Sajid Ahmed

Chief Information & Innovation Officer
Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital 

Sajid Ahmed is the chief information and innovation officer of Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital in South Los Angeles. He is leading the new hospital’s $70 million health information technology initiative and launching an innovation hub on the 42-acre MLK Medical Center Campus.

Mr. Ahmed is a true innovator and pioneer in healthcare information systems. He has unparalleled experience in all aspects of using computer technology and web-based applications to deliver the best quality of medical care to patients, facilitate collaboration among multiple and diverse medical care providers and systems, and increase the efficiency of healthcare environments. He is also a highly respected consultant on innovation, and frequently lectures about entrepreneurism and information technology for healthcare environments.

Mr. Ahmed was formerly the director of health information technology and innovation for L.A. Care Health Plan, the nation’s largest public plan serving more than one million Los Angeles County residents through free or low-cost health insurance programs. He was responsible for coordinating, managing and integrating healthcare information technology and eHealth initiatives among multiple users and partners. This includes all medical care providers, community organizations, government agencies, vendors and other health information technologies. He served as vice chair of the organization’s Technical Advisory Committee. One of his most significant contributions to L.A. Care is the creation of HITEC-LA (Health Information Technology Regional Extension Center for Los Angeles County) for electronic health record adoption and implementation for providers throughout L.A. County.

Before leaving L.A. Care, Mr. Ahmed created and launched eConsult in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. eConsult is an innovative telehealth system that allows for virtual consultations and collaboration with specialists. As eConsult expands throughout California and accumulates thousands of end users, it is becoming a national model for the standard for care coordination and access to specialty care in the U.S.

Prior to eConsult, Mr. Ahmed was the visionary behind SelfMD™; developed the ELICIT™ concept (emulating logical inferences of cognition and intuition theory), and was instrumental in getting the U.S. Military Medical Command to adopt advanced diagnostic technologies and electronic health records systems. He also served as co-chair on health IT committees for California’s Health and Human Services Agency, helping to draft the state’s $38.8 million Health Information Technology strategic plan.

Mr. Ahmed is an adjunct professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Fielding School of Public Health, and a guest lecturer at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), University of Southern California (USC) and CalState LA. He was honored for his teaching at the USC Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, and also was a finalist for the Advanced Business League (ABL) Innovative Leadership Award on Healthcare. Currently he is an advisory board member of the California Health eQuality Initiative based at the University of California, Davis.

Mr. Ahmed began his early career at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at age 16. He earned a Bachelor of Science in psychology from UCLA, while also studying computer science and bio-engineering there. He and his wife Elizabeth have an 8-year-old daughter and a 6-year-old son. They live in Redlands, where he is on the board of the local YMCA Association.

Tom August, CISSP

Co-author, CISO Handbook

Tom August, CISSP is a co-author of the CISO Handbook and frequent contributor at Healthcare Information Technology conferences. Most recently, Tom served as the Director of Information Security for Sharp HealthCare and on the Leadership Board of Directors for the National Health Information Sharing & Analysis Center (NH-ISAC).

In his 25+ years of IT Risk Management experience, Tom served at Sony Corporation of America, where he led the IT Auditing efforts for Sony Electronics and several international Sony entities. Tom also helped to create the Information Security program at Pacific Life Insurance Company, and served in a variety of roles at both Deloitte and Ernst & Young.

John F. Jaymes

Information Security Officer
Good Samaritan Hospital

John is currently Information Security Officer for Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles, CA. Utilizing his varied background in information technology & security, IT governance, compliance, and risk management, John has worked with IT and executive management for organizations wishing to achieve their goals for improved security, compliance, and risk posture. Before accepting his role at Good Samaritan, John’s 19 years of experience in information security management were spent as a senior consultant for his independent company, Standard Procedure Security Consulting, and as a consultant for various agencies and professional services firms. John also served in the United States Navy as a military police officer and aviation electronics technician.

Cherie J.Kono

Program Director
FBI InfraGard, Los Angeles

Ms. Cherie Kono is stationed at the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC), the Los Angeles Fusion Center, as the Program Director for the InfraGard Los Angeles Program. Additionally at the JRIC she sits on the JRIC Cyber Program, JRIC Internship Board, and assists with the JRIC Critical Infrastructure Protection Working Group. She graduated from the University of California, Irvine with studies in Public Health.

Mac McMillan, FHIMSS, CISM

Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder
CynergisTek, Inc.

Mac McMillan is co-founder and CEO of CynergisTek, Inc., a firm specializing in the areas of information security and regulatory compliance in healthcare. He is the current Chair of the HIMSS Privacy & Security Policy Task Force. Mr. McMillan brings over 35 years of combined intelligence, security countermeasures and consulting experience to his position from both government and private sector positions. He has worked in the healthcare industry since his retirement from the federal government in 2000 and has contributed regularly to the thought leadership around data security and privacy in healthcare. Mr. McMillan served as Director of Security for two separate Defense Agencies, and sat on numerous interagency intelligence and security countermeasures committees while serving in the U.S. government.

He is the former Chair, HIMSS Information Systems Security Working Group, and the HIMSS Privacy & Security Committee. He sits on the HIT Exchange and HCPro Editorial Advisory Boards, as well as the HealthTech Industry Advisory Board and the HealthCare’s Most Wired™ Survey Advisory Board. He has contributed to more than 300 articles and postings in Healthcare IT magazines, healthcare IT blogs and other healthcare newsletters, etc. He presents regularly at conferences and other events, and was a contributing author to the HIMSS book, “Information Security in Healthcare: Managing Risk.”

Mr. McMillan holds a Master of Arts degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College and a Bachelor of Science degree in Education from Texas A&M University. He is a graduate of the of the Senior Officials in National Security program at the JF Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a 1993/4 Excellence in Government Fellow. He was recognized in 2012 as a HIMSS Fellow and as one of the top ten health information security influencers of 2013. In 2014 he was selected by CHIME as their keynote speaker to LEAD Forums created in partnership with IHT2.

Frederick J. Simon

Special Agent/Assistant Coordinator
FBI InfraGard, Los Angeles

Special Agent Frederick J. Simon has been with the FBI for over 16 years. During this time he has been assigned to a variety of squads where he worked on International and Domestic Terrorism, Espionage, and a variety of violent crimes. SA Simon has also served as an Interrogator in GTMO, an Evidence Technician for the FBI's Evidence Response Team, and has traveled overseas to represent the FBI. He is currently the Assistant Coordinator of the Los Angeles InfraGard Program.

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