Welcome to the 2025 Tech Vision Conference!

Scott E. Augenbaum

Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, Cybercrime Prevention Trainer

With over 30 years of experience investigating and combating cybercrime as a retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, Scott is a cybersecurity author, trainer, and speaker who helps individuals and organizations prevent cybercrime victimization. He was one of the first FBI Agents to specialize in cybercrime investigations in 2003, and he has witnessed the devastating effects of cybercrime on thousands of victims.

Since retiring in 2018, Scott has dedicated himself to sharing his knowledge and expertise with the public and private sector, providing custom-made cybersecurity awareness training, writing The Secret to CyberSecurity, a book that offers simple and practical solutions to prevent cybercrime, and speaking to hundreds of groups, both live and virtually, around the world. He has also appeared as a guest speaker on major cable news shows, such as HLN, CNN, FOX, and Fox Business Networks, to discuss cybercrime matters and trends. He is passionate about empowering individuals and organizations to protect themselves from cybercrime and identity theft.

Josh Byrd

Chief Growth Officer, Copient.ai

As Chief Growth Officer for Copient.ai, Josh Byrd brings over 20 years of go-to-market strategy and storytelling across diverse fields, including AI, healthcare IT, SaaS startups, commercial electronics, real estate, and music business. His unique (and slightly quirky) path gives him a wide set of experiences, both traditional and modern, to draw from to create impactful strategies that drive new business opportunities and predictable revenue growth.

In his career, Josh helped launch, accelerate, and grow multiple early-stage B2B companies, several with high-profile exits. His prior work includes Copient Health, Patientco, Juvare, Relatient, Savista, Spring Health, NanoLumens, and many more. Josh also hosts a podcast called GrowthWell, volunteers as a Startup advisor at Atlanta Tech Village, and lives in Atlanta with his wife, two daughters, and trusty golden retriever.

Thom Coats

Director, Center for Professional Selling, MTSU

Thom is the director of the Center for Professional Selling at Middle Tennessee State University, a professor of practice whose entrepreneurial instincts and clear vision have assisted in the growth of multiple companies and individuals.

Thom stands at the forefront of professional sales education. He is a bestselling author with 25 plus years of New Business Development serving roles from sales, district manager to Vice President of Sales with corporations such as Century II, Paychex, and NFIB.

He is responsible for providing world-class sales education and training students who are productive on day one. Also, for building business relationships with businesses that are seeking high-quality sales applicants and helping both students and the business community connect. Thom’s passion is to help his students succeed by implementing solutions that work.

With an array of interests and affiliations, Thom stays connected to the community through investing time and energy as the President and founder of C|SUITE, an invitation-only networking organization, founder of the UnStuck Business Academy, and active in the Kingwood church of Christ.

As a third-generation entrepreneur, Thom has great insight into understanding what clients want and need. He and his wife have three sons/daughters-in-law and seven grandchildren.  On Thom’s desk is the same Bible that sat in his father’s office and his grandfather’s before that. This keeps him grounded in remembering who he is and where he came from.

Stephanie Dedmon

Chief Information Officer, Finance & Administration, Strategic Technology Solutions, State of Tennessee

Stephanie Dedmon was named CIO for the State of Tennessee in October 2018.  In this role, she is responsible for all operational areas of the state’s central IT organization, Strategic Technology Solutions.  This includes managing the team’s IT service delivery, technical infrastructure development and support and customer service management and a workforce of almost 1,200 IT professionals.

As Deputy CIO, Dedmon was previously responsible for the Enterprise IT Transformation (EIT) initiative that furthered the State’s enterprise IT organization by transitioning over 800 Executive Branch Department IT employees to STS.  Prior to being named Deputy CIO in November of 2015, Dedmon served as the Director of Business Solutions Delivery (BSD), also within the Department of Finance & Administration.  BSD was created in late 2011 to build a team of experienced senior project directors, project managers, and business analysts to help lead the state’s most complex IT/business solution implementations and improve project delivery success rates.

Prior to joining the State in 2005, Dedmon was an Associate Partner with Accenture in Nashville and served as project director on many public sector software implementations.  She holds a Master of Business Administration from Tennessee Technological University (TTU) in Cookeville, Tennessee, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, also from TTU.  She achieved her Project Management Professional certification in August 2012.

Dedmon is a member of the National Association of State CIOs (NASCIO), where she serves as Secretary/Treasurer with the Executive Committee and as Co-Chair of the Innovation Committee. She is a member of the Greater Nashville Technology Council, where she serves as the Diversity and Inclusion Committee Chair and is a Board Member.  She is also an active member of Women in Technology in Tennessee and the Nashville Project Management Institute (PMI) chapter. In March 2018, she was named one of Government Technology’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers for her work on the State’s IT transformation. She also was the recipient of the George H. Bass Award for Leadership in Tennessee State Government in October 2019. Most recently, Dedmon was awarded CIO of the Year at the Greater Nashville Technology Council’s 12th Annual NTC Awards in April 2021.

Charleen Forsythe

VP of Information Systems, National Healthcare Corporation

Charleen Forsythe brings a wealth of experience in health tech innovation and process improvement at National Healthcare Corporation. Known for her collaborative leadership style, she drives initiatives that blend patient care with modern technology. Charleen is passionate about workforce development and advocates for future-ready healthcare solutions in an evolving tech landscape.

Paul Griswold

Assistant Professor, Media Arts, MTSU

In addition to an MFA, Paul has nearly 30 years of experience in film, post-production, visual effects, motion graphics, and animation.  In his career, Paul has worked as a commercial film director, created motion graphics and visual effects for over a dozen films (3 of which won at Sundance), and has worked with some incredibly talented and influential people such as Academy Award-winning director Jessica Yu, actor/comedian Jack Black, creator of Ren & Stimpy, John Kricfalusi, creator of Veggie Tales, Phil Vischer, director of 10 Cloverfield Lane, Dan Trachtenberg and dozens more.

Prior to Covid, Paul brought guest speakers like Sam Daley from Technicolor to discuss his work on The Florida Project, HBO’s The Deuce, and USA Networks The Sinner, as well as Ryan Connolly, famed YouTube celebrity and host of Film Riot.
Paul was a guest speaker at Chicago’s Motion Graphics Fest 09, where he was one of the winning artists. Paul, along with Syd Garon and Shepard Fairey, was asked to speak at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles during the Flux film festival. Paul and Sam Spiegel (brother of director Spike Jonze) were featured guests at Toronto’s CFC Worldwide Shorts festival.

Dr. Gregory L. Nagel

Professor, Economics and Finance, MTSU

Dr. Greg Nagel enjoys interacting with students! He strives to create a classroom where every student enjoys learning about the real world of business. He became a Dale Carnegie instructor and fully integrated ChatGPT Plus into his classes to improve student learning outcomes in class and in the job market. His academic research on executive labor markets has been published in Harvard Business Review (HBR) multiple times, The Tennessean, and scholarly journals. His research has been presented at the Global Peter Drucker Forum and is cited by the Fed, HBR, and NYT. Before becoming a teacher, he worked as a development engineer for General Motors for 20 years. This real-world experience aids him in the classroom.

Dr. Joshua L. Phillips

Professor, Computer Science, MTSU

Dr. Joshua Phillips is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Middle Tennessee State University. Phillips’ research interests are at the intersection of AI and computational biology. Particular examples include neurobiologically inspired models of working memory for robust AI, unsupervised machine learning applied to computational electrostatics for protein engineering and HIV vaccine development, AI-inspired methods for accelerating in silico protein folding, and transformer models for permutation-equivariant multi-omics data integration.

He has helped secure over $3.5 million in funding from NSF for student scholarships and undergraduate/graduate research in applied machine learning. He aided the development of MTSU’s B.S. in Data Science program, and his research complements MTSU’s Computational and Data Science (Ph.D.) graduate program. Phillips has a B.S. in Computer Science (2002) from Middle Tennessee State University, an M.S. in Computer Science (2004) from Vanderbilt University, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (2012) from the University of California, Merced. He worked as a Nicholas C. Metropolis Post-doctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2012-2014) before joining the Department of Computer Science at MTSU in 2014.

Dr. Richard J. Tarpey

Director, Center for Supply Chain Management and Sustainability, MTSU

Dr. Richard J. Tarpey is an Assistant Professor at the Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University. Tarpey received his doctoral degree in Business Administration from the University of South Florida. He is a dual alumnus of Middle Tennessee State University, earning an MBA and a B.A. in Computer Information Systems. Dr. Tarpey has returned to MTSU after a long practitioner career in the airline and healthcare industries to convey his expertise and experience to up-and-coming supply chain and healthcare management students to help prepare them for successful careers. He coordinates the undergraduate and graduate Supply Chain Programs at MTSU, the MBA – Healthcare program, and is the MTSU Center for Supply Chain Management and Sustainability Director.

Tarpey spent most of his 30+ practitioner years working with labor and resource scheduling concepts and systems in the airline and healthcare industries. He started at United Airlines and then was with HCA for 22 years, working extensively with hospital labor scheduling and staffing.