Supercon 2022

ERIC VÉLEZ-VILLAR serves as Assistant Director of the Office of Private Sector within the FBI Intelligence Branch. Appointed to this position on October 12, 2021, Mr. Vélez oversees efforts to strengthen FBI partnerships with the U.S. private sector, which are vital to our nation’s security.

With almost 37 years of experience in some of the most challenging and responsible positions in government and private industry, Mr. Vélez is well equipped to establish relationships with the private sector. His career in government began in 1985 in the FBI San Juan Division as a computer specialist. From there he moved into the Special Agent role in 1992, working organized crime and drug cases in the McAllen Resident Agency of the San Antonio Field Office, until he returned to San Juan in 1997 to work public corruption and violent crime.

In 2000, Mr. Vélez was promoted to Supervisory Special Agent in the Drug Section at FBI Headquarters and was detailed to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

In 2002, he transferred to the Santa Ana Resident Agency of the Los Angeles Field Office as the Organized Crime/Drug Supervisor and was subsequently reassigned to supervise the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force.

In 2004, he was promoted to Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Los Angeles Field Office Counterterrorism Program, overseeing the Orange County, Long Beach, and Inland Empire Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

In 2006, Mr. Vélez was appointed Deputy Director of the Terrorist Screening Center. In 2007, Director Mueller appointed him the first Special Agent in Charge of the newly created Intelligence Division of the Los Angeles Field Office and, in 2009, named him Deputy Assistant Director for the Directorate of Intelligence’s Intelligence Operations Branch.

In 2012, Mr. Vélez was named Assistant Director for the Directorate of Intelligence, eventually becoming the Executive Assistant Director for the Intelligence Branch when Director Comey appointed him to the position in 2014.

Upon his retirement from the FBI in 2016, Mr. Vélez assumed the role of Vice President of Security for Parks, Products, Experiences, and Sensitive Information Protection at the Walt Disney Company. In that position, he was responsible for the security of all Disney parks, resorts, stores, and cruise ships around the world, as well as helping to protect the company’s most sensitive intellectual property. Mr. Vélez went on to establish his own security consulting firm, Vélez Security Solutions, which provided a full spectrum of strategic planning and risk management solutions to corporate security teams. Mr. Vélez holds a Bachelor of Business degree from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico and an MBA from the University of Southern California.

He is the recipient of the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive, the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, and the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service.

Winnie Callahan joined San Diego State University in 2019 to lead a major new cyber security and emerging technology initiative focused on education, training and applied research. Dr. Callahan will oversee myriad online curriculum programs, community outreach, and partnership opportunities designed to help build a workforce for the region and nation, as well as integrating industry, academia and government toward game-changing ideation and innovation.

Prior to joining SDSU, Dr. Callahan was the founding director of the University of San Diego Center for Cyber Security Engineering and Technology and also served as the Director of Cyber Academic Programs at the University of Alabama. Callahan spent six years as the Director of Innovation for the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute, later becoming the founding Associate Director of Informatics at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

From 1997 to 2008, Dr. Winnie Callahan served as Executive Director of the University of Nebraska’s Peter Kiewit Institute (PKI), a unique partnership between two colleges within the University of Nebraska system and industry and governmental agencies. As the founding director of the Institute, Callahan helped develop a sixteen building complex, consisting of a business park, incubator center and student housing - along with the state-of-the-art Kiewit Institute, which was nationally recognized as the best model in the country for immersing business, engineering and technology. She was instrumental in establishing partnerships with over 1,000 entities, including nearly a hundred Fortune 500 companies, and developed a unique scholarship program that annually recruited from the top two to three percent of student scholars from around the country.

During her tenure with PKI, she also served as Assistant Vice President of the University of Nebraska Foundation, a role that enabled the acquisition of gifts totaling nearly $300M. These contributions allowed expansion of the Institute and the creation of one of the most robust infrastructures and super computer facilities found in any higher education institution in the nation.

Callahan holds a Bachelor’s Degree from Winthrop University in South Carolina, and a Master’s and Doctorate from the University of Nebraska in Educational Administration. Through the years, Callahan has presented frequently at the national level, has several publications to her credit, served as a consultant to Disney, and has many recognitions to include installation in the Aksarben Court of Honor. She was named the YWCA’s Woman of Distinction in 1994, and made an Admiral in the Great Navy of Nebraska by then Governor Ben Nelson. In 2007, Callahan was named the West Point Society’s Citizen of the Year, recognizing her leadership, community participation, and patriotism. Since 2017, Winnie Callahan has served on the national board of directors for the National InfraGard Membership Alliance, an organization founded by the FBI to promote critical infrastructure security that has over 75,000 members nationwide.