Jimmy Williams is the Executive Officer of IT for the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He has over twenty years’ experience as a technology professional in various industries. Jimmy leads integrated IT functions supporting commerce/gaming, tribal government and health services. Jimmy holds a BS degree in CIS from SOSU and an MS degree in Management from ERAU. He is an Army veteran and a member of the Choctaw Nation.

Paula Starr is the Chief Information Officer at Cherokee Nation Government where she leads an IT department continuously working to build improved, reliable, and protected citizen and co-worker experiences. Paula’s 20+ year career has taken her from the early days of Cherokee Nation’s gaming and hospitality operations to the leadership of development teams across multiple countries and back to her roots at the Cherokee Nation.  Paula is proud of the leadership role she played soon after joining Cherokee Nation Government in 2021 to deliver Cherokee Nation’s single largest direct assistance campaign, serving almost 300,000 citizens to date, through its citizen access portal. Paula holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma (B.B.A. in Management Information Systems) and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (M.H.A. in Hospitality Administration).

Virgil began his career in Gaming in 1989 with Resorts International. During his 15-year tenure, Resorts International became Sun International then Kerzner International with properties in Atlantic City, South Africa, Dubai, Mauritius, Mexico and the Bahamas. His career there included Accounting, Cage Operations, Marketing, Operations and Information Technology. From 2004 until 2006, Virgil worked at Barona Resort and Casino in San Diego as the Business Analyst Supervisor. During his time at Barona, they were always were looking at bleeding edge technology which resulted in a very intense development and a mature SDLC. Virgil led the conversion from IGS to Bally’s ACSC at that property in 2004 which included typical IT tasks, such as vendor management, testing, hardware requirements, etc, but also included tasks from a business standpoint (i.e. operational and marketing settings, direct user training, etc.). In 2006, Virgil started his tenure at the Chickasaw Nation as the “IT Director of Gaming and Hospitality Applications” (and then IT Executive Director of Gaming and Hospitality Applications). His responsibilities included the Gaming Applications team, Hospitality Applications Team, POS Applications Team, Surveillance Applications/Technical Team. As a leader within the Chickasaw Nation Information Technology department, there are Gaming, Non-Gaming, Hospitality, and Surveillance responsibilities as well that include strategic, technical and transformative decisions. In 2016, Virgil took on a more technical role of IT Sr. Manager – Shared Services. His responsibilities included leading the entire Network, Server, Storage, Power Systems, Database Administration, Communication and Environmental teams that supported the entire Chickasaw Nation. In November of 2018, Virgil went back to Gaming as the IT. Sr. Account Manager. He is the primary IT person for 21 individual gaming, hotel and retail properties.