Joy Schoffler, Principal of Distinctive Edge Partners, is an award-winning global communications and investor relations strategist, with decades of experience building, scaling and protecting global public and private brands.  Clients she has worked with have raised billions in capital, went from start-up to exit, built and scaled cutting edge technologies, executed profitable M&As, grew international sales and distribution channels, closed major customers and created significant share-holder value.  Joy founded and sold strategic marketing and communications firm Leverage PR which worked across technology, financial services and promoted global innovation by representing the Economic Ministries of Japan and Brazil and SXSW, among others. The firm also served numerous financial services firms, resulting in significant AUM increases.  She has devised strategies which educated global markets on blockchain’s applicability outside of bitcoin, worked across hardware, IOT, financial technology and extensively within the artificial intelligence space across both robotics and process automation.  As a financial services leader, Joy sat on the investment committee at Ascendant Industries, evaluating middle market cybersecurity, defense, maritime and engineering technology companies. She served as the Chief Strategy Officer for Casoro Capital. There she built and led the investor relations team which was responsible for raising capital for direct investments ranging from $18-80M and was responsible for building an award-winning, tech-enabled, public non-traded REIT, Upside Avenue. Built at a fraction of the cost of competitors, it won CREs’ best new online capital raising platform and created successful acquisition channels for retail, RIA and institutional investors. As Director of Acquisitions for The PPA Group, she underwrote and acquired $250M in real estate, helped grow the firm from 4 to 75 employees—making the “Inc. 5000” list, twice.  Past and current board positions include SXSW & AARP Accelerator, FinTech Professionals Association and spent 4 years with CFIRA working with the SEC and FINRA on JOBS Act implementation, enabling online investing as we know it today.  A sought-after speaker and media contributor, Joy won numerous awards including Women Communicators “Outstanding Communicators”, CEO Magazine “Entrepreneur of the Year” and Austin Under 40 award. Joy served as an officer in the Army Reserves & Texas State Guard.

Dr. David A. Bray is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center. He has served in a variety of leadership roles in turbulent environments, including bioterrorism preparedness and response from 2000-2005, time on the ground in Afghanistan in 2009, serving as the non-partisan executive director for a bipartisan National Commission on R&D, and providing leadership as a non-partisan federal agency senior executive. He accepted a leadership role in December 2019 to incubate a new global Center with the Atlantic Council. He also provides strategy to both boards and start-ups espousing human-centric principles to technology-enabled decision making in complex environments. He was also named a senior fellow with the Institute for Human-Machine Cognition in starting in 2018. Business Insider named him one of the top “24 Americans Who Are Changing the World” under 40 and he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum for 2016-2021. From 2017 to the start of 2020, David served as executive director for the People-Centered Internet coalition chaired by Internet co-originator Vint Cerf, focused on providing support and expertise for community-focused projects that measurably improve people’s lives using the internet. He also was named a Marshall Memorial Fellow and traveled to Europe in 2018 to discuss Trans-Atlantic issues of common concern including exponential technologies and the global future ahead. Later in 2018, he was invited to work with the US Navy and Marines on improving organizational adaptability and to work with US Special Operation Command’s J5 Directorate on the challenges of countering misinformation and disinformation online. He has received both the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award and the National Intelligence Exceptional Achievement Medal. David enjoys creative problem solving. He began working for the US government at age 15 on computer simulations at a high-energy physics facility investigating quarks and neutrinos. In later roles, he designed new telemedicine interfaces and space-based forest fire forecasting prototypes for the Department of Defense. From 1998-2000 he volunteered as a part-time crew lead with Habitat for Humanity International in the Philippines, Honduras, Romania, and Nepal while also working as a project manager with Yahoo! and a Microsoft partner firm. Bray then joined as IT chief for the Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the program’s technology response to during 9/11, anthrax in 2001, Severe Acute Respiratory System in 2003, and other international public health emergencies. He later completed a PhD from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School and two post-doctoral associateships at MIT and Harvard in 2008. David likes to be a digital diplomat and a “human flak jacket” for teams of change agents working in turbulent environments. He volunteered in 2009 to deploy to Afghanistan to help “think differently” on military and humanitarian issues and in 2010 became a senior national intelligence service executive advocating for increased information interoperability, cybersecurity, and protection of civil liberties. In 2012, he became the executive director for the bipartisan National Commission for Review of Research and Development Programs of the United States Intelligence Community, leading an interagency team that received the National Intelligence Meritorious Unit Citation. He received both the Arthur S. Flemming Award and Roger W. Jones Award for Executive Leadership in 2013. He also was chosen to be an Eisenhower Fellow to meet with leaders in Taiwan and Australia on multisector cyber strategies for the “Internet of Everything” in 2015. He is the author of 40+ academic papers and published publications. David’s passions include complicated, near impossible missions involving humans and technology in challenging circumstances. Through the efforts of a team of “

Lito Villanueva is a first-generation Filipino-American immigrant, prior-USAF enlisted communications engineer, turned tech-entrepreneur. He has worked on intercontinental network engineering projects for clandestine joint special operations with the "DOD's Finest Communicators."  Lito started his entrepreneurial journey by building a suicide prevention tech company called battlebuddy. He then launched a technology company for last-mile communications and edge-computing. Book Recommendation:  The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Welcome all you back-of-the-napkin ninjas, you elevator pitch artists, build a jet while you fly it, school of hard knocks Heroes, Dreamers and Doers; join us in the foxhole, in the arena of life.  This is the Graham Plaster Podcast, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, and leaders; and the origin stories that made them who they are today.