Suzanne Alfano is the Executive Director with the Canadian Fire Alarm Association (CFAA). Her educational background is in electrical/electronics engineering along with a Master in Business Administration (MBA) degree. Suzanne has a unique 30+ year background in Association Management. She has worked for various Associations in Canada and the USA in technical management, consulting and leadership roles. Her experience includes advocating for legislative and regulatory requirements that support industry and public safety.

Bob Allan is the Vice President of Sales for NAVCO Inc., headquartered in Fullerton, CA, an industry leading security integrator. Bob is responsible for East Region sales management. Mr. Allan has over 15 years in the IT industry and worked at Honeywell Building Solutions from 2010 to 2013 helping customers optimize and integrate their buildings and the Siemon Company from 2013-2022 where he led the Intelligent Buildings and Strategic Alliances team.

Rick Bennett is a highly experienced building performance and energy management professional. His broad-ranging, 25-year career includes mechanical system design and installation, as well as commissioning, retro-commissioning, and energy engineering. Rick is passionate about moving the industry forward through education and advocacy. He is a long-time Energy Management Association [EMA] Board Member, has served on the Energy Management Professional [EMP] Exam Development Committee since 2015, and was an instructor for HVAC/R apprentices and journeymen through the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee [JATC] now known as the Electrical Training Alliance.

Anto Budiardjo is a veteran in the connected building space. Since 1989, he has led the development and promotion of building connectivity and integration technologies. His first product, the CdC Engine, first installed in 1991, was deployed widely in the UK and Europe through integrators and OEMs. The “Engine” was the first PC-based integration platform and graphical UI for buildings. Today, Anto is focused on a new venture to bring system integration into the Internet era with an online integration and collaboration platform Padi.io. Core to the current work is the advocacy of CNS/CP (Connection Profiles), an integration mechanism created by Padi and now being adopted as an open mechanism by Digital Twin communities, including the Digital Twin Consortium, as a key integration tool.

Dan Diehl is Chief Executive Officer of Aircuity and has over 25 years of industry expertise across a wide variety of vertical markets and disciplines in commercial and light industrial building markets. Prior to Aircuity, Mr. Diehl led business development at Lutron Electronics, was a Partner for six years with Synergy and also spent 11 years at Johnson Controls, Inc. Mr. Diehl holds a BS from the University of Maryland and an MBA from Villanova University.

JD‘s experience spans the U.S. Armed Forces, semiconductors, solid-state drives, and the solar industry. His functional leadership has impacted pricing, new product introduction, customer experience, and communications at all levels. Most recently, JD has spent the last few years as chief marketing officer of Tigo Energy, helping to take them public in May of 2023.

Michael Grant is the co-founder and COO of Metrikus. Michael is an operations, strategy and management professional with over 20 years in the technology sector. Specialising in technology, software, IoT, ESG and cloud, Michael has over 10 years’ experience working at Senior Management and C-Level and has dealt with large teams to deliver solutions with exceptional service – clients include those from banking, commercial real estate and IT sectors.

Rick has more than twenty-five years of experience in the Fire & Life Safety industry. He is the Group Vice President of SDi, based in Merritt Island, Florida. Transitioning from a career in law enforcement, Rick has been very active in many facets of the life safety industry. He was appointed to the Automatic Fire Alarm Association (AFAA) Board of Directors fifteen years ago and is the Immediate Past President. Additionally, he is currently Vice Chair of NEMA BS-SB. Rick is an NFPA Technical Committee Member on NFPA 72, NFPA 101/5000, NFPA 1, NFPA 915, NFPA 715, NFPA 461, NFPA 909/914, NFPA 170 and NFPA 420.

Kim Johnson has over 10 years of marketing leadership and experience in a wide range of industries such as consulting, retail data, consumer packaged goods, and technology. Today she serves as chief marketing officer for MHT Technologies, a leader in Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) lighting and building automation software. At MHT, Johnson leads marketing of the company’s core brands, products and platform-based solutions. Most recently, she was elected President of the newly formed PoE Consortium – an industry organization dedicated to the education and advocacy for PoE-based smart building solutions.

Johnson previously led marketing for a PoE lighting startup, where she developed and executed branding and communications strategy that earned significant market exposure. Johnson was recognized for her efforts by LEDs Magazine, as a member of their inaugural class of 40 Under 40 and received multiple marketing leadership awards.

Johnson has a bachelor’s degree from Augustana University in South Dakota and graduated with honors from the University of Iowa’s full-time MBA program with an emphasis in marketing.

Isiah Jones has 18 years of progressive experience in various aspects of IT, security, assurance, and ICS. In 2014 he decided to work exclusively on ICS security and has since performed work in the Middle East, East Africa, Europe, Hawaii, and across the continental United States. Isiah has delivered ICS security for the US Navy, US Marine Corps, Siemens, and FERC in addition to various asset owners and operators across several sectors and asset-type verticals.  Has had a network of affiliations throughout US intelligence community, Defense community, Congress, FERC, DOE, DHS, Department of Commerce, various National Labs, ICS vendors, ICS integrators, and asset owners/operators. His rounded interdisciplinary experiences have touched many asset types and sectors (water, electric, oil, gas, building automation, airfields, maritime, manufacturing, life sciences pharma, pulp & paper, logistics & warehouse, SAP ERP etc.

Rick Justis is the Managing Director at the Coalition for Smarter Buildings (C4SB). has spent the last several decades working with companies and organizations that have the potential to transform the built environment and drive broader adoption of technologies that can deliver positive change.  The variety of experience gained while working for companies like Apple, Dell, Johnson Controls, Honeywell and a long list of Start-Up’s in the Prop-Tech market has given him the ability to be relatively comfortable with conversations from board rooms to boiler rooms and he knows his way around Silicon Valley and Washington DC almost as well as his adopted home town of Kansas City, Missouri.

Walt King has spent 10+ years in the building controls industry and specializes in lab airside optimization programs. He has spent 9 years with Aircuity and is also Managing Director of Thrive Building Solutions providing turnkey decarbonization programs for Life Sciences, Higher Ed and Healthcare organizations. Walt has a BS and BA from Carnegie Mellon University.

Martyna Kowalczyk, a passionate solar installer in Texas, has been leading her business with family since 2008 in Poland, EU, and in Texas since 2016. As a solar enthusiast, she educates and inspires thousands through her YouTube channel, “Solartime with Martyna.”

Jim Lee is the founder of Cimetrics and has acted as its CEO since its formation. Mr. Lee has been a leader in the embedded control networking and building automation community for over 20 years. As founder and former President of the BACnet Manufacturers Association, the leading open systems networking consortium in the building automation industry, Mr. Lee’s aggressive promotion of the BACnet open protocol standard has helped make Cimetrics a high-profile player in the arena. Mr. Lee has a B.A. in Physics from Cornell University.

Birgitte Messerschmidt is Director, Research, National Fire Protection Association. She is responsible for NFPA’s Research Strategy, Research on fire problems and other safety issues, Data collection efforts to maintain NFPA’s fire incident and fire service databases and the NFPA Research library. She has a M. Sc. In Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and has spent her entire career working on fire safety issues.  Making our built environment more resilient to fire through better understanding of the impact of construction products and methods, as well as testing procedures and policy has been a career long passion. She has been involved in testing and research as well as standardization and advocacy. She has published and presented numerous papers on fire safety issues.

Paul O’Malley is the founder of Paul O’Malley Associates, LLC, a Boston-based strategy consulting firm founded in 1991. He has worked with CEOs and senior managers in a variety of organizations: start-ups, growth companies, Fortune 500’s and non-profits. Paul provides strategy and execution coaching to help organizations deliver great outcomes for customers and other stakeholders. He authored the white paper, Creating Value: Linking the Interests of Customers, Employees and Investors, published by Pegasus Communications as part of its Innovations in Management series, and coauthored with Dan Diehl (CEO of Aircuity) Facilities as Strategic Assets, published in A New Deal for Business.  Paul holds a Master of Science in Management from the MIT Sloan School (1991).

Derek Peterson serves as chief executive officer of Soter Technologies, and is responsible for driving the company’s innovation and strategies that have set benchmarks for safety, security, and wellness in education and other markets. Under his leadership, Soter has delivered environmental sensing, social management, and indoor air quality monitoring solutions to customers in more than 22 countries.

Peterson has over two decades of extensive technical, functional, and management experience in the wireless, mobility, and automatic identification industries. Prior to founding Soter, he was Vice President of both Business Development and Software Engineering at Intelligent Product Solutions, and served in executive roles at Neohapsis, Computers By Design, which he co-founded in 2003, and Symbol Technologies.

Hailed as a technology visionary, Peterson founded Soter Technologies in 2018 and has been granted 18 U.S. Patents for his inventions related to technology, product design, and development for the company. Among his accomplishments at Soter, Peterson developed FlySense, the world’s first vape and bullying detection and alert system for schools, which has been deployed in educational settings around the world.

His accolades include winning the prestigious Roy L. Clayton Technology award in 2020, as one of the top 50 most influential African Americans in Technology named by the Journal of Black Innovation. A national thought-leader and expert in the field of the Internet of Things (IOT), Peterson currently writes for TechTarget / IOT Agenda and regularly speaks at universities and conferences across the United States on technology matters.

Peterson works with several community groups and serves as treasurer for the Timothy Hill Children’s Ranch in Riverhead, New York, a not-for-profit organization that provides a safe haven and counseling services for at-risk youth. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Stony Brook University in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics.

Marc Petock is a highly accomplished Global Marketing, Strategy and Technology Executive known for positively impacting the growth and performance of organizations.

He has been successful in guiding entry and growth in emerging technology markets, including Smart Buildings and the Internet of Things (IoT). In addition to his formidable record of building and growing technology businesses, Marc brings experience in strategy, creating and enhancing position/messaging and brand, alliance partnerships, channel development, penetration of new markets, and spearheading new products.

Marc is an innovative, entrepreneurial leader in strategy, brand, product and marketing planning and execution of global marketing initiatives. He is known for providing corporate-wide leadership to manage change in dynamic business environments. In addition, he is a trusted team leader and executive relationship builder known for the ability to evaluate complex business scenarios and devise “outside the box” solutions and strategies to align resources with corporate goals.

Currently, Marc is Vice President, Chief Marketing, Communications and Strategy Officer for Lynxspring, responsible for leading corporate planning, shaping vision and strategy for the company’s product offerings, technology direction, defining and implementing marketing programs and initiatives and the budgets and people that support them. He is responsible for creating the company’s corporate and product brand positions, their evolution and communications that support them. He serves as the spokesperson and industry thought leader where he speaks at conferences and regularly contributes industry articles, briefings, and papers.

Prior to joining Lynxspring, Marc was the Vice President, Global Marketing at Tridium.

His career began by leading the technology practices for marketing, consulting, and advertising firms.

Marc is a industry author and speaker. He is a contributing editor to Automatedbuildings.com, advisor to the Realcomm Organization, serves on the Board of Directors of Lynxspring, is a founding member and serves on the Board of Directors of Project Haystack, and is an executive member of the Real Estate Cyber Consortium.

Marc has been recognized with several industry accolades including a Who’s Who from M2M Magazine; a Niagara Community Spirit Award; the “Petock Award”, an annual award named in his honor; Realcomm’s Top 35 People to Watch, a Digital Impact Award (Digie) and the Realcomm|IBcon 2021 Lifetime Achievement Award. He also is an inductee into the Controls Industry Hall of Fame.

Darlene Pope is President of Planon, North America, overseeing all aspects of business operations for the world’s leader in integrated real estate management solutions.  With more than 30 years of experience in commercial real estate, technology, and smart building consulting, she is a globally recognized subject matter expert and visionary in the smart building industry.  Prior to Planon, Pope served as Global Lead for Smart Buildings and Digital Workplace at WeWork, and as EVP/Managing Director and Global Practice Lead for JLL’s Smart Building Practice.  She was also the founder and CEO of CoR Advisors®, a woman-owned small business, specializing in technology consulting for commercial and corporate real estate, which was acquired by JLL in 2015.  Pope is a passionate advocate for the application of leading-edge technology in buildings and is an inspirational author and speaker on digital transformation and the future of work.

Allen Proithis is chief executive officer of GXC, a leading provider of an award-winning, private enterprise 5G networks, and the world’s only provider of private cellular mesh technology. In this capacity, he is responsible for all corporate strategy, product development, go-to-market activities and operations. Before joining GXC, he founded Capstone Partners, a strategic advisory firm for clients interested in Digital Transformation enabled by mobile, IoT, software and managed solutions. Among his successes at Capstone was the creation of 5G optimized applications for one of the first US Department of Defense private 5G network deployments.

Prior to Capstone, Allen was  president of Sigfox North America, where he formed a high-performance team that built  a successful IoT business with top enterprises while providing wireless coverage for over 70M people across the US.

In addition, Allen created Convida Wireless, a $155M IoT joint venture with Sony &  InterDigital, serving as chairman. Before that, he oversaw the commercialization of IoT, Wi-Fi, shared spectrum and video content management solutions for InterDigital, and led strategy and business development for HP’s global Smartphone & Tablet division, which included the launch of HP’s first mobile app store.

Rodger Reiswig is a Fellow with Johnson Controls and serves as VP, Industry Relations. With over 37 years in the fire protection industry including training, product support, application design, sales, and management experience. Rodger currently serves on numerous NFPA Technical Committees as well as NFPA’s Standards Council. Rodger serves as a board member for the Center for Campus Fire Safety. He is the Immediate Past Chair of NEMA’s Life Safety Signaling Section and serves as Vice-Chair on NEMA’s Plenary Codes and Standards Committee. Rodger serves as Chair of the Electronic Security Association’s Codes and Standards Committee. Rodger Co-Chairs the USA delegation for ISO TC21 for Fire Alarm Systems and IEC TC 79 Security Systems and Components Committees. Rodger holds a NICET level IV Fire Alarm Systems Certification, NICET level II Inspection and Testing of Fire Alarm Systems and NICET level I Special Hazards Layout Certification. Rodger holds certifications from Two Rivers Technologies as a Master in Telecommunications and from Eastern Technical holds a certification in Electronics Technology and Microprocessor Design. Additionally, Rodger holds both a Master’s and Doctorate Degrees in Theology from Evangelical Theological Seminary.

Rich Tehrani is a futurist and visionary in technology including cybersecurity, communications, blockchain and IoT. A well-respected voice in the technology space, Tehrani has been interviewed and quoted by The Economist, Boston Globe, Newsweek, WABC Radio, WMAL, New York Times, BusinessWeek, USA Today, The LA Times and CGTN. TMC, where he is CEO and Group Editor-in-Chief, has educated tens of millions of tech decision-makers via numerous web portals. The company’s ITEXPO #TechSuperShow has educated hundreds of thousands of global IT decision-makers for the past 20 years. Tehrani founded TMCnet and has fostered its growth into one of the most popular Web sites in the world covering communications and technology. Rich is also the author of a widely read and popular blog covering cybersecurity, IoT, communications, and other technologies. The author of a tech dictionary, Tehrani is also an expert witness, editor, top social media influencer and sought-after speaker. In addition, he serves as CEO of Apex Technology Services, a leading provider of quality, timely and professional managed & cybersecurity services to the Fortune 200 on down.

Brian Turner is enthusiastic about leading the disruption to the way building systems are viewed, maintained, and reported on: “In short, we are bringing the back of house to the front of house. The control systems in buildings where we spend much of our lives help shape the people we are, the energy we use, the security we feel, and the overall environment we share. Most people only think of buildings as spaces to work or live, but they are so much more under the hood. People know when they are uncomfortable, but they do not always know why. The controls, infrastructure, and systems that bring these buildings to life is where the exciting opportunities live that will shape our future and this is the single mission that drives me and our team.” – Brian Turner

Brian has worked with some of the largest property owners and facility managers in the world in developing lasting strategies for managing complex integrations and building data for over two decades. This experience paired with his thirst to apply tech-enabled solutions to the problems found fuels his passion and forms the basis of their work at Buildings IOT.

“Building systems have a significant impact on our lives in all aspects from physical and mental well-being to the work we complete to the simplest life experiences.” – Brian Turner

Tim Vogel, a ASHB member and Director of IoT at KMC Controls, is passionate about helping others see more, know how, understand why, act faster, work smarter, and be more successful. The keys to realizing these passions are using technology and leveraging partnerships through relentless collaboration. For buildings, this means disrupting the old-guard model, innovating the approach to “smart,” an ardent emphasis on looking 10-years-out, and building a team that loves what they do. It is all about people, from top to bottom!

Scott Wolf co-founded Enviros with the mission of alleviating challenges faced by facility owners and operators. He has dedicated his 30+ year career to the advancement of facility performance and efficiency. Scott spent over a decade developing and running third-party commissioning programs for some of the largest commercial developers in the nation. Identifying frustrations and gaps in the industry, he spearheaded the development of software and performance management tools that minimize the fragmentation of information for better outcomes. Over the last decade, he has focused on building the team, technology, and processes to help owners and operators achieve and sustain performance optimization through technology.