Executive Board

2023 NASTD Executive Board

The Executive Board is responsible for managing and directing the operation of the association and performing such duties as may be required during the year for the benefit of the entire membership. These duties include, but are not limited to, forming committees, establishing cooperative agreements with other organizations and contracting on behalf of the association.

President - Dawnna Pease, Director, Computing Infrastructure and Services - Maine

As director of computing infrastructure & services for the Maine Department of Administrative & Financial Services, Dawnna is responsible for a wide variety of services within the Office of Information Technology. This includes: infrastructure computing, administration office personnel, cloud hosting, directory services, enterprise storage and backup, SQL server, digital accessibility, IIS/SharePoint, application hosting, Office 365, document management/ITSM and power platform.

Dawnna has been with the state for 36 years and became active in the National Association of State Technology Directors in the fall of 2014.

A Maine native, Dawnna enjoys spending time with her family & friends (which is her world), her dog Bruschi, the ocean, exploring the outdoors and traveling.


Vice President - Rick Woodruff, Executive Director of Infrastructure Services - Kentucky

Rick Woodruff joined the Commonwealth Office of Technology (COT) in 2005 where he has held various leadership positions throughout his tenure. In his current role, Rick serves as the executive director of the Office of Infrastructure Services. Rick contributes to strategic planning and enterprise initiatives. He is responsible for overseeing infrastructure services relating to compute, storage, cloud, network, voice and large volume printing for the Kentucky Executive Branch of state government. Rick has accumulated more than two decades of IT leadership serving government and private sector environments. He is an advocate for openness/trust and continuous improvement of technology service delivery through enterprise models. “Thank you for the opportunity of a lifetime – inspiring partnership to do better each and every day for the citizens of Kentucky.”  

Rick has been an active member of NASTD since 2016. “Every state faces similar problems with advancements or roadblocks in technology – NASTD provides the means for states to have open conversation, testimony and dialogue that lead to better understanding, direction, strengthening core relationships and trust.”   

Rick is happily married to his wife of 30 years. They have one adult daughter. In their spare time, Rick and his wife enjoy food odysseys, travelling to new destinations and serving others through Christian missions. 



Secretary/Treasurer - Joe Homan, Site Support, IT Manager - Nebraska


As the site support IT manager for state of Nebraska's Office of the CIO for more than five years, Joe is responsible for the management of the consolidated site support team. The team consists of 65 staff across the state providing desktop support for more than 60 state agencies, county automation, district and supreme courts across the state supporting more than 17,000 computers and laptops. His team works with each agency to ensure their computer needs are being addressed and provides guidance on computer hardware standards.

Joe has worked for the state of Nebraska for more than 20 years.  With the Department of Health and Human Services, he supervised the desktop support team for eight years. He managed the customer services area for Health and Human Services, overseeing the level one and two help desks, desktop support, 24-hour facility support and IT warehouse operations for more than ten years.

Joe is happily married to his wife of 36 years. They have two sons. Joe is an active member of HDI and is a certified support center manager. His interests include woodworking, construction and his involvement with the Camp Creek Threshers, an antique farm machinery club in Waverly, Nebraska.


Midwestern Region President - Rory Barrett,
IT Manager 2, Ohio

An information technology professional with more than 30 years of experience in network and communications systems management, Rory Barrett became active in the National Association of State Technology Directors in the fall of 2018.

He is currently employed at the state of Ohio Department of Administrative Services and acts as service owner for several Ohio enterprise IT services including the Ohio One Network, wireless as a service, mobile carrier, life-cycle and telecom expense management service and the state's next generation telephone service.

Rory is happily married to his wife of 23 years. They have three daughters and two grandsons. In their spare time, Rory and his wife enjoy family time in the backyard pool and on beach vacations.


Eastern Region President - Kevin Gravel,
Director of Compute,
Connecticut

As the director of compute for the state of Connecticut, Kevin oversees multiple areas of practice, including:  platform, database, mainframe, directory, cloud and app hosting. Brought on in June 2022 as part of a new department, Bureau of Information Technology Solutions, this newly formed executive board is tasked with successfully consolidating all IT across 47 agencies within the executive branch.

Kevin is happily married to Kelly, his wife of 24 years. They have four children (ages 15-23). In his spare time, he typically acts as a personal UBER driver chasing their kids all over and attending multiple sporting events. Kevin graduated from Johnson and Wales University as a classically trained chef and spent ten years traveling the United States as a private country club chef. He loves cooking, but hates the cleaning part.


Western Region President - Julie Arp, North Dakota

Julie Arp represents North Dakota IT as a business analyst manager, overseeing agile product owners and business analysts as they support agencies’ critical business applications. Julie has extensive experience in ERP systems, program management, project management and IT management. She especially enjoys developing positive customer relationships by delivering state-of-the-art, reliable technology to fit her customers' business needs.

After a few decades of experience in IT, Julie is focused on providing people-centric leadership to the IT industry and prides herself on being a positive voice in advocating for technical workers. Julie is a strong change agent and thought leader who enjoys reading, TED talks, and throwing the ball for her faithful dogs.



Southern Region President - Hank Kaylor, Director of Hosting Services, North Carolina

With more than three decades of experience in designing and managing information management technology programs and people, Hank Kaylor offers a distinctive blend of leadership, vision and exceptional knowledge of people & communication technology within this industry. For the past five years, he has served as the director of hosting services for the state of North Carolina’s Department of Information Technology, improving risk management programs, enhancing state data center capabilities and promoting budget constraints against the rising costs of information technology programs.

Hank has been actively engaged with IT infrastructure since its inception, providing functional, innovative and timely deliverables for:  data centers, distributed networks and systems, radio networks, communications grids and programs for federal, state and local communication systems and programs worth over $200M. These deliverables include the development of future IT budgets and personnel programs to support new and emerging programs, as well as future sustainment of the programs by applying life cycle methodology to minimize long-term loss of IT capital investments.

His experiences include more than 26 years of Air Force Reserves aviation crew chief and Army infantry, chemical, operations and signal officer assignments. Additional experiences include Department of Army Civilian managing National Guard Bureau’s data center and more than nine years in IT management for the commonwealth of Massachusetts and state of North Carolina. He has an MBA from American Public University and BBA in accounting from the University of Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the Army’s Command & General Staff College to include Army’s CISSP certification. He also graduated from Air Forces Crew Chief training school. He has retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel. He currently supports the state of North Carolina and was recently assigned as IT representative to the governor’s EO-80 Climate Project.