Keynote Speakers

Academic Keynote Speaker

Merrill Warkentin, PhD is a William L. Giles Distinguished Professor at Mississippi State University, where he serves as the James J. Rouse Endowed Professor of Information Systems in the College of Business. In 2018, he was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist by the Association for Computing Machinery. His research, primarily on the impacts of organizational, contextual, situational, and dispositional influences on individual computer user behaviors in the contexts of information security, privacy, social media, and eGovernment, has appeared in MIS Quarterly, Journal of MIS, Journal of the AIS, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Decision Sciences, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, Journal of Information Systems, Computers & Security, Government Information Quarterly, The DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, and others. His research has been reported in the Wall Street Journal. He has authored or co-authored over 300 published manuscripts, including over 100 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. He is also the author or editor of seven books on technology. His work has been cited almost 20,000 times (in early 2023, h-index = 51), and he is among the 150 most cited IS scholars of all time globally. He was recently ranked #15 in the world in articles published in the top six ranked AIS journals, according to AIS and MyVisionResearch. He currently holds or has held editorial positions at MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of the AIS, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, and other journals. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Intellectual Capital (2019 JIF-4.805). Dr. Warkentin has served as Vice President for Publications of the Decision Sciences Institute (DSI) and as Distinguished Lecturer for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He co-founded (in 2009) the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group on Information Systems Security Research (WG 8.11 / 11.13) and served as its Chair. He is now the Senior Advisor. Dr. Warkentin was awarded the working group’s “Outstanding Leadership Award” in 2015, and was recognized with the 2017 Outstanding Service Award by the IFIP General Assembly for his role in cofounding the IFIP Working Group. His work has been funded by NATO, NSF, NSA, DoD, Homeland Security, IBM, UN, and others. He has chaired several national and international conferences, including the 2016 AMCIS, and has been Track Chair at ICIS, AMCIS, ECIS, and DSI. Dr. Warkentin has served as a visiting professor or invited speaker at numerous universities in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Industry Keynote Speaker

Rachel Lockett has been in Information Technology leadership for more than 25 years. She is has served as the Chief Information Officer at Pohlad Companies since 2014. She is also the author of The Technology Doesn’t Matter: Prioritizing the People in IT Business Alignment.

Rachel is passionate about developing leaders and serving as a mentor to IT professionals. She was selected as the 2020 Twin Cities Enterprise CIO of the Year and was a finalist for the National CIO of the Year in 2022. She also serves on the Technology Advisory Board for Stratacor, the parent company of Delta Dental.  

Rachel has served on the Board of Directors for Goodwill – Easter Seals of Minnesota, supporting their mission to help everyone experience the power of work, for 7 years. She is currently the Board Chair and a member of the GESM Foundation Board.  She enjoys volunteering with other local organizations that help encourage young women and girls pursuing careers in technology.

She has a degree in Computer Information Systems from Illinois State University and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional. Rachel enjoys home improvement projects and travelling with her husband and children.