2024    

Bohdan Volyanyuk

Conference Chair

Bohdan Volyanyuk is a second-year MBA student at MIT Sloan. Prior to attending Sloan, Bohdan served in the US Army as an infantry officer in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Liz Lippie Rimmer

Conference Chair

Liz Lippie Rimmer is a student at Harvard Business School. She has eight years of naval operations experience as a U.S. Navy Surface Warfare Officer and she previously interned at Vannevar Labs.

Ben Buchheim-Jurrison

Conference Chair

Ben is a JD/MBA candidate at Harvard University. Prior to Harvard, Ben served as an Intelligence Officer for five years in the United States Air Force and worked at Meta.

Evan Long

Conference Chair

Evan Long is a dual master’s of mechanical engineering and MBA student at MIT. He will commission as an acquisitions officer in the Air Force Reserve with the rank of Captain after graduating this spring, but he plans to work in defense tech in DC for his full-time civilian job. Prior to MIT, Evan was a consultant at Bain & Company and worked on the strategy team at Supernal, an eVTOL startup. He traveled to Kyiv last summer to support a factory building vehicles and drones for the Ukrainian military.

Dansil Green

Dansil Green is a second year Master’s student in the Technology and Policy Program at MIT. Before MIT, Dansil worked as a civilian for the US Space Force and received her Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from California Polytechnic State University. She supports the Small Satellite Collaborative within the MIT AeroAstro Department. Her research in space technology and policy focuses on In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM).

Asad Akram

Asad is a mid-career MPA candidate at Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to HKS, he spent 4 years doing strategy/M&A consulting with KPMG serving industrials and energy clients. Asad is also a Reservist with the Army Futures Command focused on venture scouting and non-dilutive financing. He is a chemical engineer by training, and completed his MBA at Rice University in 2019.

Theo Squires

Theo Squires is a second-year MBA student at MIT Sloan. Prior to attending Sloan, Theo served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Australian Navy. While at MIT, Theo interned as a consultant at BCG and has worked as a research assistant for MIT Mission Innovation X.

Nicholas Hanson

Nicholas is an MBA/MPP candidate at Harvard University. He previously served as a ground intelligence officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, worked at Vannevar Labs, and served as a fellow on the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party.

Chelsea Conard

Chelsea is a student in the MIT Technology and Policy Program (TPP), concentrating in cybersecurity policy. She is researching cyber risk quantification at MIT's Internet Policy Research Initiative (IPRI) and working as a threat analyst with the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA). Her past work in cybersecurity spans SRC (strategy, risk and compliance), intelligence, networking, and cloud.

Mark Betzel

Mark is a current HBS MBA student and a former test director and pilot for the USMC. He spent the past summer as a behaviors engineer at Shield AI.

Zach Zimmerman

Zach Zimmerman is an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. He previously served in the U.S. Army as a Cyber Warfare Officer at U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

Irena King

 Irena King is an innovative medical researcher and entrepreneur, with a deeply rooted passion for improving the lives of individuals who face significant health challenges and empowering medical professionals. Irena is currently completing her PhD in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics with a concentration in Brain and Cognitive Sciences in the MIT and Harvard Medical School Health Sciences and Technology (HST) Program.

Clif Luber

Clif Luber was a Supply and Logistics Officer in the Navy for 9 years. After the Navy, he worked at Anduril Industries on the Proposal and Capture team. He is currently a student at Harvard Business School.

Jasen Baker

Jasen is a current MBA student at Harvard Business School. Prior to school, Jasen spent 8 years in the U.S. Army as a Special Forces Medic in 1st Special Forces Group.

Tony Roa

Tony Roa is a Fellows student at MIT Sloan School of Management. He served as a Submarine Officer on Virginia Class Subs then in defense technology at Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Draper Labs.

Angelique Talmor

Angelique Talmor is a final-year MPP/MBA candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School and MIT Sloan. She has been a visiting research fellow at the Hudson Institute and a Krauthammer Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her writings on foreign policy and politics have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and City Journal. Before graduate school, Angelique worked at Capgemini and in the French government.

Sam Laney

Sam Laney is a second-year SM candidate studying in the ALFA group of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) as a Draper Scholar. Sam is a 2022 Graduate of the United States Naval Academy and an Active Duty Cryptologic Warfare Officer.

Austin Gray

Austin Gray is a defense entrepreneur advancing unmanned vessel technology for the US Navy. Gray previously worked in a drone factory in Ukraine and served as an intelligence officer. He is pursuing an MPA at Harvard.

Artem Sorokin

Artem is an MBA candidate on a Leave of Absence at MIT, Founder of Silicon Valley-based Cybersecurity and AI startup - CrackenAGI. Originating from Ukraine, Artem brings 12+ years of engineering experience in cybersecurity, software, and data science.

Louis McCullagh

Louis McCullagh is an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School. He previously served as a Cyber Operations Officer with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and as an Acquisitions Program Manager with Air Force Materiel Command.

Laura Ahmetaj

Laura is a first year MBA student at Harvard Business Schoool, and she studied Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at NYU and worked in Northrop Grumman’s Space Sector for 5 years where she spearheaded multimillion-dollar proposals and advocated for innovation in the space sector. Most Recently, she worked as an VC Investor at Marlinspike and executed market sizing analyses across various investment sectors, including cybersecurity, aerospace, space, autonomy & robotics, and AI/ML & data analytics.