National DICE Data Center Construction, Design And Development - East

Jonathan (Jon) Gibbs is the Senior Program Manager of Development at Cologix, North America’s leading network-neutral interconnection and hyperscale edge data center company. In this role, Jon is responsible for managing construction standards, facilitating new property acquisitions, and overseeing the preconstruction process. Jon has over 25 years of extensive construction experience including preconstruction, procurement, and project management. He began his career in electrical contracting and has completed a five-year electrical apprenticeship in 2002. Jon also holds certifications in estimating along with a degree in Construction Management.

As Vice President of Data Center Development and Construction, Karen Petersburg brings 17 years of significant experience to PowerHouse, having successfully managed complex sustainable data center design and engineering projects, including campus developments, hyperscale built-to-suits, and major infrastructure renovations. Most recently, Petersburg has served as director of design for Digital Realty Trust, where she was responsible for the quality of the organization’s designs and processes. Alongside Luke Kipfer, Petersburg oversees the planning and execution of all PowerHouse data center projects. Karen Petersburg actively contributes to the data center industry as the president of the local 7x24 DC Chapter, with board and committee positions for the Data Center Coalition and the Nomad Futurist Foundation. She also supports local non-profits aiming to increase STEM participation among local youth. Beyond her professional life, Karen is dedicated to exploring the philosophical and socio-economic dimensions of data, contemplating how it impacts our daily lives and shapes our globalized society's future. Karen holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Government as well as a Masters of Arts in Philosophy from Virginia Tech, along with several industry certifications from CNet Training/Uptime Institute and Data Center Dynamics.

Oz Morales is currently the Chief Officer of Infrastructure at Denvr Dataworks, an AI centric cloud provider. Prior, he was SVP for Infrastructure and Innovation at Digital Realty Trust, the worlds largest colocation provider. He was responsible for Innovation, Infrastructure Development, Cost, New Technologies, and Operations Development. Oz spent 5 years as the CTO/VP for COI at Microsoft. He was responsible for Operations, Engineering, Software tools, Supply Chain, Colocation acquisition, and technical direction for the CO+I team at Microsoft, Oz spent most of his time developing methodology and focus on AI compute, structured cabling plants and Networking. He was the former Vice President for Data Center Global Services for Amazon Web Services, responsible for maintaining all the Amazon.com/AWS data centers around the world, he was with AWS/Amazon for 17 years. He worked at MSFT for 5 years and started his career in MSFT as a Partner Engineer in DCX. Oz has continued to apply new innovations and proven technology to deploy into the data center space and has developed many innovative project patents for efficiency and cost savings. His patent awards are in the hundreds and range from developing strategies for low-cost distribution of electrical power for data centers to methods of airflow control and he currently has several other patents pending. Prior to coming to MSFT, Oz worked as a manager at Enbridge Technology Inc., an oil and pipeline gas industry worldwide based in Canada. Oz led the SCADA team to automate control and loss prevention of all the company’s hydro-carbon pipeline system (domestic and International). Oz graduated from University of Alberta with a BSc Eng. in Mechanical Engineering and obtained his MSc in Electrical Engineering from University of Delaware. Besides building data centers, Oz has a passion for cars and motorcycles. In his spare time, Oz enjoys playing hockey, spending time with his daughter and reading books by his favorite authors Edgar Allan Poe and Pablo Neruda. He currently has a blog at www.ozmorales.com where he reviews many of the topics and challenges experienced by the industry.