State & Local IT Influencers Worth Following in 2025

Alan Fuller has been CIO of Utah since 2021. Fuller helped migrate most of the state’s applications to the cloud and has championed responsible use of artificial intelligence within his state. He is also overseeing creation of Utah’s new citizen portal and has advocated for renewal of the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program before a U.S. House committee in 2025. These efforts and his extensive IT leadership experience have landed him on StateTech’s influencer list for a second consecutive year.

Amanda Crawford is Texas CIO and executive director of the Texas Department of Information Resources, and also president of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers. Crawford has contributed to key Lone Star State IT initiatives in recent years, including the state’s Texas by Texas (or TxT) mobile application, and its whole-of-state cybersecurity progress, which involves partnerships with higher education.

Amaya Capellán has been Pennsylvania’s CIO and deputy secretary of IT since 2023. In that time, she has helped grow the Commonwealth Office of Digital Experience and has overseen the launch of a revitalized PA.gov experience, which involved the redesign of 63 agency websites based on results from customer feedback focus groups.

Amy Bhikha is the chief data officer for Colorado. The Centennial State has been a leader in AI policy, and Bhikha has been the engine behind the scenes from a data readiness, policy and governance perspective. She has more than 20 years of experience in project management and IT leadership roles and will play a crucial role in the state’s furtherance of generative AI initiatives.

Bianca Lochner is the CIO for Scottsdale, Ariz. In 2025, Lochner was appointed to a committee responsible for developing AI policy guidelines for the state. She was instrumental in standing up her city’s Short-Term Rental Resource Center, an award-winning online resource for citizens, and has picked up the mantle on Scottdale’s smart city initiative.

Caitlin Lewis is executive director of Work for America. She spearheaded a Civic Match partnership with the National Association of State Procurement Officials in early 2025, focused on bringing IT and AI experts into state procurement offices. Civic Match, which launched in late 2024, has also been a vital resource for connecting former federal talent with state and local offices.

New Jersey CTO Chris Rein has more than 35 years of IT experience, 20 of which have been in service to the public sector. He has been a driving force in the Garden State’s IT modernization efforts, emphasizing long-term sustainability, efficiency and security, as well as a measured approach to hybrid cloud adoption.

As Colorado CIO, David Edinger has been a thoughtful AI advocate in service to the first state in the nation to pass AI legislation, having overseen the state’s Gemini chatbot deployment. Edinger has more than 15 years of public sector IT experience under his belt, including five years as CIO for the city and county of Denver.

Gary Coverdale, CISO for Santa Barbara County, Calif., has extensive cybersecurity experience at both the federal and local levels and has advocated for strengthening cyber resilience at the county level for years. He has been an RSA Conference participant and earned a spot on The Cyber Express's top 50 CISOs to watch in 2023.

Kevin Kramer is first vice president for the National League of Cities and a member of the Louisville Metro Council in Louisville, Ky. In April, Kramer testified before Congress in support of permanent funding for the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program. The National League of Cities is an organization composed of city, town and village stakeholders that are focused on improving civic life for constituents.

Lea Eriksen is the CIO of Long Beach, Calif., where she manages an $88 million annual budget and oversees the city’s key technology initiatives, including smart city pilots. She also serves as treasurer for the Southern California Society of Information Management. In 2024, Long Beach was named a top digital city by the Center for Digital Government, ranking first in its population category, and Eriksen received a SoCal ORBIE award for her technology leadership.

As executive director, Leah McGrath played an important role in the formation of StateRAMP and its recent rebrand to GovRAMP, which aims to be more inclusive of local governments. McGrath has more than 20 years of public sector experience and has been pivotal in helping state and local governments standardize cloud solution procurements.

California CIO Liana Bailey-Crimmins is helping lead the charge on leveraging generative AI in the country's most populous state. She has endorsed using AI for traffic safety, language translation services, virtual assistants and other services that directly benefit citizens. She highlighted some of the Golden State's latest GenAI initiatives at NASCIO Midyear 2025.

Mark Raymond has been Connecticut’s CIO for nearly 15 years and has overseen a number of transformative initiatives, including the state’s ongoing adoption of AI and its CT-KIND initiative to improve child welfare. He advocated for renewed federal funding for state and local cybersecurity before the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection in the spring.

Michael Geraghty is the CISO for New Jersey, a post he’s held for nearly nine years. Under his watch, the New Jersey Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Cell started leveraging AI for enhanced threat detection and response. Geraghty has advocated for cybersecurity talent recruitment through partnerships with state colleges and universities.

Michael Lee Sherwood is the senior business manager for state and local at NVIDIA, and a former chief innovation and technology officer for Las Vegas, where he oversaw several smart city initiatives. Sherwood has deep experience with public-private partnerships, process improvement and budgeting. He’s also adjunct professor at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, and a well-followed presence on social media.

Michael Watson is the CISO and deputy CIO for the commonwealth of Virginia. He was awarded NASCIO’s 2024 Thomas M Jarrett State Cybersecurity Leadership Award for his work in advancing Virginia’s cybersecurity posture. Watson is a regular presence at NASCIO conferences and a familiar name for StateTech readers. He has nearly 20 years of experience with the Virginia Information Technologies Agency.

Mike Hurt is vice president of state, local and education for ServiceNow. Hurt has several decades of experience working with state and local government organizations as a private-sector partner and is an expert in AI and data management, especially as it pertains to helping state and local governments make strategic AI purchasing decisions and laying the groundwork for meaningful AI adoption.

Mike Witzman is vice president of solutions engineering for the U.S. public sector at Cisco. Witzman has 30 years of technology leadership under his belt and was promoted to his current position in 2024. While his current role centers on state and local government, he also has deep federal insights through his previous experience with the U.S. Air Force, which he has shared with readers of StateTech’s sister publication, FedTech.

Chicago CIO Nick Lucius became the first head of the city’s newly formed Department of Technology and Innovation in mid-2024 by a unanimous 48-0 city council vote. With nearly two decades of public service under his belt, he brings both legal and data science experience to his role in the Windy City and is prioritizing efficiency in 2025 and beyond.

Nikhil Deshpande has served as Georgia’s chief digital and AI officer since 2023. He oversees the state’s efforts around AI governance frameworks, and carefully selects which AI tools to bring into agencies and which problems to solve. He formerly served as the state’s chief digital officer and helped make services more accessible online.

Robert Huber is the chief security officer for Tenable. He has allied himself with state and local leaders, testifying before a U.S. House committee to advocate for the continuation of key programs to safeguard critical infrastructure, including State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program funding. He has decades of experience working for, and collaborating with, state and federal entities on IT initiatives.

Virginia CIO Robert Osmond has more than a decade of public sector IT experience. Since his appointment in 2022, he has spearheaded key commonwealth initiatives including an IT modernization campaign and development of the nation's first AI use case registry. He has made cost-effectiveness a priority for his agency, collaborating closely with the Virginia’s chief procurement officer.

When Teena Piccione became North Carolina CIO in January 2025, she hit the ground running with initiatives to attract more IT talent to agencies and achieve connectivity across the state (for example, by advocating for the use of broadband alternatives such as Starlink as a mechanism for emergency preparedness). Piccione has more than 20 years of IT leadership experience with household names such as Google and AT&T.

Zachary Christensen is deputy chief cooperative procurement officer at NASPO ValuePoint. Christensen is a procurement expert with deep public sector experience, having held procurement roles with the Utah State Board of Education and the University of Utah. He is an advocate for eProcurement and for using AI to innovate public sector supply chain and finance workflows.