Joy is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Boone Group, a firm driving advancement and adoption of superior technologies within the national security, energy, and infrastructure markets. Prior to founding Boone, Joy worked in a variety of roles spanning federal and local governments and the private sector. Most recently, she served as a Senior Strategist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, where she was responsible for communications as it applied to the defense industrial base and international weapons program development. Joy also served as the primary speechwriter for the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics (AT&L) and was routinely sought after by communications teams for the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense for assistance on communications within the AT&L domain. In addition to leading growth and execution for Boone, Joy is a Board Member for the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, a certified yoga instructor, mentor for transitioning servicemen and women and their families, and spends much of her free time training as a USA boxing amateur for an annual charity boxing match benefiting the military and veteran communities. Megan Lacy is the co-founder of Lumineye, which builds through-wall sensors to help first responders and soldiers find people and threats through walls and barriers. Lumineye went through Y-Combinator and currently works with DHS, the Air Force and the Army. Outside of Lumineye, Megan is the race director of Boise Front Trail Run, a volunteer-led trail race that donates all proceeds to Boise's local trail system. Megan also owns & operates Fleet Feet Meridian with her fiancé, a local run specialty store. Outside of work, Megan is an elite mountain and trail runner that has been selected to compete for Team USA two times. She will be competing for Team USA as part of the NACAC Mountain Championship on September 16th, 2023. To follow along with her running career, you can follow her on Instagram and Strava. 

Joe Billingsley serves as the Director of Strategic Engagement at the National Defense University (NDU) College of Information and Cyberspace (CIC), where he focuses on forging and sustaining relationships with a diverse array of critical stakeholders to support the organization's educational mission. He is also the creator of the National Service Panel at the DEF CON hacker conference, founder of the nonprofit Military Cyber Professionals Association (MCPA), an Adjunct Professor and Cyber Intelligence Advisor at the Institute of World Politics (IWP), Special Advisor of the peer-reviewed journal Military Cyber Affairs (MCA), and creator of the Cyber Embassy Night event series in Washington, DC. He has been Adjunct Faculty at the George Washington University, Advisor of the Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI), and Fellow at the Center for Network Innovation and Experimentation (CENETIX). He is a former U.S. Army Strategist (Functional Area 59), Signal Corps Officer, and Cyber Operations Officer. In uniform, he had served in various executive and staff positions at each echelon from Platoon to General Staff. His expeditionary activities included a 15 month Surge deployment to Iraq as part of the 1st Armored Division (Multi-National Division - North), engagement activities in the former Warsaw Pact, being underway on the Mediterranean Sea aboard the USS Mount Whitney during the Arab Spring, and earning the highest level of the Military Proficiency Badge from the Bundeswehr. He is a graduate of programs at the Naval War College, Army War College, Military Intelligence School, and Army School of Information Technology. He holds a BA in History from the University of Connecticut, where he founded the History Club. Selected as the first Army Cyber Scholar, he was one of the first graduates of the Naval Postgraduate School's MS in Cyber Systems and Operations. He also has a graduate certificate in Cyber Wargaming and is pursuing a PhD. Links: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joebillingsley/ https://cic.ndu.edu/ https://public.milcyber.org/ https://www.iwp.edu/

Sarah Adams is an award-winning targeting officer and global threat advisor with extensive domestic and international experience. She is the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the Ukraine NGO Coordination Network (UNCN). UNCN is an umbrella organization using a "Team of Teams" concept to bring together over 40 international NGOs to aid humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.   With a career that has spanned the government, private and non-profit sectors, she has worked overseas on behalf of the U.S. Government's intelligence mission in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Most recently, she led Department of Defense (DoD) research and development efforts to discover, incubate, and deliver innovative solutions to complex national security challenges. Previously, served as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. House of Representatives after being recruited as an executive appointment out of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). She is also the co-author of Benghazi: Know Thy Enemy, a cold case, open source investigation into the al-Qa'ida terrorists who attacked the U.S Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi in 2012.   She holds a Master's Degree in International Relations from the University of San Diego and a Bachelor's of Science in International Business from the University of Central Florida. BOOK: Benghazi: Know Thy Enemy NGOs Mentioned: Afghanistan--Heart of an Ace (HOAA) Ukraine--Ukraine NGO Coordination Network (UNCN)  Moral Compass Federation 

Camille Tuutti’s journalism career in Washington, D.C., may have begun in earnest in 2008, but she has always been a storyteller. Growing up in Sweden, Camille had one dream and one dream only: to be a journalist. At age 5, Camille told her mom about her career plans — a goal she remained laser-focused on until she snagged her first reporting job. After Camille left Sweden to pursue her dream, she spent a few years in London and New York City honing her reporting skills. Eventually, she landed in D.C., where she began covering the government contracting industry and the federal government’s use of technology. With her natural knack for storytelling and captivating ledes, it didn’t take long for Camille to rise through the ranks, leading some of the area’s top government technology publications. In 2018, Camille launched Tuutti Frutti Strategies, an editorial consultancy that creates content for tech companies targeting government audiences. Camille’s 14 years of experience in tech journalism gives her a unique understanding of the pain points in government and how industry can help ease them. She’s able to narrate the connections between the exact challenges government faces and how tech brands can solve them with their services and solutions. Camille firmly believes every person and every business has a story worth telling — a compelling, unique narrative that can set them apart in a noisy marketplace. Camille’s goal is to help tell those stories in a way that reaches and resonates with her clients’ target audiences.  Camille is a frequent moderator, panelist and speaker. She serves as an adviser to BingeBuilderX, which helps creators and creative organizations turn intellectual property into digital-asset-based communities. She's also the co-host of the upcoming podcast "Technocracy," which highlights cool people doing cool stuff in tech. When Camille isn’t working, she enjoys traveling, working out and spending time with family, friends and her rescue French bulldog. If you’re looking for her on a Sunday morning, you’ll most likely find her at a local coffee shop or in the yoga studio.

Adam is a serial entrepreneur who has spent his 26-year career running, fund-raising for, investing in, coaching and mentoring startup companies. He has raised money from a wide variety of sources including strategic venture capital, venture debt, friends and family, and a U.S. government intelligence agency. As a very junior VC, Adam had one positive exit. He co-founded, ran and sold betterVote.com in 2000 as the dot-com bubble burst. Valid Eval was born of Adam's frustration with poor learning outcomes for companies competing for grants, prizes and acceptance into accelerator programs.

Josh has been working with friends to launch a new social platform for audio. See a demo or signup here: https://laceapp.xyz

Adam Hesch is a US Navy veteran with a passion for the intersection between veterans and technology. In March of 2015 he joined UPLIFT Aeronautics as the social media manager and head of the digital fundraising team, where he led the effort that raised over $35,000 via the IndieGoGo crowdfunding platform. UPLIFT Aeronautics is a non-profit based out of Stanford, California that is developing humanitarian aid delivery drones (featured on the BBC, NPR, Washington Post, Fast Company, and more).  Adam actively networks to build meaningful relationships with veterans across industry, with a focus on tech. To this end, he has attended the TechStars Patriot Boot Camp; Stanford Graduate School of Business Post-9/11 Veterans IGNITE program; VetTechTrek tech-immersion trip; and has been a speaker at the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. He is also learning iOS app development via the bloc.io veteran’s scholarship, and helps with business development for stubble & stache, a veteran-owned beard care company (featured on CNN and Washington Post) where 15% of proceeds go to veterans struggling with the mental wounds of war.  In the Navy he was a surface warfare officer and graduate of the US Naval Academy, the Defense Language Institute, Navy Dive school, and Army Mountain Warfare school.

Ben’s mission is to promote widespread and sustainable human flourishing by empowering talented individuals to drive innovation within large organizations. While on active duty with the U.S. Navy as an F/A-18 Super Hornet pilot, Ben founded the Chief of Naval Operations Rapid Innovation Cell. This effort formally linked technologically savvy junior officers to four star admirals for the first time. The CRIC sponsored cutting edge technology programs, such as putting 3D printers on ships and fundamentally reshaping maritime cyber defense efforts. Ben’s leadership was chronicled in Adam Grant’s NYT best-selling book “Originals.” He later helped stand up the Defense Innovation Unit (Experimental) in Silicon Valley.  Ben also co-founded and led the non-profit Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. Now in it’s 8th year, DEF has a membership of over 2,500 military innovators across three continents. DEF hosts national and regional design thinking events for defense innovators, shaping many entrepreneurial and personnel reform efforts within DoD.  In his current professional capacity, Ben is an engagement manager at McKinsey & Co, focused on transformational change within the energy and public sectors. He has driven front-line operator reforms within railroads and pipeline companies in addition to helping public sector clients rethink legacy acquisition strategies. Most recently, his work has focused on COVID-crisis response efforts within a large US city and an elite East Coast University.  Ben received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Tillman Scholar and helped found Hacking 4 Defense. He was a 2018 Presidential Leadership Scholar and 2020 Leadership Dallas fellow. In his free time, he hosts “A Random Walk with Ben Kohlmann,” a weekly podcast featuring interviews with a wide range of experts, including astronauts, architects, and policy reformers.

Jason Criss Howk has spent over 30 years in the national security arena in defense, diplomacy, and intelligence roles. He educates, writes, and speaks about Afghanistan, Interfaith issues, Islam, and other foreign policy and national security topics.  He holds a Master’s degree in Middle Eastern and South-Asian studies, was a term-member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a Malone Fellow in Arab and Islamic Studies.  He also studied Afghan Farsi (Dari) and Arabic, and has published numerous works on the Broader Middle East and Islam. Jason is currently a national security and career advice columnist at Clearance Jobs News and a professor of Islamic and Afghan studies at the Air Force Special Operations School. He has bylines in over two dozen journals and magazines and regularly appears on news outlets to discuss Afghanistan.   Jason has worked on Afghanistan since 2002 assisting the most senior Generals, Ambassadors, and policy-makers in building the Afghan National Army; developing the International Security Sector Reform (SSR) program in Kabul; conducting the U.S. and NATO strategic assessment of the Afghan War in 2009; helping the Afghan government create an Afghan Peace, Reintegration, and Reconciliation policy; and also leading two teams that monitored Afghanistan and Pakistan issues for senior Defense and Joint Staff leaders and the National Security Staff at the White House. He continues to monitor Afghanistan and advise various entities on conflict resolution and security prospects. In his spare time Jason works on conflict resolution and tolerance building as an interfaith leader. In 2017 he published an award-winning chronological modern-English interpretation of the Qur’an.

Kevin Landtroop is a leader and entrepreneur with 20+ years of National Security experience. Having founded, designed, and executed programs connecting startups, DoDX, VC, academic research, and defense industry, including the Center for Defense Innovation at Capital Factory and the Texas Defense Innovation Forum, Kevin has emerged as a plankholder for the national security innovation ecosystem centered in Austin Texas (ATX). A founding moment for DoDX came in Austin in early 2018: DIUx had completed its first full year, AFWERX was in launch, and the Army announced that Army Futures Command would be activated – all in ATX. Kevin founded the Texas Defense Innovation Forum to scale this effort and bring more educational resources and meaningful connections for the assembling mass of dual-use tech startups. In early 2019, Capital Factory opened the Center for Defense Innovation and Kevin joined Vice President, providing greater reach to core programs he designed, such as Defense Academy and SBIR Accelerator. Kevin left to help launch SGS, the DoD-focused spinout of applied Artificial Intelligence powerhouse SparkCognition.  Prior to coming to ATX, Kevin served the Army as a Soldier, lawyer, strategist, and leader. Kevin holds a B.S. from West Point (1998), a Juris Doctor (JD) from the University of Texas School of Law (2005), and a Master of Laws (LL.M) from the Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School (2010) (concentration in National Security and government contracts). He has two operational deployments, leading a platoon of cavalry in Srebrenica, Bosnia in 2000 and serving as National Security Law advisor to an Army Brigade in Al Anbar, Iraq from 2007-2008. Kevin helped rebuild Iraqi criminal justice institutions for Al Anbar Province and performed National Security Law reviews for over 500 detained terrorist suspects.