Freddie Guerra is a strategist who collaborates with clients to optimize their water, wastewater and stormwater operations and assets. With 30 years of experience, he has learned what drives sustainable business models and practices with dividends that result in financial, customer and environmental benefits – all of which strengthen an organization’s brand, business, bottom-line, and improves the quality of life for the people and markets its services. Prior to joining Xylem, Freddie had the opportunity to serve as a Regional Sales Director for Hitachi Consulting focused on optimizing assets and infrastructure through technology, IoT, analytics, Big Data and predictive maintenance. His diverse experience includes working at a large municipality and various national and local engineering and environmental consulting firms, and a Fortune 100 energy services company, providing a myriad of services – analytics to energy performance contracting, AMR/AMI to public works infrastructure (roadways drainage, water, and wastewater), to geotechnical engineering to environmental consulting as well as asset management and capital planning.

Vernadine Merrick is the Water Vertical Marketing Manager for Sensus North America at Xylem, focused on developing growth strategies through market intelligence, VOC, sales enablement, and industry relationship building. Vernadine has 20+ years of experience in industrial automation and control systems and equipment for a variety of industries, including Oil & Gas, Pulp & Paper, Mining and Municipal Water. Marketing & Sales roles include strategy, market planning & analysis, global product management, market management, sales, and sales training. Vernadine has previously worked for ABB, Flowserve, and Siemens. She holds a chemical engineering degree with an MBA.

Matthew W. Thomas is a utility professional with over 39 years of experience and currently serves as Assistant Director at Houston Public Works (HPW), Customer Accounts Services (CAS). Customer Account Services provides customer information, billings, credit and collections, and all meter-associated services to water and wastewater utility customers within the City of Houston. Additionally, CAS provides wholesale water services to many of nearby towns and utility districts, and also bills for the Solid Waste department. The City of Houston was the first major city in the U.S. to use in ground automated water meter reading (AMR) technology. The City of Houston is continuing its’ technology leadership with the adoption of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) that supports Smart Utility/City interoperability. Prior to joining HPW, Matthew spent twenty-two years in leadership roles in Electric Utility Operations, followed by twelve years of Financial Planning and Analysis leadership in the Oil and Gas industry.