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The Industry Advisory Council announced and feted the graduating Partners Program class of 2006 during last weekend’s American Council for Technology/IAC annual Executive Leadership Conference in Williamsburg, Va.

The program was developed to support IAC’s mission of bringing industry and government executives together to collaborate on common issues, IAC said in a statement released Nov. 1.

The program offers executive development for government and industry leaders who have a high potential for advancement and success. The program’s goal is to prepare those leaders for the roles they will soon assume at the Senior Executive Service or company officer level.

The 10-year-old Partners Program includes a network of more than 200 alumni.

“We attribute our decade-long success with the Partners Program to several factors,” said Leslie Barry, vice president for government affairs and business development at GTSI. She is a 1998 graduate of the program and vice chairwoman for professional development at IAC.

Barry said graduates tend to stay involved in ACT/IAC forums and use the leadership skills they learned in the Partners Program to continue the safe, ethical and open dialogue needed in today’s government.

This year, IAC graduated 32 government and industry participants who were recognized as future executive IT leaders by their respective agencies or organizations:

2006 Partners Program graduates in government:

• Ronald Chrismer – Homeland Security Department.
• Terry Conroy – NASA.
• Linda Garcia – Deloitte.
• Mitra Nejad-Guerin – Justice Department.
• Anthony Carlisi – Department of Veterans Affairs.
• Joe Klumpp – Army Department.
• Carmen Iannacone – General Services Administration.
• Paul DiRenzo – Defense Business Transformation.
• Steven Yonkers – DHS.
• Maile Arthur – Commerce Department.
• Beverly Franklin – Treasury Department.
• Kevin Cooke – Energy Department.
• Steve Laterra – Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
• Gary Washington – Food and Drug Administration.
• Nina Raheja – Department of Housing and Urban Development.

• Darlene Hines – Sprint Nextel.
• Joe Brock – Pragmatics.
• David Page – SRA International.
• Sergio Rodriguez – CGI.
• Jeffery Smith – Ventera.
• Susan Bethke – Northrop Grumman IT.
• Dave Acup – ENC Marketing and Communications.
• Chris Blake – Juniper Networks.
• Sangita Phelps – Verizon Business.
• Barbara Perlowski – AT&T Government Solutions.
• Joe Grossnickel – IBM.
• Irene Richwine – CACI.
• Thomas Bacigalupo – General Dynamics IT.

• Adrian Gardner of the Energy Department and Debbie Dowling of Science Applications International Corp.
• Gary Galloway of the State Department and Annie Williams of Cisco.

The Partners Program was chaired this year by alumni Lawrence Gross and Ivette Granier-Smith. Vice chairs included Brenda Beck, Robert Carey, Greig Fields, Don Reiter, Lisa Schlosser and Dave Wennergren.