July 2025 Tech Upload
| The NEW Digital Alliance would like to thank Beacon Hill Technologies, nvisia & Wipfli for their support as Strategic Level investors! |  |
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NEW Digital News
NEW Digital Alliance announces Steeno as new Executive Committee Chair
Thrivent IT VP will guide strategic direction in continuing work to bridge region’s digital gap
Shari Steeno
Shari Steeno, a Thrivent vice president of technology with more than a quarter-century of professional experience in information technology, has been chosen as the new chair of the NEW Digital Alliance (NEWDA) Executive Committee. In that role, she will help guide the strategic direction of NEWDA as it continues its work to bridge the digital gap within the New North region and to support regional tech ecosystem growth. Her appointment took effect on July 1.
Steeno is the vice president of enterprise technology solutions for Thrivent, a Fortune 500 financial services company that serves more than 2.4 million clients across the country. She has a 19-year tenure with Thrivent and has held a variety of positions within the technology organization. In all, Steeno has more than 25 years of IT experience, having spent the first seven years of her professional career within the technology division at Kimberly-Clark before taking on an information technology position with Thrivent Financial.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science/business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, along with an MBA degree from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.
“I look forward to continuing the mission of the NEW Digital Alliance – enhancing the pool of quality tech talent in the New North region, while also growing our technology industry community,” says Steeno. “It’s an exciting time in Northeast Wisconsin with multiple technology initiatives taking off across the education, industry and innovation sectors in the name of driving digital success.”
Scott Steinfort
Mike Bertello
Outgoing co-chairs Mike Bertello of Faith Technologies Incorporated and Scott Steinfort of Community First Credit Union will conclude their NEWDA leadership at the end of this month. Under their guidance, the Digital Alliance launched several major initiatives, including expanded mentorship opportunities, tech roundtables and cross-sector collaboration efforts that continue to make meaningful impact in the region.
“We are excited to have Shari and her rich experience in enterprise technology in leadership,” says Jason Mathwig, director of the NEW Digital Alliance. “She has a strong commitment to developing digital talent, along with fostering innovation across Northeast Wisconsin. “The Digital Alliance also extends its sincere appreciation to Mike and Scott, who have been incredible
champions of our efforts. Their leadership helped to shape the momentum we’re seeing today, which we’re grateful for.”
Applications for Investor Mentorship Program 2025 Fall Cohort now live
This exclusive program is designed to connect experienced IT & digital professionals with emerging talent to support career growth, industry insight, and leadership development in Northeast Wisconsin’s tech community.
| Commitment Twice a month one-on-one sessions for 3 months (could be virtual or in person) |
Fall 2025 Dates 2nd week of August – 2nd week of December Includes welcoming and celebration events |
- Grow your desired skillsets through a guided mentorship
- Gain outside perspective from local IT talent
- Build relationships with likeminded professionals
- Expand your network
Click here to Learn more and Apply Now to be a mentor or mentee this fall!
Reminder: This opportunity is available ONLY to current investors of the NEW Digital Alliance.
Upcoming northeast Wisconsin IT events
Ideas Amplified – Reset Your Brain
Tuesday, July 15
5 – 7 p.m.
The Grand Lounge (Oshkosh)
Organizer: Amplify Oshkosh
Tech Voyagers: A Summer Camp for Young IT Explorers
Tuesday & Wednesday, July 15 & 16
FVTC Appleton Campus, Room C125
Organizer: Fox Valley Technical College
WIT Annual Statewide Meeting: Reflecting on our 2024-25 Season
Wednesday, July 16
12 – 12:45 p.m.
Virtual
Organizer: Women in Technology Wisconsin
IT Roundtable: Data as a Product – Redefining Data Strategy with Product-Centric Thinking
Wednesday, July 23
10 – 11 a.m.
Virtual
Organizer: NEW Digital Alliance
Cyber Thursday: CMMC 2.0: What Contractors Must Know in 2025
Thursday, July 31
11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Organizer: Wisconsin Procurement Institute
Labor Market Insights: June 2025
Photo cred: Carex
While headline numbers might suggest stability, the underlying data paints a more cautious and complex picture. The labor market is in a holding pattern, and no one’s quite sure how long the fog will last.
Here are a few key takeaways from the latest data:
- Layoffs rose to the highest level since September 2023.
While still low by historical standards—and lower than you’d expect given the current unemployment rate—layoffs have been climbing over the past year. - Quits fell sharply.
The quit rate—a strong proxy for labor market confidence—dropped, signaling that workers are increasingly hesitant to leave their current jobs amid uncertainty. - Labor force participation and the employment-to-population ratio (ages 25–54) both declined.
This lack of momentum suggests that future unemployment increases are more likely to stem from layoffs than from new entrants into the labor force. - Hiring ticked up slightly.
The hiring rate in April rose to 3.5%, its highest level since last September. Still, that’s a relatively soft number (similar to 2014 when unemployment hovered around 6.5%).
New Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Specialist Program
Photo cred: Moraine Park Technical College
Technical education evolves alongside the ever-changing needs of business and industry. As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape nearly every sector, Moraine Park Technical College is seizing the opportunity to train students in how this powerful tool can drive economic growth and innovation through its new AI Data Specialist program—a two-year, 63-credit associate degree built to influence one of the fastest-growing areas of technology.
In this cutting-edge program, students will learn to harness data and programming to build powerful machine learning solutions that drive innovation and smarter decision-making. This comprehensive training will prepare students for rewarding careers as an AI Data Specialist, AI Data Technician or Data Analyst. As a quickly evolving field, the career growth is seemingly endless, and students can expect to:
- Explore programming and data tools like Python, SQL and relational databases.
- Analyze, model, and visualize data to extract insights and tell compelling stories.
- Build AI-powered solutions using predictive analytics and natural language processing (NLP).
- Understand AI ethics and responsibility to make thoughtful, informed decisions in real-world applications.
- Apply your skills through real-world projects, culminating in a capstone experience.
Other IT News
Help Inspire the Next Generation of Digital Talent: Join the Inspire WI Advocacy Network
Photo cred: Inspire WI
Are you passionate about technology and ready to make an impact in the lives of young students across Wisconsin? The Inspire Wisconsin Network is currently recruiting digital experts to join our Advocacy Network and help launch a meaningful, grant-funded Inspire Girls Program in the 2025–2026 school year.
We’re looking for professionals in IT and digital fields to volunteer as career coaches, providing students with authentic career experiences—from mock interviews to panel discussions and Q&A sessions. Through this effort, we aim to increase awareness and excitement about digital career pathways while also building future talent pipelines for our state’s workforce.
Why Sign Up?
- Inspire the Next Generation: Share real-world insights to help students explore digital career opportunities.
- Support Your Company: Strengthen your company’s brand and show up as a professional face of your industry.
- Flexible & Easy: We’ll only contact you when volunteer opportunities align with your background and passions.
How it Works:
TO opt in for occasional student events-mock interviews, panels, Q&A’s, and more, click here to complete our Volunteer Sign Up Form. It’s easy, impactful, and a great way to give back.
Benefits for Your Company:
- Build your talent pipeline by connecting early with future job seekers
- Showcase your company’s culture and digital career opportunities
- Strengthen your brand while supporting the next generation of IT leaders
Help us bring more digital and IT role models into schools across Wisconsin—spread the word and consider signing up today!
For questions or to learn more, contact us at inspirewi@cesa6.org or visit inspirewi.org.
Upskill for Free with In-Demand Career Training
The gener8tor Skills Accelerator program is back in Northeast Wisconsin thanks to a renewed partnership with the Bay Area Workforce Development Board! This no-cost, virtual training initiative is designed to help job seekers and currently employed individuals build critical skills for today’s workforce.
Programs are offered monthly and feature self-paced learning, one-on-one career coaching, and industry-recognized certifications. Tracks include:
- Project Management – A 6-week program preparing participants for management roles with CAPM certification.
- IT Foundations & Customer Service – A 6-week course focused on technical and problem-solving skills for entry-level IT roles, aligned with CompTIA ITF+ certification.
- IT Support/Help Desk – A 10-week deep dive into IT hardware, software, and troubleshooting, with the opportunity to earn a CompTIA A+ certification.
Participants also gain access to:
- Resume, LinkedIn, and cover letter coaching
- Weekly virtual networking with industry experts
- Mock interview practice and long-term job placement support
Visit www.gener8tor.com/skills/wisconsin to learn more and apply.
⚠️ Note: The deadline to apply for the July cohort is July 4, but new programs begin each month, making this a great ongoing opportunity for anyone looking to skill up and stand out.
Why companies have high hopes with low code
Photo cred:
Amelia Kinsinger
Source: IT Brew by Billy Hurley
As organizations continue to search for faster, more flexible ways to meet evolving tech demands, low-code development is gaining serious traction. This emerging approach empowers non-developers to build and deploy applications quickly—often without writing a single line of code. A recent article from IT Brew highlights why businesses are betting big on low-code platforms and what IT teams need to consider as adoption grows.
The Big Win: VA’s Transformation
- The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs dramatically streamlined its burial benefits process using low‑code.
- Their Memorial Benefits Management System (MBMS), launched in 2019, now handles over 135,000 internments annually—without traditional coding.
- Non-developers use visual tools to connect data, schedules, and workflows via cloud-based PaaS, significantly improving service speed and accuracy.
What Makes Low‑Code So Enticing
- Speed & accessibility: Enables rapid app creation by business analysts and citizen developers—no coding necessary—while minimizing errors.
- Market momentum: Forecasted to reach $16.5 billion by 2027, growing at ~16% CAGR.
- Strategic sweet spot: Offers a “Goldilocks” solution—more customization than SaaS, faster and cheaper than hand-coding.
Analyst Insights
- Forrester: Low‑code tools enable faster delivery, empower non-coders, and help maintain app quality via structured visual development.
- Gartner: Highlights democratization of app delivery but points out challenges like vendor lock-in, scale constraints, and the need for ongoing investment and governance.
Emerging Trends
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Low‑code platforms are incorporating AI-powered features—such as natural-language queries and auto-generated logic—to further accelerate development.
Implications for IT Teams
- Democratize development
Empower business analysts and domain experts to create mission-critical tools with little to no code. - Speed up delivery
Ideal for internal apps, workflows, and MVPs—cutting weeks or months off traditional timelines. - Balance pros & cons
Must manage vendor lock-in and scalability, while instituting governance processes as adoption grows. - Plan for scale
What starts small can quickly balloon—be prepared with training, standards, and a low-code center of excellence. - AI is the next frontier
Explore platforms that embed AI to accelerate app creation and reduce manual design.
Bottom Line
Encouraging low‑code adoption can dramatically speed up internal development and empower non-technical staff to innovate. But success hinges on thoughtful governance and strategic planning—especially around vendor dependency, scalability, and long-term maintenance. Emerging AI features may further tip the scales toward efficiency and accessibility.
Managing machine identities in 2025
Photo credit: Getty Images
Source: ITPro. by Keri Allan
Machine identities—such as AI agents, IoT devices, APIs, service accounts, and robotic systems—are rapidly proliferating, outnumbering human identities by a large margin. These non‑human identities (NHIs) are increasingly powerful, autonomous, and embedded deeply in critical operations.
- Scope and scale: The surge of cloud, AI, automation, and bots has dramatically increased both the quantity and variety of NHIs.
- Growth trajectory: Platforms like CNCF report machine identities now outnumber human users as much as 40:1.
Why securing NHIs is mission‑critical
- Governance gaps: Many organizations lack formal processes for credential lifecycle management—provisioning, rotation, and decommissioning—making NHIs attractive targets.
- Audit blind spots: Once deployed, machine identities often go unmonitored, allowing attackers persistent footholds (a “living off the land” strategy).
- Privileged roles: These identities possess high-level access—cloud pipelines, critical APIs, automation workflows—so compromising them can lead to serious breaches.
AI: both challenge and shield
- Challenge: Agentic AI creates opaque, autonomous behaviors (“black‑box” risk, swarms, emergent behaviors) that outpace traditional IAM.
- Opportunity: AI can automate identity discovery, enforce policies for new NHIs, flag anomalies in behavior, and serve as oversight (“superego”) agents that audit and verify decisions.
- Human oversight remains essential: Experts emphasize that governance rules, exception workflows, and regulatory oversight must still be defined and monitored by people, especially in sectors like healthcare and finance.
Foundational recommendations
To secure machine identities as they become pervasive, the article recommends:
- Robust governance frameworks: Establish oversight bodies (e.g., AI/IAM steering committees) tasked with identity policy, auditing, and ethical supervision.
- Lifecycle management: Ensure controlled provisioning, continuous logging, regular rotation, and proper decommissioning of every NHI.
- Zero‑trust alignment: Apply least privilege, continuous verification, transparency, and explainability in AI‑driven and hybrid systems .
- Monitoring and auditability: Leverage AI‑powered anomaly detection and enforce cryptographic verification and logging for sensitive actions.
For your IT‑security roadmap
| Immediate Action | Strategic Steps |
|---|---|
| Conduct an inventory of machine identities across hybrid environments | Form a governance group to define policy and autonomy thresholds |
| Enable continuous logging and audit trails for NHIs | Build AI‑assisted workflows for anomaly detection and policy enforcement |
| Apply MFA and rotation best practices for high‑privileged identities | Adopt zero‑trust and cryptographic verification models |
| Integrate oversight agents or post‑action reviews where AI decisions occur | Educate teams on emergent threats like “shadow AI” and unexpected agent behaviors |
Bottom line
Machine identities in 2025 are no longer just technical credentials—they’re autonomous agents with growing scope and influence. Without strong governance, visibility, lifecycle control, and AI‑augmented oversight, they’ll remain weak points in enterprise security. A hybrid model—where AI handles scale, but humans define policy and ethics—is essential.