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Scott Kirby and the art of changing course
He wanted to fly fighter jets. He became an airline analyst instead. Now United’s CEO is betting that bigger planes, better information and a little less certainty can change the way people travel.
Cary Gunn Keeps Asking Silicon to Do More
The Air Force officer turned photonics founder helped move light onto chips, then carried the same insistence on small, fast systems into diagnostics and preventive care.
Nick Shelly
Nick Shelly is the co-founder and CEO of Apero Health, a Y Combinator-backed (S19) medical-billing and revenue-cycle company in San Francisco that helps healthcare practices get paid faster and gives patients clearer bills. Before software, he was a computer scientist with an unusually wide runway: a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, a Stanford CS researcher in computer networking, and an engineer at Apple, Nicira, and Forward Networks. He turned that systems-and-networks training toward one of the least glamorous, most broken corners of American life - the medical bill - and built Apero with co-founder Jacinda Shelly to fix the plumbing behind it.
Steve Gatena
Steve Gatena is the founder and CEO of Pray.com, the world's #1 app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content. A former NCAA football champion who won a Rose Bowl at USC, he built and sold a fast-growing video agency (REP Interactive) and ran a $150M aerial production company (Helinet) before the death of his business partner in a plane crash redirected his life toward faith. Launched in 2016, Pray.com became a leading destination for prayer, sermons, Bible stories narrated by celebrities, and faith community, raising more than $30M from investors including TPG Growth, Greylock Partners, Spark Capital, and Science Inc. In 2025 Gatena received the LA Times Executive Leadership Award.