Jim Hunt, on three things he would tell any entrepreneur, and co-investing with In-Q-Tel

Summary

Jim Hunt began his career in Washington in the mid 70’s as a U.S. Government scientist. After eight years with the government, he founded “BDS, Incorporated” where he served as CEO for ten years. In 1991, BDS was merged with BTG, Incorporated and Jim assisted in the integration of the two companies. In 1992, BTG was taken public in a successful offering. Jim also served on the BTG board of directors.

Subsequent to his tenure at BDS/BTG, Jim went to Price Waterhouse where he started and ran the firm’s system integration practice. After two years at PW, Jim was recruited away with 17 PW colleagues and founded “Ernst & Young Technologies” (EYT), where he was CEO for eight years. EYT was subsequently sold to Cap Gemini and Jim served as President of Cap Gemini Technologies for two years, leaving Cap Gemini in 2006.

After leaving Cap Gemini Technologies, with two colleagues, Jim founded “The MITA Group” a Washington-based consultancy focused on public affairs and business strategy.

Jim began his angel investing activities in the mid 1990’s after the successful BTG IPO, with five investments in area companies. After over 25 years of seed stage investing, he expanded his portfolio since the early 2000’s to the present over 120 early stage investment. Jim sits on numerous corporate boards. He has exited over 30 investments over the past ten years, the last of which was January of 2019.

Jim’s investments are in the area of cyber and physical security, Internet-of-Things, data center management, social media, analytics, and mobile applications.

As an active member of multiple angel groups and managing partner of “Lavrock Ventures”, a recently formed early stage venture capital firm, Jim spends a significant amount of his time scouting for world-class, game changing technology.

In addition to his investing activities, Jim serves as a consultant to both government and corporate organizations in the area of overall strategy, product commercialization, channel strategies and M&A strategies.

Jim has been an Adjunct Professor at the McDonough School at Georgetown for the past 20 years as well as at Notre Dame and teaches cornerstone courses in business planning and start-up business management and investing. He has also created and taught courses to international angels and entrepreneurs and has successfully launched four overseas ventures in the past several years, with particular emphasis on technology incubation in developing countries.

Jim is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Rochester Institute of Technology and sits on the Notre Dame Engineering College Advisory Council. Additionally, Jim is a past president of the Computing Industry Technology Association.

Gordon Sumner Ph.D., on puppies, veteran transition, and serving as DASD for two administrations

Summary

Gordon Sumner, PhD, is the President & CEO of Veterans Moving forward, a nonprofit providing service and emotional support dogs to veterans at no cost. He is also the founder of Gordon Sumner Consulting, a Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business and American Indian Small Business. A member of the Santee Tribe, Dr. Sumner has supported various veteran supportive nonprofits, small veteran owned, and service-disabled veteran owned small businesses.

Dr. Sumner previously served as the National Director for the National Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR). As a presidential appointee and member of the Senior Executive Service serving at the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense level, he provided executive leadership to the largest volunteer organization within the Department of Defense comprised of over 5000 uniformed military, government civilians, defense contractors and volunteers.

During his military career, Dr. Sumner served in a variety of Infantry and Aviation command and staff positions around the world. After retiring from the US Army as a Colonel select in 1997 as the Division Chief, Army Training, Pentagon, Washington, DC, Gordon served as Managing Director, SYColeman.

Gordon currently serves as a Member, Graduate School Advisory Council, Auburn University; a Senior Fellow and Affiliate Faculty, George Mason University; Scholar, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and, Senior Fellow, George Mason University.

He holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Adult Education from Madison University, MBA from Auburn University, a Master of Education from Boston University and a BS, Music Performance and Music Education, Jacksonville State University. He is also a Graduate at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Dr. Sumner, a decorated combat veteran, is the recipient of the Bronze Star Medal (V), Purple Heart Medal, and Air Medal. He also holds the Army Master Aviator badge, the Master Parachutist badge and the Ranger Tab.

Karl Schlegel, on how King Kong saved the Empire State Building, NASCAR of the skies, and using A.I. to raise capital

Summary

Karl is Co-Founder of NeedCapial.AI. He also led a media company from launch to the Inc. 500 as Chairman in 2015. While holding positions within venture capital and family offices, Karl has advised projects across a multi-billion-dollar portfolio.

James Pitcher, grew up the oldest of 9 in a 3 bedroom house, and achieved his dream of becoming a contracting officer … what’s next?

Summary

TSgt James Pitcher (USAF) is a Contracting officer, formerly assigned to the 21st Contracting Squadron, supporting the newly established U.S. Space Force, Peterson-Schriever Garrison, Colorado. He was selected for the Defense Ventures Fellow program and supported Harpoon Ventures, a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.  He has served as Team Lead of the Business Intelligence Competency Cell (BICC), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

Shoutout to The Merge newsletter by Mike Benitez and Eric Lofgren’s Acquisition Talk Podcast

Joy Schoffler, on Life in a Commune, Real Estate Investing, Emerging Technology and National Security Venture Investing

Summary

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 Bray, on why Garlic won’t cure COVID, lighting fingernails on fire, and leading people to become problem solvers

Summary

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, on Preventing Veteran Suicide, Deploying to Afghanistan, and the Entrepreneurial Journey

Summary

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

Trailer

Summary

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.