Alan Mather – Chief Officer, Office of College and Career Success, Chicago Public Schools

Alan is the Chief of the Office of College and Career Success at the Chicago Public Schools. During his 30 years in CPS, Alan has served as a high school English teacher at three neighborhood high schools, where he coached track and cross country; as the founding assistant principal at Northside College Preparatory High School; and as founding principal of Lindblom Math & Science Academy. At Lindblom, Alan took a closed school to being the top majority African-American school in Illinois, earning US News and World Reports Gold Medal status for three of his last four years as principal. The school, as part of a partnership with Baxter International, started the first high school biotechnology program in CPS; additionally, it has the largest Mandarin program in Chicago and the largest non-heritage Arabic program in the United States.

At Lindblom, Alan was the first recipient of the Stanley C. Golder Award for School Leadership, an annual award from the Golden Apple Foundation given to a principal or head of school in the six-county Chicagoland area. Alan serves as President of the Board for the Center for Arabic Language and Culture, a 501(c)(3) that seeks to building Arabic programs and cultural understanding throughout the Chicagoland area.

Sony Rusteberg – Managing Director, Slalom Consulting 

A Managing Director with Slalom Consulting, Sony Rusteberg has more than 20 years of IT consulting experience. She supports the Slalom Delivery Network, which provides clients with an alternative to offshore development by hiring and training the next generation of U.S.-based technologists in a regional delivery model.

Prior to joining Slalom, Sony spent 20 years at Accenture, where she was a Managing Director and a capability lead for various businesses, including Technology, Application Outsourcing, BPO, and more. Sony earned her bachelors of business administration from The Ohio State University.