As CISA’s Water and Wastewater Sector Liaison, Ms. Wisniewski is the nexus for CISA’s Water and Wastewater Sector efforts. She partners with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Sector Risk Management Agency, as well as private and public stakeholders in the Water and Wastewater Sector. In addition to supporting water efforts across CISA, Ms. Wisniewski, as CISA’s representative on the Water Government Coordinating Council, works with EPA and other government partners, as well as the Water Sector Coordinating Council to address sector priorities and increase the resilience of our nation’s critical water infrastructure.
Prior to joining CISA, Ms. Wisniewski served as an environmental engineer in the EPA Office of Water for over 20 years. For most of her EPA career, she worked on a variety of efforts to increase the resilience of the water sector and address key water sector interdependencies. She led over 40 locally customized workshops and exercises across the country for drinking water and wastewater utilities on resilience, infrastructure protection, and coordination with other critical infrastructure sectors including energy, emergency services, and food and agriculture. She developed numerous EPA publications, including EPA’s Power Resilience Guide for Water and Wastewater Utilities. She also staffed the Water Desk in EPA’s Emergency Operation Center (EOC) during several activations and served as a Watch Officer in the EOC. During her tenure at EPA, Ms. Wisniewski received two EPA Gold Medal Awards for Exceptional Service and two EPA Bronze Medal Awards for Commendable Service.
Ms. Wisniewski has a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, summa cum laude, in Civil Engineering from Duke University and served as the Engineering Student Government President her senior year. Additionally, she has her Master of Public Health degree from the George Washington University.
Matthew Rogers, PhD, is an Industrial Control Systems (ICS) Cybersecurity Expert in the Office of the Technical Director at CISA and the lead for the Secure by Design initiative for Operational Technology (OT). He received his PhD in securing legacy OT networks in vehicles from the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. Matthew worked as the founding engineer at a vehicle and weapon’s system cybersecurity startup before pursuing broader ICS cybersecurity efforts at MITRE. Matthew’s focus at CISA is on how ICS Research & Development efforts can be transitioned to effective tools for Critical Infrastructure sectors.
Mr. Elkin Hernandez currently serves as DC Water Director of Maintenance Services, in this role, he oversees the maintenance of the over 40,000 assets used at Blue Plains AWTP. He has over 20 years of experience in the design, construction, commissioning and maintenance of water treatment and power utilities. For the past 9 years, he has worked at DC Water Blue Plains AWTP. Prior to joining DC Water, he worked in the consulting and construction engineering fields as a design, development and commissioning engineer and manager.
Mr. Hernandez is the immediate past chair of WEF’s Intelligent Water Technology Committee, his background includes work on telecom cation, automation, process control and cybersecurity. Currently his work is focused in the fields of smart water, management, and maintenance optimization. Mr. Hernandez holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s engineering degree in Electrical and Computer science.
The Water Data Forum is a series of interactive web sessions that engage cross-sector experts in an exploration of utility, industry, and research approaches to collecting, managing, and measuring water data for impact. Topics in this free, virtual forum will range from new sensor and control technologies to broader application spaces such as water data for environmental justice and climate resilience.
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