Nathan Appleton is a director in West Monroe Partners’ Security & Infrastructure practice, based in Seattle, Washington. He has nearly 20 years of experience partnering with organizations to transform operations and deliver business goals through the application of technology solutions. Over the course of his career, Appleton has gained extensive experience in a wide array of technology disciplines and solutions, from data centers and converged infrastructures, virtualization, and security, to enterprise productivity, content management, and online collaboration tools. He is also adept at building high-performing technology service organizations.

Appleton has responsibility for driving West Monroe's infrastructure modernization and cloud platforms solutions, which focus on cloud strategy and advisory as well as cloud design and implementation engagements. He joined West Monroe Partners from Denali Advanced Integration in Redmond, Washington, for which he held several vice president roles. Among other responsibilities, he led a business unit responsible for developing and delivering an innovative data center product, as well as the firm’s Infrastructure Services organization and its teams of system engineers and solution architects serving clients across an array of markets and solutions. Previously, Appleton was a vice president of intranet for Washington Mutual and played a similar role at JP Morgan Chase following its acquisition of Washington Mutual.

Chandra Chikkareddy is a product and engineering leader in the area of Artificial Intelligence, Data and Cloud Computing. He has extensive experience delivering large-scale customer facing platforms and applications for both enterprises and consumers.

At Meta, he pioneered applied AI/ML to tackle some of the defining challenges of our time in the areas of Integrity, Trust, Monetization and GenAI. Previously as a VP/GM at Microsoft, he was the head of the Office AI and Word teams, where they helped redefine the future of work for billions of users. His team was the home of the NLP, applied LLMs, Multimodal GenAI, and the Office AI runtime platforms. Chikkareddy also led Merchant platforms at PayPal, and was involved in data and analytics startups.

Chandra holds a bachelor of engineering in computer science from Mysore University, and a MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

In her three decades at Boeing, Michele Denny has held a number of leadership positions. In her current role, Denny supports Parts and Distribution Services; Supply Chain, Commercial Modifications, Engineering and Specialty Products (CMESP), Commercial Training Solutions and BGS Sales & Marketing.  She is responsible for partnering with the business leadership, aligning on critical business objectives, and powering the business via cutting-edge solutions.

Prior to this role, Denny was the director of Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) Product & Business Results Office (PBRO), where she was overseeing the business operations of I&O, and H2 transformation. Her responsibilities included simplifying business processes and driving productivity, quality, savings, and collaboration across her organization. 

As Education & Learning Director on the Fortnite team at Epic Games, Robert Gervais builds and shares learning resources with creators who work with Unreal and Fortnite technology to make fun games and engaging experiences for their players. Since joining Epic in 2015, Gervais has built and shared learning resources with games and enterprise customers who work with Unreal Engine to run their real-time applications, both for interactive games and real-world simulations. While at Epic, Gervais also implemented data-driven information solutions to improve learning content for the interactive toolset. His research at Epic continues to focus on improving the quality of technical information delivery for users around the globe.

Before joining Epic, he worked as a civil and project engineer, consulting as a technical leader on infrastructure projects for public and private sector clients both at home and abroad. His engineering contributions over the years have been recognized for their innovation and quality by the American Council of Engineers and the Consulting Engineers & Land Surveyors of California. Additionally, Gervais is an award-winning technical and creative writer.

Gervais holds advanced certifications in project and liability management for architects and engineers. He has a Bachelor of Science in Technology and Industrial Arts with a Certificate in Management from Berea College and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in Real-Time Interactive Simulation from DigiPen Institute of Technology.

Erik Johnson has built and grown several practices during his 12 years at Slalom, including Information Management & Analytics, Corporate Performance Management and Microsoft Business Intelligence. 

In recent years, Johnson has personally led numerous strategies, road maps, hackathons and leading-edge proof of concepts for clients moving analytics workloads to AWS and Azure.  He led Slalom’s first AWS Serverless Analytics (S3, Glue, Athena and QuickSight) engagement at the Kenworth Truck Division of Paccar.  He has expanded Slalom’s presence at a number of enterprise accounts, including Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, Seattle Children’s Hospital and T-Mobile.  He has published customer case studies with Microsoft and is also a member of Microsoft’s AI Customer Advisory Board.

Prior to Slalom, Johnson served as Senior Architect in the Business Intelligence Practice at Hitachi Consulting.  He began his career as a CPA in the Seattle office of Arthur Andersen and later joined Arthur Andersen Business Consulting (subsequently acquired by Hitachi), performing Oracle ERP and Business Intelligence implementations. Johnson holds a BA from the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business.

Patti Killins most recently led a quality and agile transformation for The Walt Disney Company, recognized among the top 5 “World’s Most Admired Companies” by Fortune. Prior to that role, bringing a "resilience and security-by-design mindset," Killins led multiple Systems Reliability Engineering teams, successfully completing enterprise scale cloud migrations for critical internal and external online authentication and registration systems, messaging, data and financial platforms. 

With more than 20 years of expertise at Disney, across a number of engineering disciplines, Killins has played instrumental roles in leading and delivering operational excellence and application resiliency at global scale for annual major events like ESPN's Fantasy Football and NCAA March Madness and key product launches such as the Disney MagicBand and Disney+.

Killins holds a Bachelor's of Commerce degree from McMaster University in Canada. Currently residing in Seattle, she is also an avid curler, having competed in both Women's and Mixed U.S. National Championships.

Over the course of 15+ years at Accenture, Grace Kim has been focused on accelerating her clients' business transformation with the power of technology. Her broad set of experiences span from defining technology roadmaps to designing and implementing large-scale billing, operating, or ERP, systems for Fortune 500 companies across the U.S. As part of Accenture Technology Strategy & Advisory group, she is currently focused on cloud advisory services for Technology clients in the West.

Kim is a proud graduate of the University of Washington where she holds a BA from the Foster School of Business. She serves as the overall University of Washington Campus Recruiting Executive Sponsor at Accenture.  

Monica (McCool) McConnell, Sr. Analytics Product Manager, Demand at Mars Petcare, is on a mission to democratize eCommerce data and analytics. With over a decade of experience in data and analytics product management, she's an "intrapreneur," crafting business solutions that improve productivity and profitability, impacting Mars, Nordstrom, Capital One, and more. Her cross-industry expertise, fueled by a self-designed management rotation, accelerates solution delivery. Holding an MS in Information Management from the University of Washington, Monica shapes industry growth as an advisory board member of the program.

Michael Mott has over 10 years of experience in product management, with expertise in delivering B2B SaaS solutions. Currently, Mott heads PitchBook’s Asset Allocation and Fundraising initiative, leading product managers and cross-functional stakeholders who deliver tools and data insights to institutional investors. One of Mott’s key accomplishments includes the initial launch of PitchBook’s Chrome extension, which has become one of the most frequently used features by PitchBook subscribers. He also leads mobile app, CRM integration, and security features across PitchBook.

Before joining PitchBook, Mott led product management for the ActiveCamps division of Active Network, a leading provider of online registration and participant management tools. Mott graduated from the University of Washington in 2004.

Karen M. Potts is the Senior Vice President, Technology at Boeing Employee Credit Union (BECU), the largest community-based credit union in the United States.  As a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative with more than 1 million members, BECU offers services designed to improve the economic and social well-being of all its members. Potts is responsible for the Engineering, Digital Operations and Workplace Services functions for BECU. This encompasses providing technology vision, strategy, business coordination, leadership and direction in the development, implementation, and governance of strategic information technology initiatives.

Potts's career began as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force, her initial assignment was as a Systems Engineer Officer station at Travis Air Force Base, California. There she was responsible for the design, development, testing, and evaluation of integrated systems for managing industrial production processes including human work factors, quality control, inventory control, logistics and material flow, cost analysis, and production coordination. After 27 years of service, Potts retired from the U.S. Air Force holding the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.

Potts received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from Grambling State University and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from National University.

Javier Salido has worked in the technology industry for 30 years, first assisting large enterprises and government organizations in Latin America with the adoption of information technology, and building internet services at Microsoft. For the last 14 years, his efforts have focused on the creation of technical and policy infrastructure to enable privacy by design at Microsoft.

In November 2020, Salido moved to Airbnb where he works with engineers and data scientists in the creation of technical and policy elements necessary for data governance and the responsible use of machine learning. He is also co-chair of the company’s Responsible AI Advisory Board.

Salido holds a B.S. in Electronic Engineering from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico city, and considers himself a UW lifer: MSEE ’06, MBA ’09 and MSDS ’21.

Cheryl Scott has been delivering innovative software solutions for over 40 years across enterprise, mobile and consumer spaces, providing information for decision making by harnessing big data. Her current consultancy practice has two focal areas: evaluating the overall customer experience of early-to-mid stage startups, providing recommendations for executives to improve relevant NPS scores; and re-imagining business intelligence systems to drive actionable decisions.

Previously, she managed the business analytics function for HERE’s Data Marketplace, overseeing the production of new data products and services for the Open Location Platform, where spatial data is turned into business value. Throughout her career, she has been at the intersection of emerging technologies and operational excellence. She has product & program managed and launched 20 software products, including award-winning software for embedded devices and was a Microsoft security program manager for several versions of Windows NT. Her strong foundation in data analytics was formed at Execucom, a worldwide leader in decision support systems, who implemented AI for business intelligence in the 1980s. 

Scott graduated from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with a degree in Finance and earned an MBA in Management Information Systems from Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

Richard Starnes is a Senior Managing Director at Accenture with over 25 years of experience focused on delivering Analytics solutions with measurable value for his clients. Starnes advises many of the largest and most influential technology sector companies on approaches and programs around data governance, data platforms, cloud migrations, MDM, business intelligence, AI/ML, and CDO/COE organizational structure and operations.

Previously at Deloitte, Starnes served as the Global Leader for Tableau and Salesforce Analytics, leading the Semiconductor sub-sector for Analytics, and serving in many other leadership roles in his 15 years there.

Starnes has a Bachelor of Science in Management Science from Loughborough University in the UK. He lives with his wife, and five children in Bellevue. He is an avid soccer fan, coach and player, and in on the board of the Queen Anne Soccer club.

Kris Tomasovic Nelson, CFA, is a Sr. Director, Head of ESG Investment Management in the Investment Division at Russell Investments, where she is responsible for developing and overseeing its sustainable investment process. This includes leading efforts to develop ESG investment processes and infrastructure for Manager Research and Portfolio Management across asset classes, while overseeing the company's Active Ownership program. She began contributing to stewardship efforts as a member of the Active Ownership Committee shortly after joining Russell Investments in 2016. She was named the Chair in 2021. In her role, Kris leverages 20+ years' experience in business model and equity market analysis across economic cycles, and she balances her focus on investment decisions with a keen interest in analytics and investment processes.

Kris has been awarded the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and earned the CFA’s Certificate in ESG Investing. She received her Master of Science in Information Management from the University of Washington Information School and an undergraduate degree in Accounting from Villanova University.