November 6, 2026

CDT celebrates excellence at the 2026 Ovation Awards Ceremony

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Ovation Awards recognize CDT’s employees whose innovation, dedication and collaboration turn ideas into improvements for California residents and workforce. From advancing enterprise technology to strengthening everyday operations, their contributions help shape the future of digital government and make a difference for millions of Californians.

Behind every advancement in California’s digital government are the people who make it happen. CDT’s November 5 Ovation Awards Ceremony recognized those CDT employees whose ingenuity, and teamwork turn ideas into results.

The annual ceremony honored those individuals and teams whose work advances CDT’s mission and improves the delivery of services to Californians. Managers and supervisors nominate staff in seven award categories, and an Ovation Awards Committee selects the recipients.

This year’s honorees exemplify excellence across public service, with accomplishments spanning technology innovation, project delivery, procurement and operational improvements.

Jack Vang, Information Technology Specialist II

Jack Vang, an Information Technology Specialist II, received CDT’s highest individual honor: the Performance Excellence Award, recognizing his exceptional contribution and commitment.

Jack’s technical expertise helped transform a vision into one of CDT’s most recent technology initiatives: POPPY, California’s Digital Assistant.

What began as an idea on his personal time evolved into a low-cost enterprise tool that provides centralized governance, supports future statewide growth, and serves as California’s government generative AI (GenAl) platform.

Over the past year, Jack led the engineering efforts that made POPPY’s statewide deployment possible. His technical leadership and innovative approach established a platform that positions CDT to expand the responsible adoption of GenAl and improve government services.

“I’m truly honored to be recognized,” he said. “While this concept started as a mini side project hosted on my local virtual machine, POPPY really has grown into something much bigger than that. It wouldn’t have been possible without the dedication and collaboration of the POPPY engineering team; our management, executive and product teams; CES; our UAT testers and many other teams that have helped and continue to make POPPY what it is today.”

Beyond the Performance Excellence Award, CDT also recognized exceptional achievements in six additional categories: Leadership, Innovation, Organizational Enhancement, Customer Service, Superior Accomplishment, and Team Excellence.

Together, these awards reflect the breadth of talent across CDT and the many ways employees are making government more innovative, efficient and responsive to the needs of Californians and our state workforce.

Congratulations to all the 2026 Ovation Awards recipients!

The following are all the Ovation Awards recipients.

PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE AWARD

• Jack Vang

LEADERSHIP AWARD

• Amanda Huynh
• Julie Bianucci

INNOVATION AWARD

• Andrew Green
• OCRBot Modernization Team: Ravi Singamsetty, Igor Pekelis, Tejaswi Eerpina, Shanthan Madadi, Selvarani Janarthanan

ORGANIZATIONAL ENHANCEMENT AWARD

• Annual/Biennial Training Team:Karla Piacentini-Souza, Heather Jackson
• CalVCB Discovery Sprint Team:John Tangenberg, Jonathan Saepharn, Angelina Gerasimov, Matthew Daley

CUSTOMER SERVICE AWARD

• Anatoliy Markoglo
• Chris Gomes
• GenAI Service Agents Team: Eric Khotpanya, Trent Stigerts
• eCommerce IdM Support Team: Jimmy Ren, Nikunj Patel, Bryce Wong, Ching Vue, David Shen

SUPERIOR ACCOMPLISHMENT AWARD

• Jakub Dorazil
• Evan Underwood
• AIX Team: Jeremy Fong, Rubi Carillo
• JES3 to JES2 Migration Team: Paul Vincent, Jeff Bradway, Oleg Shambra, Andrew Hang, Arlene Persinger, Bhupesh Patel, Cole (John) Rogers, Xiong Vang, Julio Bermudez, Vanessa Ortiz

TEAM EXCELLENCE AWARD

• IT Program Management Team: Israel Jimenez, Robert Flores, Wendy Moritz, Tiffany Tran, Hamilton Vo, Isiah Clay, Eric Truong, Cindy Hensley, Kristine Abella, Bethany Montez
  
• Poppy Product Team: James Finch, Tim Lyons, Steven Garrett, Ann Ta, Kermit Bonner, Kori Lin Arbis, Chris Baad, Minh Tu, Ryan Mekata, Jack Vang, Nikunj Patel, Shaun Owens, Raymund Dizon, David Chang, Cory Buchanan, Jason Fanner, Brock Whitbread-Cole, See Vang, Hong Chen, Amandeep Shahi, Myles Maskovich, Jack Race, Eric Woodford, Eric Khotpanya, Trent Stigerts
• Project Delivery Lifecycle Team: Adam Ralls, Carmen Morrison, Denise O’Neill, Eric Kapucinski, Heather Totten, James Smith, Jeffrey Porcar, Jennifer McKinley, Sean Briggs, Julie Bianucci, Kimberly McHolland, Michael Halverson, Micheline Wilcoxen, Namrata Vatsal, Wais Payab, Raquel Rivera, Sachin Brahme, Sharon Nicholson, Shelly Lima
• CDT Office Relocation Project Team: Sabrina Donelli, Jake Nelson, Elias Oyog, Ian Noumov, Shon Gates, Charles Jepsen, Kevin Smith, Stephan Hoaglund, Brett Rabang, Alfredo Reyes, Travis Dusenberry, Adam Martin, Amanda Huynh, Kaylie Chao, Carol Chavez-Perez, Erin Morgan, Jeff Pudoff, Zack Wheat, Shawn Symonds, Nyeda Gamboa, Robyn Uyeda-Goto, Manju Kamalamma, Sandhya Mattipalli, Leandro Barge
• zOS 3.1 Upgrade Core Members Team: Andrew Freid, Paul Vincent, Cyndi Seibel, Marielou Valdez, Jerry Carlson, Susan Bergen, Jeff Bradway, Oleg Shambra, Kelly Loiler, LeighAnn Kato, Tony Nguyen, Trevor Allen, Andrew Hang, Arlene Persinger, Mike Neal, Bhupesh Patel, Cole (John) Rogers, Xiong Vang, Julio Bermudez, Chris Gomes, Brad Denton, Bryan Alvarado, Lisa Wayman, John Carlson
• Middle-Mile Broadband Initiative Team: David Friedman, Nina Westphal, Rick Goldberg, Mackenzie Shea, Shannon Martin-Guzman, Louie Rowley, Nick Giustini
• SITeS Team: Cristina Brinzei, Edna Toy, Adam Crook, Gagandeep Kaur, David Lane, Renoir Pope, Jason Perez, Enea Antonicelli, Yulia Starchenko