On Wednesday, September 28, the Austin Chamber and SXSW will present a multitracked cybersecurity summit to bring together businesses, policy influencers, and cyber experts to discuss the immense cyber challenges faced by our business community. Panelists will help attendees understand the current challenges, explore ways to mitigate these challenges and offer practical cyber advice to business leaders.


  • Moderator, Hugh Forrest

    Hugh Forrest is Chief Programming Officer for SXSW. He oversees content for the SXSW Conference, as well as the Music Festival, Film Festival, and EDU aspects of the program. Hugh was named “Austinite of the Year” in 2012 by the Austin Chamber of Commerce and in 2014, he and other SXSW Directors were named Austin Entrepreneurs of the Year by Ernst & Young. He recently received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Kenyon College, his alma mater.

  • Mayor Steve Adler

    Steve Adler is Austin’s 52nd Mayor, having won re-election in 2018 by 40 points in a field of 8 candidates. His top priorities include mobility, affordability and equity for all Austinites. Adler is a Trustee of the United States Conference of Mayors, Past Chair of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO) policy board, and Vice President of the National Council of Democratic Mayors.

    While he’s been in office the City of Austin passed the largest mobility and affordable housing bonds in its history. The city raised its minimum city wage to $15/hr, passed city-wide sick leave and second chance hiring protections. Still working on the homelessness challenge, the city has become one of a limited number of cities to achieve effective net zero veteran homelessness. The city has become a world leader on climate change action.

    Mayor Adler has received broad recognition for innovative leadership. Foreign Policy named him a Global reThinker and Living Cities included Mayor Adler on its list of 25 Disruptive Leaders (along with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and author Ta-Nehisi Coates) to mark that organization’s 25th anniversary.

  • Ioana Bazavan

    Ioana Bazavan is a Managing Director in Accenture’s security practice with more than 23 years of experience in security assessment and strategy design, organization design, program management, training and awareness, managed security operations, and compliance. She is Accenture’s High Tech security lead for North America.

    Ioana is known in the security industry for her pragmatic and scalable approaches to large strategic problems and acts as a trusted advisor to her clients and colleagues. She is a published author on the topics of integrating security into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and developing an effective security organization and function on a realistic budget. She is also a highly sought-after career coach within Accenture Security, having mentored dozens of resources toward career progression and promotion.

    Ioana has two BS degrees (Mathematics and Marine Biology) from UCLA.

  • Carlos Kuri

    Carlos Kuri is an experienced general counsel and business leader.

    As General Counsel for SXSW, LLC, Carlos leads the SXSW legal team and advises the senior management on all pending legal and risk management matters, including complex transactions, marketing and advertising, content production and distribution, licensing, data privacy, litigation and labor and employment.

    Prior to SXSW, Carlos was the Chief Legal Officer at Heineken USA in New York, where he was instrumental in launching the company’s front-end innovation portfolio and establishing the company’s first Data Privacy Task Force, developing initial company data privacy strategy and initiatives.

    Prior to Heineken USA, he was the SVP and General Counsel for Red Bull North America, Inc. in Santa Monica, where he led the legal, business affairs and risk management teams for the beverage, distribution, media and consumer products business lines. During his time at Red Bull, Carlos established the legal department for the New York Red Bulls MLS franchise and Red Bull Arena, and was a founding member of Red Bull’s US Data Security Advisory Board and Key Crisis Management Team.

    Carlos has experience in private practice with the Sports, Entertainment & Media Group at O’Melveny & Myers, LLP in Century City, and with the Project Finance and M&A Groups at Skadden, Arps, Slate & Meagher, LLP in New York.

    He is a proud graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and received his law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

    When he’s not drafting contracts, updating powerpoint presentations or spreadsheets, Carlos is an avid runner, collector of vinyl and Longhorn football fan.

  • Lucian Niemeyer

    Lucian serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Building Cyber Security, a private sector, non-profit organization enhancing global safety through developing cyber security protections for intelligent technologies, buildings, and communities. In this role, he applies his expertise and experience to the nexus of facilities, real estate, and technology to mitigate the risk and impacts to society from the growing threat of cyber incidents.

    Over three decades, Lucian has served in the White House, the Pentagon, and Congress, providing leadership for U.S. national security programs. He served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense managing the world’s largest real property portfolio valued at a trillion dollars. Lucian also served as the Secretary of Defense as a strategic advisor for critical cybersecurity programs, and at the White House overseeing national security, nuclear, and intelligence programs. He also served in the United States Senate on the professional staff of the Armed Services Committee. He is an Air Force veteran with 16 years of active service and 6 years in the Virginia Air National Guard.

  • Elizabeth A. Rogers, CIPP/US

    Elizabeth Rogers currently serves as a partner with Michael Best. Elizabeth is a business and technology-specific lawyer with extensive experience involving a variety of regulatory, cybersecurity compliance, and privacy-focused matters. A former Chief Privacy Officer and General Counsel, she brings a unique and informed in-house perspective to her practice. Elizabeth routinely advises her clients on privacy and cyber risks and suggests practical risk mitigation steps that achieve business objectives.

    Elizabeth focuses on projects including breach prevention, privacy risk assessments, and management of breach response teams. She also focuses on building enterprise-wide privacy and cybersecurity compliance frameworks across industries such as retail, health care, contingent workforce and staffing, education, and state and local governments. She has a breadth of experience creating solutions for privacy issues arising in the employment law context, as she spent the first half of her law career as a management-side employment lawyer.

    Leveraging her in-house and Texas state government experiences, Elizabeth works with executive leadership and other stakeholders to provide practical compliance counseling on cybersecurity and privacy requirements, design and conduct tabletop exercises, and create and implement policies, procedures, and employee privacy and security awareness training.

  • Richard Steven Seline

    Richard has a long history of working with public and private sector executives, organizations, and governments across a number of industry sectors. For over 30 years, his career has included senior-level roles in business, economic, and technology-focused strategic development for federal and state agencies, academic research institutions, civic-led initaitives, and the private sector. Throughout his professional work, Richard has been called upon to facilitate and advise the reorganization and the formation of new business units, restructuring of revenue and operations, creating innovative financial and investment models. Richard has conducted 185 national and regional strategic consulting engagements and launched 22 new investment programs at the national and regional levels.

    During the George H.W. Bush Administration, Richard served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Department of Commerce – Economic Development Administration, Chief of Staff of the President’s Commission on Executive Exchange, Congressional Liaison to the Persian Gulf Task Force for the Environmental Protection Agency, Director of Client and Industry Relations for the US General Services Administration, and White House Liaison to the Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations (“G8 Summit”). Post his federal service and White House appointment, Richard consulted with Arthur Andersen’s Public Sector Practice as a Senior Advisor where he was the lead for reorganization of several Cabinet-level and agency operations (e.g. Office of the President, the White House; Office of the Director, FBI; Office of National Aviation Communications, FAA), and the formation of the Central Intelligence Agency’s groundbreaking InQTel Investment Fund. He was co-chair and author of the National Council of Public-Private Partnership’s Transforming Federal-Private Partnerships for New Investments and Alternative Resource Allocation that led to significant changes in policies, rules, and practices in procurement reform.

    Currently, Richard serves as both the Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Resilience Innovation Hub and Collaboratory Network, as well as the Managing Partner of The ROAR Partnership, a national investment advisory firm connecting pre-disaster risk mitigation and resources with global technologies, equipment, and technologies. In his role with the Innovation Hub, a 501c3 organized to connect technology, equipment, data science, and alternative investment for pre-disaster risk mitigation, Richard has worked with insurance senior executives, public agencies, industry and business associations, civic and community organizations, traditional and innovative investment interests, and a broad coalition to identify next-generation solutions for long-standing challenges caused by droughts and floods, spills and leaks, snow and ice, fires and explosions, pandemics and cyber security breaches.

  • Bobbie Stempfley

    Bobbie Stempfley serves as Vice President, Infrastructure Solutions Group – Business Unit Security Officer (BUSO) for Dell Technologies. Bobbie brings more than 20 years of cybersecurity experience to the role and leads the implementation of security and resiliency programs across the Infrastructure Solutions Group.

    Before joining Dell, Bobbie served as the Managing Director of the CERTTM Division at the Software Engineering Institute, a part of Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to her time at Carnegie Mellon, Bobbie had a successful career in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Defense where she held senior executive leadership roles in technology and cybersecurity, including Chief Information Officer of the Defense Information Systems Agency.

    Bobbie has a bachelor's degree in engineering mathematics from the University of Arizona, a master's degree in computer science from James Madison University and is a doctoral student at Georgetown University. A recipient of many awards, she was recognized by CyberScoop as among the Top Women in Cybersecurity, by Federal Computer Week in the Fed 100 and by Information Week as one of the Top 50 Government CIOs for two consecutive years. She serves on several boards, including the Center for Internet Security and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

  • Violet Sullivan, Esq., CIPP/US

    Violet Sullivan leads Redpoint Cybersecurity’s channel development and cyber consulting services divisions as VP of Client Engagement. She works with insurance carriers, trade associations, and individual business clients from around the world providing expert guidance on cybersecurity threat management and response. She represents Redpoint Cyber within the legal, insurance, and risk management channels to develop long-term relationships, recurring revenue, and new business growth. Ms. Sullivan is a licensed attorney in Texas and Pennsylvania and a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US), with her JD and MBA degrees from Baylor University. In addition to her full-time role, Violet serves as a professor of Cybersecurity & Privacy Law for Baylor Law School’s LL.M. Degree in Litigation Management, the first of its kind nationwide.

    Her diverse practice experience at both the individual and policy levels has prepared her for developing new tools and approaches to solving what is fast-becoming a pervasive and costly challenge in modern industry: how to respond to a cybersecurity incident.

    Early in her career, Violet worked on the incident responses for some of the largest and most notable data breaches to date, including: Home Depot, Sony, and Anthem. Her experience in managing scaled breach responses led to her expertise and proficiency in proactively preparing organizations for cyber incidents. In the past 8 years, she has facilitated over 450 cyber incident simulations (tabletops) for public and private sector companies, including many Fortune 100 companies.

    As a cybersecurity and privacy attorney, Violet provides consulting services to respond to the needs of various cybersecurity programs. She reviews and develops customized incident response plans to ensure organizations are prepared to respond efficiently and effectively to a data breach. Violet also helps improve internal coordination by facilitating customized tabletop simulations focused on "pressure-testing" an organization's incident response procedures and protocols. Each of these customer-facing services mentioned has been built and developed for the purpose of creating long-standing relationships that turn to Violet for guidance, referrals, questions, and future projects.

    As a cybersecurity and privacy professor, Violet developed the entire curriculum for an innovative course on cybersecurity and privacy law for licensed attorneys working toward their LL.M. degree. The specific focus on litigation management has made Sullivan’s course and her lecture series uniquely valuable to experts across the United States.


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Presenting Sponsor

Corporate Sponsor

Supporting Sponsor

HID Global

Michael Best


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