and sits on the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Development Board and College of Business board of directors. Mr. Morrow founded Grande Communications with a vision of providing bundled phone, Internet and cable services to business and residents Central Texas . 

Bill is trusted and called upon by national media journalists from USA Today, Yahoo! News, San Antonio Business Journal and others as a leading identity theft and fraud detection expert.

Jim Olson
Bush School of Government, Texas A&M University
Professor Olson is a Senior Lecturer at the Bush School , where he teaches courses on intelligence, national security, and international crisis management. He served for over 25 years in the Directorate of Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency, mostly overseas in clandestine operations. In addition to several foreign assignments, he was Chief of Counterintelligence at CIA headquarters in Langley , Virginia . Professor Olson is the author of Fair Play: The Moral Dilemmas of Spying.

Brian S. Rawson
Chief Technology Officer, The State of Texas
Brian Rawson is the Chief Technology Officer for the State of Texas as well as the Executive Director for the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR), the agency responsible for overseeing value-driven technology management in the state. Mr. Rawson has over 22 years of progressive experience in a variety of information technology management, executive-level management, and leadership positions, most notably with the State of Texas and a global information technology consulting firm.

Larry Singer
Vice President , U.S. State, Local and Education Sales, Technology Solutions Group Hewlett-Packard Company
Larry has more than 20 years of experience in both the public and private sector, with expertise and leadership roles across information technology, public policy and administration, corporate strategy, engineering, sales, marketing, business development, procurement, and consulting functions. A former Senior Vice President at Sun Microsystems, Larry served as CIO in Residence and Strategic Insights Officer. Previously he was appointed by the governor of Georgia as that state's first CIO and first Executive Director of the Georgia Technology Authority, responsible for developing a statewide IT policy and strategy.