Alissa Knight is the Founder, CEO, and Chief AI Officer of Assail, Inc., a venture-backed cybersecurity and artificial intelligence company building autonomous AI systems for continuous exposure management of modern enterprise application stacks. A 26-year veteran of offensive security, Knight has built her career at the intersection of deep technical expertise and company building -- identifying where critical systems break and turning that knowledge into category-defining products and lasting enterprise value.

Knight is a proven operator with a track record of building, scaling, and exiting technology companies. She sold her first company to a publicly traded acquirer at 20, completed a second successful exit at 27, and has since led both buy-side and sell-side M&A transactions totaling more than $65 million in capital raised. She brings a rare combination of technical depth and commercial execution -- the ability to architect a product, bring it to market, and scale the business around it.
As CEO and Chief AI Officer, Knight serves as the principal architect of Ares, Assail's flagship autonomous offensive security platform. She personally designed, developed, and trained Dagger, a 14 billion parameter frontier model purpose-built for offensive security -- trained on real-world exploitation of APIs, mobile applications, and web applications. Ares represents the culmination of more than two decades of hands-on adversarial experience, encoded into an AI system capable of autonomous vulnerability discovery at a speed and scale no human red team can match.

Knight's research has directly shaped how industries and governments think about application security. She has published more than 30 vulnerability research reports exposing critical API flaws across financial services, fintech, healthcare, and government systems. Her groundbreaking research into FHIR APIs was cited on Capitol Hill as evidence of systemic weaknesses in U.S. healthcare infrastructure and contributed to changes in public policy. She has advised the Pentagon and U.S. Marine Corps on securing global military API infrastructure, and following publication of her book Hacking Connected Cars (Wiley & Sons), was engaged by federal and state law enforcement agencies to assess fleet-wide vehicle vulnerabilities.

Beyond the boardroom and the codebase, Knight has operated at the intersection of cybersecurity and visual storytelling. She has collaborated with Zero Gravity Management -- the producers behind Ozark and The Accountant -- and led Knight Studios as Studio Head, Director, Producer, Executive Producer, Editor, and Colorist, overseeing productions from concept through post-production. Her ability to translate complex technical narratives into compelling stories extends directly into how she positions and communicates Assail's vision to the market.

Daniel Gizinski was named President of Comtech's Satellite & Space Communications Segment in November of 2024. Previously, Daniel served as Chief Strategy Officer and President of the Comtech Satellite Network Technologies ("CSNTI") division. Daniel also held prior appointments as the Company's Chief Strategy Officer from 2022-2024 and President of CSNTI in 2022. During his tenure at Comtech, he has held various senior management positions, including serving as Vice President of Product and Strategy for Comtech Systems, Inc. Earlier in his career, Gizinski held program management and leadership roles at General Electric, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and L3Harris Technologies. Gizinski holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia and a master's degree from Duke University.

Lauryn Williams is the deputy director and senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Until January 2025, she was chief of staff to the assistant secretary of defense for industrial base policy within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, where she spearheaded the release of the National Defense Industrial Strategy Implementation Plan. From 2022 to 2024, Lauryn was director for strategy in the White House Office of the National Cyber Director and led the strategic initiative on space system cybersecurity, which leveraged extensive government agency, industry, and international collaboration. This work resulted in the first-ever minimum cybersecurity requirements for federal space systems. Prior to the White House, Lauryn served as a policy advisor in the Pentagon space policy office and led efforts to leverage commercial space and develop norms of responsible behavior. She has also served in the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, where she led international export control projects, and worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Lauryn received her master's degree in public and international affairs from Princeton University and her bachelor's degree in political science, with honors in international security studies, from Stanford University.

Amyn Jan is a senior AI and technology executive with more than 25 years of leadership across U.S. national security, defense, semiconductors, telecommunications, and biomedical engineering. Before entering public service, he spent a decade in the private sector, contributing to IBM's PowerPC processor design and leading hardware development for one of Samsung's early CDMA mobile handset platforms.

Over more than two decades in government, Mr. Jan held senior executive and technical leadership positions across the U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of War. He served as the inaugural head of enterprise AI programs for a major intelligence agency, leading AI strategy, governance, and enterprise adoption, and most recently as Chief AI Architect, where he helped accelerate the deployment of artificial intelligence across mission-critical defense operations.

His work has spanned the full AI lifecycle - from enterprise AI transformation, data architecture, MLOps, and AI platforms to the rapid deployment of operational AI capabilities supporting computer vision, natural language processing, autonomy, and adversarial AI for national security missions.

Outside government, Mr. Jan advises tech startups with focus on next-generation AI architectures emphasizing inference-efficient, low-token, multimodal AI systems, along with AI security, assurance, and governance across the hardware-to-software stack.

Mr. Jan is a Distinguished Member of the American Society for AI (ASFAI), a founding member and contributor to the AIUC-1 Consortium. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Virginia Tech, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program.


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Amyn Jan is a senior AI and technology executive with 25+ years of experience across U.S. national security, defense, semiconductors, and telecommunications. He previously worked in industry at IBM and Samsung on processor and mobile systems, before moving into roles across the U.S. Intelligence Community and Dept. Of War.

He served as the inaugural head of enterprise AI programs for a major intelligence agency and most recently as Chief AI Architect - led AI strategy, research, development and operational deployment across missions.

His expertise spans enterprise AI transformation, MLOps, data architecture, and deployed systems in NLP and computer vision application. He is a Distinguished Member of ASFAI and a founding member and key contributor to AIUC-1.

He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Virginia Tech, and is a graduate of Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program.

Brandon Bailey is a principal engineer for the Cybersecurity and Advanced Platforms Subdivision (CAPS) at The Aerospace Corporation, at The Aerospace Corporation. In this role, Bailey has focused on developing a cyber range to support penetration testing training and in-the-lab evaluation of customers' implementations, performing vulnerability assessments and penetration testing activities for multiple customers as well as performing cybersecurity research on ground systems and spacecraft systems to better position the federal government with respect to protection of our critical space infrastructure. Bailey has also led the development of the space-focused tactic, technique, and procedures (TTPs) framework called Space Attack Research and Tactic Analysis (SPARTA). SPARTA is intended to provide unclassified information to space professionals about how spacecraft may be attacked. Bailey is a former civil servant at NASA, where he led various cybersecurity efforts and was awarded NASA's Exceptional Service Medal for his landmark cybersecurity work in 2019. He has extensive experience in the test and evaluation of systems and technology using high-fidelity digital twins with specialization in cybersecurity.

Ernest Wong is the Technical Lead for Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and Space Systems Resilience at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T). In addition to managing R&D, he provides technical policy advice to DHS leadership on issues relating to PNT cybersecurity, space systems, and critical infrastructure resilience.

Ernest has spent over 10 years managing R&D on critical infrastructure security issues and was the DHS contributor to national strategy documents such as the White House OSTP/NSTC National R&D Plan for PNT Resilience and the Quantum Sensors National Strategy (Bringing Quantum Sensors to Fruition). He has also helped advance the state of cybersecurity research on space systems through the development of cyber threat indicators for spacecraft, which was published through the SPARTA 3.0 update as Indicators of Behavior (IOBs). Ernest sees industry collaboration as vital to addressing critical infrastructure resiliency challenges and worked closely with industry partners to lead the development of the Resilient PNT Conformance Framework, which has since transitioned to IEEE P1952.

Ernest's focus at DHS is critical infrastructure resilience and its intersection with emerging technologies and threats, including PNT, space systems, cybersecurity, quantum, and 5G.

Before coming to DHS S&T, Ernest was an IT project manager delivering enterprise software solutions to the General Services Administration (GSA). Ernest holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Master of Public Policy from George Mason University.

Suzanne Lightman has over a decade of experience in information security policy in positions all over the government, as well as in the private sector. She has held positions in both the legislative and executive branches which gives her a unique perspective on the development and implementation of government policy. Currently, Ms. Lightman is a Senior Advisor at the Computer Security Division of the Information Technology Lab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In that position, she is involved with a diverse portfolio of topics including development of the Cybersecurity Framework required under Executive Order 13636, cybersecurity in cyber-physical systems, identity management, and cybersecurity policy. She is also one of the team developing the Privacy Risk Management Framework at NIST

Deneen is an accomplished technology and risk management executive with experience across multiple critical infrastructure sectors. She has expertise in advising global companies and their most senior executives on technology, cybersecurity, compliance and digital risk decisions related to products, services and operations.

Deneen currently serves as Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer at United Airlines. She is responsible for leading the cybersecurity and digital risk organization to ensure the company is prepared to prevent, detect and respond to evolving cyber threats. She leads initiatives on commercial aviation cyber safety risk, improving cyber resilience, and represents United working with international partners to reduce cyber safety risk worldwide across the aviation ecosystem.

Deneen is on the board of both the Internet Security Alliance and the Aviation Information Sharing Analysis Center, and a member of the Airlines for America (A4A) Cybersecurity Committee. She serves as an independent director on the board of directors at Blackbaud software and is the Chairperson of the Risk Committee. In 2022, she was appointed to serve on the President's National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), advising the White House on how to reduce physical and cyber risks and improve the security and resilience of the nation's critical infrastructure sectors.

A dedicated advocate for fostering talent and inclusivity in technology Deneen actively participates in mentorship programs and women-led organizations to inspire and empower the next generation of leaders in STEM. She is deeply committed to creating opportunities for women in the field, supporting their professional growth, and driving meaningful change within the tech industry.

Follow her on X @deneendefiore

Daniel Collender is Chief Information Security Officer at Spire Global, where he leads the company's global cybersecurity strategy and helps secure the infrastructure supporting space-based data and analytics services. With more than two decades of executive leadership experience across the commercial space, intelligence and defense sectors, he has led cybersecurity, enterprise technology, and digital transformation initiatives supporting some of the industry's most critical missions.

Prior to joining Spire, Daniel served as the first Chief Information Security Officer at United Launch Alliance (ULA) and held executive technology leadership roles with Ball Aerospace and DigitalGlobe. Throughout his career, he has helped protect and modernize the technology environments that support a broad range of space capabilities, including Earth observation, weather and environmental monitoring, missile warning, communications, national security, and launch systems. Daniel is passionate about building cybersecurity into ground and space architectures from the outset and exploring how artificial intelligence, geopolitical competition, and increasingly distributed multi-orbit constellations are reshaping the future of cyber resilience.

Vinit Duggal is currently the Chief Information Security Officer for Intelsat. Since joining Intelsat, Vinit has been responsible for the development and engineering of much of Intelsat's key infrastructure, as well as building out an industry leading information security practice that fits the business needs for both the corporate and service provider entities that make up Intelsat's overall operations.

Prior to joining Intelsat, Mr. Duggal was the Chief Architect with Nortel Networks Professional Services. At Nortel he developed the network reference architecture and consulting models for the professional services practice that was responsible for over $80 million in revenue. Before joining Nortel, he held the position of Director of Information Security Consulting at VISTAIT where he incubated a first of its kind security practice that focused on delivering bespoke solutions for various types of organizations that allowed management teams to create individualized security infrastructure and policy. Mr. Duggal started his career in information security working for the Aviation Civil Intelligence division of the FAA (Now part of TSA).

Outside of his daily duties at Intelsat, Mr. Duggal takes part in many Network Engineering and Cyber activities. He has worked with and spoke at various events for SANS, CSI, Applied Network Security Foundation, Information Security Magazine, and Department of Homeland Security, to name a few. Vinit is an active member of various standards bodies where he is fostering the core principles of the industry to help current and future security professionals.

Norm is a seasoned technology executive with over 30 years of cybersecurity and IT services experience.

He has held senior executive roles at Bigbear.ai, Verizon, Terremark, VeriSign, Sophos, and Symantec, as well as founding and building several successful startup companies. He is an expert in software design and development, cyber security, and massive online infrastructures such as cloud computing and software as a service. He has bought and sold several companies, resulting in significant merger and acquisition experience. His education is in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and he has held our nations highest level of security clearance while working for various intelligence agencies. He has also been published in over 100 newspapers and magazines, appeared on over a dozen television news programs, been interviewed on local and national radio, and has delivered presentations at numerous international conferences. He has also taught classes on a diverse set of topics, and published research papers and blog articles related to his areas of expertise.

Suzanne E. McBride has served as our Chief Operations Officer since February 2019 and as a director of our company since May 2020. Ms. McBride served as Chief Operating Officer of OneWeb, Ltd., a privately held company building a space-based global communications network, from October 2018 to January 2019 and as its Senior Vice President from 2016 to October 2018. Previously, she was employed by Iridium Satellite LLC, our primary operating subsidiary, in a series of positions with increasing responsibility from 2007 until 2016, most recently serving as Vice President, Program Management Office and Launch Services, a role in which she oversaw the launch program for our second-generation constellation. Ms. McBride has more than 30 years of experience in the satellite industry, including as a senior engineer at Motorola's Satellite Communications Group during the building and launching of the original Iridium satellite constellation in the 1990s as well as deploying 2G and 3G networks. Since February 2022, she has served as a director of the publicly held company Skyworks Solutions, Inc. Ms. McBride previously served on the board of directors of Descartes Labs and Finite Carbon. Ms. McBride received her Master of Business Administration from the University of Tennessee in the Executive Aerospace and Defense program, and her dual undergraduate degrees are from Columbia University in Industrial Engineering and Claremont McKenna College in Management Engineering.

Capt. David M. Vermillion is the Commercial Consolidated Satellite Systems Expert Deputy Division Chief at Space Delta 8, Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado. He connects warfighters to centrally managed commercial SATCOM while providing leaders with situational awareness.

Captain Vermillion commissioned into the Air Force through ROTC from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in May 2020 and completed his transfer to the Space Force in February 2022. He completed Officer Undergraduate Space Training in October 2021 and concluded his initial training pipeline in July 2022. He has overseen shift operations for the crew section dedicated to operating the Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS) and Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellite constellations, including his unit's first satellite disposal operation, and taught both the technical details of operating those systems and how to effectively use them for a variety of missions.

Throughout his active-duty time, he undertook multiple special projects, including six appearances at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and a keynote presentation at FIRST Robotics Denver Regional to discuss the Space Force. He also coordinated machine learning research and development efforts to improve satellite anomaly detection processes culminating in two publications. Prior to his current position, the Captain was a Staff Instructor at the 8th Combat Training Squadron, Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado.

Scott Zemerick is TMC's Chief Engineer with 25 years of industry experience spanning various domains such as power systems, unmanned vehicles, software/hardware integration, product development, NASA spacecraft, CubeSats, modeling/simulation, and academic research.
Scott's areas of expertise include spacecraft systems and flight software, embedded systems, middleware, modeling and simulation, and unmanned vehicles. Scott's achievements include the 2019 NASA IV&V Engineer of the Year Award, Simulation-to-Flight 1 (STF-1), (WV's First Spacecraft), and JSTAR Team for Digital Twin Development of Spacecraft.

Ken is Partner and Founder of Pen Test Partners, a firm of ethical hackers. He regularly blogs on everything from satellite communication hacking to maritime security and the Internet of Things. This has led to regular appearances on BBC TV and BBC News online as well as the broadsheet press. He also writes for various newspapers and industry magazines in an effort to get beyond the unhelpful scaremongering put about by many security vendors. Ken has become a voice for reform and legislative change in the largely unregulated IoT, briefing UK and US government departments as well as being involved with various EU consumer councils. He has also spoken about satellite communication security at various maritime events such as Digital Ship Rotterdam/Oslo/Limassol and CMA Shipping.

Lacey Wean is a visionary executive at Carahsoft Technology Corp., a premier government-focused IT solutions provider, where she serves as a Senior Director for high-impact business units, including Geospatial, Space Tech, Aerospace & Maritime, Autonomy & Robotics, Smart Cities, Law Enforcement, Oracle, and Emerging Technology. As a strategic leader, she drives exponential growth by spearheading innovative go-to-market strategies with over 200 technology partners, empowering their success in the public sector. Renowned for her transformative leadership, Lacey pioneers cutting-edge initiatives across the industry while championing company-wide leadership development, mentorship programs, and industry-defining events. Her bold vision and executive influence position her as a cornerstone of Carahsoft's continued dominance in the IT solutions landscape.

Thorsten Stremlau is a Distinguished Engineer and Systems Principal Architect in NVIDIA. He is responsible for technical strategies for components, devices, software and cloud services. In this role, Thorsten identifies and drives integration of current and future technologies, integrating them into the product development processes, and specifically drives innovation into the security capabilities of NVIDIA's portfolio.

Thorsten's career has been dedicated to identifying solutions and strategic implementations for customers in all aspects of IT. As an engineer for nearly 25 years, his broad experience enabled him to assist thousands of our customers to digitally transform their environments using advanced technology.

Thorsten holds a Bachelor in Industrial Manufacturing/Finance. Thorsten lives in North Carolina with his family.

Dr. Dianne Poster provides more than two decades of technical experience in research and development for measurements, standards, technology, and data at the United States (U.S.) Department of Commerce (DOC) National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Her portfolio covers innovative developments in radiation physics and chemistry, materials engineering, and optical, dimensional, and chemical metrology. Her current work supports the U.S. DOC National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Office of Space Commerce promoting U.S. space commerce through international technical standards development and innovation in space systems, data, and cybersecurity technologies. She leads DOC representation for the U.S. interagency supporting space activities, including developing principles for national strategies in cislunar science and technology, planetary defense, low Earth orbit research and development, and in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing.

Previously, as the deputy associate director for technology and environmental policy at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Dr. Poster administered the environmental federal regulatory portfolio and advised on policy and strategy issues related to protecting the environment.

Mr. Shepard is the Chief Engineer of Cyber Programs at Sierra Nevada Company (SNC). Mr. Shepard has a bachelor of science in electrical engineering and 15 years of experience in product development, information system design and cybersecurity for both commercial and government industrial sectors. Mr. Shepard holds two US patents for machine to machine cyber security and advanced networking methodologies, In his current role, Mr. Shepard is responsible for technical design and development of SNC's cybersecurity product portfolio, including products targeting cybersecurity for space assets

Dr. Ulf Lindqvist is a Senior Technical Director in the Computer Science Laboratory at the nonprofit research organization SRI where he manages research and development programs. Dr. Lindqvist established and leads SRI's program in infrastructure security research, which is focused on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure systems, including specialized systems in the Internet of Things, electric power, oil and gas, telecommunications, finance, automotive, aviation, and space sectors. His areas of expertise include cybersecurity, infrastructure systems, intrusion detection, and security for systems that interact with the physical world. He has more than 40 publications in the cybersecurity area, many of which are bridging the gap between theoretical and applied research, and he holds several patents. Dr. Lindqvist has previously served in various leading roles in the security research and engineering community, including chair of the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Committee on Security and Privacy and vice chair of the IEEE Cybersecurity Initiative. He holds a Ph.D. in computer engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and was named an SRI Fellow in 2016.

Jeff Wiemeri is the Manager of Space Systems Strategy & Advanced Concepts under the Space Mission Engineering Program Office of Sandia National Laboratories. In 2024. Jeff took this role where he manages Space Control programs and Sandia's Space-Cyber portfolio, which provides the National Security Space community with analysis, modeling and protype technologies to help assure US Space Warfighting dominance.

From 2015 to 2024, as Manager of Air & Space Defense, Jeff managed the development and delivery of advanced threat analysis, countermeasure capabilities, hypervelocity gun technologies and target and test rocket systems.

Prior to coming to Sandia in July 2015, Jeff was an officer in the United States Air Force. During his 21-year military career, Jeff led multiple developmental and advanced technology, prototype and classified programs at Air Force Research Laboratory and Air Force System Program Offices focused on Directed Energy, Space and Rocket systems. His final assignment was as Chief of the Air Force's Rocket Systems Launch Program.

Jeff's recognitions include: NNSA Administrator's Achievement Award in 2024, Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Stellar award in 2015, Air Force Outstanding Military Program Manager of the Year for 2013, and Air Force Outstanding Military Scientist of the Year for 2003.

Jeff earned his bachelor's degree from University of Notre Dame and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in 1994, he earned his master's from Air Force Institute of Technology and his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. All degrees were in Physics.