Denis Gusty

Mr. Gusty serves as a Program Manager in the Command, Control and Interoperability Division’s (CCI’s) Office for Interoperability and Compatibility (OIC); in addition, he leads OIC’s data interoperability programs which aims to improve incident response and recovery by developing tools which includes the FEMA Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) and the Commercial Mobile Alert System (CMAS) and the EDXL messaging standards that help emergency responders manage incidents and exchange information in real time.  Mr. Gusty came to CCI from the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), where he served as Director of GSA’s Office of Intergovernmental Solutions. Prior to joining GSA, Mr. Gusty served as a Program Manager at the U.S. Department of Labor. In this role, he was responsible for helping to implement the President’s Management Agenda by managing the e-Government initiative, GovBenefits.gov. Mr. Gusty has more than six years of experience in developing intergovernmental partnerships and IT policy and practices.

Sukumar Dwarkanath

Sukumar Dwarkanath works as a Principal at Touchstone Consulting Group (part of SRA International) and serves as a trusted advisor to senior executives in the federal government. Mr. Dwarkanath’s areas of focus and expertise include strategy and program management. He is an expert in emergency management and public safety technologies and has considerable experience in telecommunications and information technology.  His contributions include federal reports, data standards, white papers/publications, in addition to speaking engagements at a number of conferences.

Prior to his current role, Mr. Dwarkanath served as the Technical Director of COMCARE, a national coalition advocacy organization of 100+ members dedicated to advancing emergency response. During his career, he also worked as a Research Assistant to Dale Hatfield, on Federal Communications Commission’s  E911 Report, that provided an analysis of wireless E911 deployment in the US.

Art Botterell

Art Botterell is a professional emergency manager with more than four decades of experience in emergency communications, public information systems and mass media. He has served on FEMA’s national Emergency Response Team and with the California Office of Emergency Services.  He has consulted to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and numerous other public-safety and emergency management agencies in the U.S. and abroad.

Mr. Botterell was the architect of the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) and a founding trustee of the non-profit Partnership for Public Warning. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Policy Research in Science and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia.  He has served on study panels for the National Academy of Sciences and on the Federal Communications Commission’s national advisory committee on cellphone alerting.  He also managed technology and operations for an advanced Community Warning System for the Office of the Sheriff of Contra Costa County in Northern California.

Carl Reed

Dr. Carl Reed

Dr. Carl Reed is currently the Chief Technology Officer and an Executive Director of the Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC). The OGC is an international standards organization that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location based services.  Reed’s responsibilities include facilitation of the OGC standards process, chairing the OGC Planning Committee and Architecture Board, and tracking future market and technology trends that impact standards development.

In his role as CTO, Dr. Reed also participates in and collaborates with other standards organizations, including OASIS, NENA, ISO, and the IETF, to insure harmonization of geospatial standards across information communities. In a recent collaboration, Dr. Reed helped define the initial GeoRSS specification.

Prior to the OGC, Reed was the vice president of geospatial marketing at Intergraph. This was after a long tenure at GIS software company Genasys II, where he served as chief technology officer for Genasys II worldwide. From 1989 to 1996, Dr. Reed was president of the Genasys Americas operation. Before his tenure at Genasys, Dr. Reed worked at Autometric for six years as GIS division manager, developing a variety of systems for the civilian and military branches of the U.S. federal government. Dr. Reed has designed and implemented two major GIS packages, MOSS and GenaMap.  Reed as published over one hundred professional papers and articles and has recently contributed to a number of books on geospatial technology and standards.

Dr. Reed received his PhD in Geography, specializing in systems architectures for GIS technology, from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1980.

For his contributions to the geospatial industry, Reed was recently inducted into the URISA GIS Hall of Fame.

Gary Timm

Gary Timm

Gary Timm works as an Alerts and Warnings Domain Subject Matter Expert (SME) at Touchstone Consulting Group (part of SRA International) in Washington, DC.  He has been active in the alerts and warnings community for the better part of three decades, particularly as it relates to the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and prior to that the Emergency Broadcast System (EBS).  Gary has successfully passed the FEMA Emergency Management Institute’s coursework IS-100, Introduction to Incident Command System (ICS) and IS-700, Introduction to National Incident Management System (NIMS), giving him a greater understanding of the emergency management community.

Gary recently concluded a 37-year career as a Broadcast Engineer at Journal Broadcast Group in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He continues his commitment to emergency alerting in his home state of Wisconsin as the Broadcast Chair of the State EAS Committee, as well as involvement on the State Amber Alert Committee.  In 2005, he was awarded a Certificate of Commendation from the Governor of the State of Wisconsin for his work on EAS and Amber Alert.  Gary’s work in emergency alerting extends to the national level as well, through membership on the Society of Broadcast Engineers (SBE) EAS Committee, as well as frequent speaking engagements on the state, national, and international level.

John M. Contestabile

John M. Contestabile

John M. Contestabile is the Assistant Program Manager for Homeland Security for the Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Lab.  He joined the Lab in July of 2009, after retiring from the State of Maryland Department of Transportation [MDOT] where he was the Director of the Office of Engineering & Emergency Services working in the Secretary’s Office. In that capacity, he had been responsible for Emergency Planning/Response/Recovery activities for the MDOT since 1996. In addition to working at MDOT, Mr. Contestabile was named by Governor O’Malley as the Director of the Maryland State Public Safety Communications Interoperability Program [MSCIP], reporting to the Superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

Previously, Mr. Contestabile served on assignment with the Governor’s Office during the Ehrlich administration as the Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Homeland Security, from May through December of 2004 and as Acting Assistant Secretary of the MDOT from September of 2006 through September of 2007

Mr. Contestabile has participated on a number of National Committees including: the former Vice Chair of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials [AASHTO] Security Committee, the Transportation Research Board’s Security Oversight Panel, the Department of Homeland Security’s “Safecom” Interoperable Communications Advisory Committee and is a  member of the Strategic Advisory Committee  of the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, who holds the national license for the proposed 700 MHz broadband system.  He is a member of several organizations including: the All Hazards Consortium, the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Maryland Emergency Management Association.

Mr. Contestabile received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and holds a Master of Business Administration Degree from the University of Baltimore.