Government cybersecurity in Minnesota carries a particular kind of accountability. The systems being protected hold court records, retirement funds, resident data, and the operational infrastructure of cities and state agencies that millions of people depend on without thinking about it. The CISOs in this feature have built and sustained security programs inside those environments, across municipal government, county administration, the state judicial branch, state retirement systems, and statewide IT governance, where the margin for error is low and the public trust at stake is high.
Jen Vandemmeltraadt — Deputy Chief Information Security Officer, State of Minnesota
Jen Vandemmeltraadt’s path to the deputy CISO seat at the State of Minnesota runs through nearly twenty-six years of state government service, starting as a child support officer at the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office and moving through income maintenance program advisor, project manager in health care operations, and cybersecurity and infrastructure program manager at the Minnesota Judicial Branch before joining the state’s central security office. She served as ICAM program manager and interim deputy CISO before stepping into the permanent deputy CISO role in November 2023. That progression, from frontline public services through project management and program leadership into security governance, gives her a grounded understanding of how state government actually operates that most technology-track security leaders simply do not have. Her background in organizational change management, process improvement, and stakeholder translation between business and technical functions informs how she approaches security at the enterprise level.
Zhiming Zhao — Chief Information Security Officer, Minnesota Judicial Branch
Zhiming Zhao arrived at the Minnesota Judicial Branch CISO role in April 2025 with a background built almost entirely in audit, risk, and identity management across financial services and enterprise technology. He spent nearly eight years at Wells Fargo in IT audit, operational risk management, and information security controls management, followed by two years as a senior security lead at SAP and nearly two years as information security officer at Tradition Capital Bank. He also serves as an elected school board member for Hopkins Public Schools, sitting on the audit committee and the safety and security committee simultaneously. That combination of financial sector audit discipline, enterprise identity and access management depth, and active civic governance reflects a security leader whose accountability extends well beyond any single organization.
Linda Goettler — Chief Information Security Officer, City of St. Paul
Linda Goettler has served as CISO of the City of St. Paul since January 2014, a tenure of more than twelve years that reflects sustained institutional commitment to building security from within. Her background is one of the more varied in this feature: she spent more than a decade as a systems engineer at Boeing working on defense programs including the AV-8B Harrier, F-15 Eagle, F/A-18 Hornet, and YF-23 Advanced Tactical Fighter, then spent ten years as a senior manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers serving Fortune 500 clients, then held CISO roles at Ingersoll Rand Security Technologies and Surescripts before arriving at the city. That arc, from defense systems engineering through Big Four consulting to municipal government, produces a security leader with a genuinely uncommon breadth of sector experience. Twelve years at St. Paul reflects a deliberate choice to stay and build something lasting inside a public institution.
Michael G. Collins — Chief Information Security Officer, Minnesota State Retirement System
Michael G. Collins has served as CISO at the Minnesota State Retirement System since June 2015, overseeing information security for an agency responsible for the retirement benefits of Minnesota’s public employees. His background spans more than eleven years of network support at the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry and nearly seven and a half years as a network administrator at MN.IT Services before stepping into the CISO role. That long public sector technology foundation, built across state agencies before he took on security leadership, gives him a grounded operational understanding of how Minnesota’s government IT environment works. Securing a retirement system is a specific kind of challenge: the data is sensitive, the regulatory expectations are high, and the consequences of a breach extend directly to the financial security of the people the system exists to serve.
Phil Dreyer — Chief Information Security Officer, Washington County, Minnesota
Phil Dreyer joined Washington County as CISO in August 2023, bringing a background that spans Thomson Reuters, Ameriprise Financial, and Arctic Wolf, where he held senior IAM and infrastructure security roles before moving into county government. At Thomson Reuters, he managed a global enterprise security project portfolio covering privileged identity management, data encryption, DDoS protection, and remote access gateways, and later directed a $10 million cloud transformation program across 100 locations worldwide. At Ameriprise, he led IAM delivery across the enterprise. At Arctic Wolf, he managed identity and access management for a cybersecurity company whose clients depend on its own security posture as proof of concept. That private sector depth, particularly in identity and access management, translates directly into county government security work where access governance, compliance, and data protection are the core operational challenges.
Built on Public Service, Sustained by Institutional Commitment
What distinguishes this group is how many of them have spent years, in some cases decades, inside the public institutions they now lead from a security perspective. Jen Vandemmeltraadt has served the State of Minnesota in one form or another for more than twenty-five years. Linda Goettler has spent twelve years securing St. Paul. Michael Collins has been at the retirement system for nearly eleven. That kind of sustained public service commitment does not make headlines. It is, however, what actually builds the security programs that government institutions depend on over the long term.
Discover more government CISOs to watch:
- CISOs to Watch in Illinois’ Government Administration
- CISOs to Watch in Georgia’s Government Administration
- CISOs to Watch in North Carolina’s Government Administration
- CISOs to Watch in Florida’s Government Administration
- CISOs to Watch in the State of New York’s Government Administration
