Meet the Board
Vance Checketts
Board Chair
Vance is the chief operating officer for Dsco.io, having formerly served as senior executive for Dell EMC in Utah. Under his leadership, Dell EMC’s local operations exceeded expectations for growth and delivery of real value for both the company — including approximately 1,300 Utah employees — and its customers. Construction was recently completed on a new building in Draper City’s transit-oriented Vista Station business park. All of this was achieved with Vance’s direct oversight. Vance’s responsibilities also included a 500,000 sqft data center and other operations in North Carolina, as well as close coordination with other “Centers of Excellence” around the globe. Vance had been with EMC since 2007, when EMC acquired Mozy. As the COO of Mozy, Vance helped drive triple-digit revenue growth and a significant transformation of their cloud operations, security and customer service functions. Prior to Mozy Vance worked at several other high-tech firms, including 10 years at Oracle in Silicon Valley, WordPerfect, Novell and several start-ups.
In addition to technology, Vance is passionate about his family, the outdoors and helping improve the world through healthcare and education.
Vance currently serves on boards for several local organizations, including the Utah Technology Council, Women Tech Council, Intermountain Healthcare, Utah Valley University, and University of Utah. Vance was appointed by Governor Herbert to serve on his Economic Development Coordinating Council and the Technology Initiative Advisory Board. Vance has served on several other boards, including holding an elected position on the Provo School District Board of Education. Vance has an MBA from Brigham Young University.
Sydnee Dickson
Board Member
Sydnee Dickson has been serving as a proud Utah educator for the past 35 years. Her experience includes teaching, counseling, and school and district administration. She earned master’s degrees in School Counseling and Education Administration and a doctorate in Education Leadership and Policy.
She joined the Utah State Office of Education eight years ago to expand Educator Licensing Services and develop a Teaching and Learning section. Sydnee was asked to serve as Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction in June 2014 and is currently serving as Interim State Superintendent.
Dr. Dickson has represented Utah on national committees, task forces, and Boards through the years, including serving on the Board of Trustees for Learning Forward. Most recently Sydnee served on the national CCSSO writing committees for the InTASC Model Core Teaching Standards and the refresh of the ISLLC standards for preparing school leaders. Her professional expertise centers on results-based professional learning and her passion is focused on ensuring that all students have access to high-quality instruction every day in order to prepare them for their future.
Kennedy T. Mpungu
Board Member
Lead Scientist - Chemistry and Raw Materials at Cytiva
Kennedy was raised in Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). He currently works for Cytiva as Lead Scientist – Chemistry and Raw Materials. His work supports Cytiva’s global Cell Culture Media production and advances the development of therapeutics. Kennedy also worked for Tenke Fugurume Mining (TFM), which was an affiliate of the American firm Freeport McMoran, mining cobalt and copper in DRC.
Kennedy obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Université de Lubumbashi (UNILU). He also earned both his MBA and Chemistry master’s degree from Utah State University. He is also a member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the American Translators Association (ATA).
Kennedy enjoys spending time with his family, playing the piano and singing with his daughter Lindsey. Kennedy also sings with the American Festival Chorus and Orchestra. He likes using his multilingual abilities to volunteer as an interpreter for the Cache Refugee and Immigrant Connection (CRIC) in Logan, Utah. He also runs a small technical translation business called Mpungu Global Connect, LLC.
Aniza Brown
Board Member
Chief Executive Officer of Rosie Project
Aniza Brown is Chief Executive Officer of Rosie Project in Ogden, Utah, leading the initiative to empower military spouses to enter into the world of tech through a hands on approach focused to remove barriers of entry. The Rosie Project provides IT certifications so each military spouse may serve right alongside our service men and women with every permanent change of station, deployment, and temporary duty assignment. Rosie Project recognizes the sacrifices you make to support our warfighters and believes it is time to support you. Our mission is to educate and empower military spouses to advance their careers into mission critical positions within the Department of Defense alongside their spouse’s military career. Source: LinkedIn
Sarah Reale
Board Member
Utah State Board of Education
As a member of the Utah State Board of Education representing District 5, Sarah Reale is a Salt Lake native with a passion for advocacy, education, and a focus on action-oriented student-first strategies to help students reach their academic and career goals.
She holds a master’s degree in political science from Utah State University and has spent almost two decades working in higher education, including teaching. Sarah is currently the Interim Vice President and Director of Digital Marketing at Salt Lake Community College where she manages the digital and institutional marketing and communications. She is also an adjunct professor of political science at SLCC. Sarah has a decade of research and volunteer-based experience advocating for communities and developing creative and effective solutions that support Utahns. She serves on the Standards and Assessment and Audit Committee at the Utah State Board of Education. As well as the SLC Library Board, SL County Open Spaces Board, SL County Mountainous Planning District Planning Commission, and Chi Omega Advisory Board at the University of Utah.Sarah comes from a family of educators; her mom and sister are currently both k12 public educators in Utah. In her free time, Sarah can be found on her bike exploring the incredible Wasatch Mountains with her girlfriend or with her dog Franklin Delano Reale.
Mark Sunday
Board Member
Oracle
Mark Sunday is chief information officer and senior vice president at Oracle. He is responsible for providing the global communications, computing, and security infrastructure that enables Oracle’s internal business operations as well as a variety of hosting and education services for Oracle customers. Additionally, Sunday and his team strive to be the first adopter, biggest influencer, and best promoter of relevant Oracle technologies. He routinely shares his insights in optimizing business results through the use of technology, developing world-class global teams, fueling innovation, and enabling IT operational excellence.
Prior to joining Oracle in 2006, Sunday was senior vice president and chief information officer of Siebel Systems. With more than 30 years in the high tech industry, he has also served in various IT leadership positions at Motorola, ST Microelectronics, and Texas Instruments.
Sunday holds a BSE from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
Jamie Morningstar
Board Member
Jamie is a pillar in Utah’s Silicon Slopes tech scene and has contributed to the success of several of Utah’s most interesting and innovative software brands. Jamie began her career in software engineering, working up the development ranks before arriving in product management. In her current role at Qualtrics, Jamie combines her years of product management and engineering experience to help open new markets to the world’s leading experience management platform by providing product vision and leadership to the creation of new text and data analytics products. In addition to her official engineering leadership role at Qualtrics, Jamie co-founded the Qualtrics Women Leadership Development group. She is also an advocate for orphans worldwide and serves as the board chair for Creating a Family, the nation’s most trusted adoption education nonprofit. Jamie holds a degree in Computer Science from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and an MBA from BYU. Jamie is married, mom to four kids, and loves to ski and cycle in her spare time.
Brittney Cummins
Board Member
Brittney Cummins is Senior Advisor of Education. She graduated from Brigham Young University with a B.S. in Secondary Education: Biology. For the past six years, she has served as a member of the Utah State Board of Education, filling a Vice Chair position for the last four years.
Her favorite place to be is in a classroom with high school students and she has worked with the ONE Refugee High School program at Cottonwood High School. Cummins and her family reside in West Valley City.
Andrea Ibanez
Board Member
CEO and Founder of Streemly
Andrea is the Founder of Streemly, a venture backed B2B SaaS company that provides an Enterprise Decision Process Automation platform. She was born in Bolivia and immigrated to Utah as a child. She got her start in B2B SaaS after getting her bachelors degree at Utah Valley University. She is passionate about accelerating business growth and success through people and operational excellence. This led her to be instrumental in the success of some of the fastest growing tech startups in Utah, working her way up to become a Vice President by the age of 26 prior to starting her own company.
Andrea was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 North America, Utah’s 40 under 40, the 2018 Women Tech Awards, 2019 Sego Awards in Innovation in Technology, 2020 UWS Emerging Leader, Silicon Slopes Tech Summit top 8 startups and has won many more awards with the companies she's helped scale. She is a board advisor for the Women Tech Council and an active leader in the Silicon Slopes community, FounderPod organization and a SheTech mentor.
Andrea also co-founded the non-profit, El Chasqui Foundation, which empowers self sustainability for people in her home country of Bolivia.
Chiao-ih Hui
Board Member
Director of Global Operations at Arcserve
Chiao-ih is the Director of Global Operations at Arcserve, a data encryption, back up and
recovery leader. Her background in Engineering and Business has given her
opportunities in research with small R&D firms to program management in IPO start ups
and working in large organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley,
VA.
Chiao-ih received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the Electrical and
Computer Engineering Department at the University of Utah and a Master in Business
Administration from the University of Utah, David Eccles School of Business. Chiao-ih
has been honored as the youngest “Rising Star: Top 40 Under 40” by Utah Business
Magazine, has received the Rising Star 2010 Women Tech Award from Women Tech
Council and is a governor appointed member of the State of Utah’s Science, Technology,
Engineering and Mathematics Action Center Board..
Chiao-ih loves being a mother, is passionate about new places and new foods, and finds
being active and outside restorative. She, her husband, and young sons live in Salt Lake
City, Utah with their beloved dog.
