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Rob Slaughter and the surprisingly serious business of waffles
Before he co-founded Defense Unicorns, Rob Slaughter cooked waffles for an Air Force software team. His career has kept returning to the same question: how do you help people get useful software where it needs to go?
Dan Holt and the business hidden inside the business
He built BillGO to make paying bills easier. The harder lesson was learning which parts of his own company to leave behind.
Mark Byers and the business of staying
Three brothers started DSS in a Colorado basement in 1991. Thirty-five years later, Mark Byers’s story runs through a federal customer, longtime colleagues and a seat on an Honor Flight.
Kristi Einhorn and the Small Promises That Make a Team
At Medtronic, Kristi Einhorn works across strategic partnerships, CEO communications, and operations. Her approach to trust begins with something more ordinary: remembering a name, keeping a commitment, and doing it again.
Jack Welde and the trouble with a perfectly good word
A software engineer, a former Air Force pilot, and a student of language, Jack Welde built Smartling around a familiar frustration: reaching the world is easier than making yourself understood.
Melanie Stricklan Knows Why Space Is Getting Small
A West Texas childhood led Melanie Stricklan to surveillance aircraft, a space startup, and the crowded business of keeping satellites apart. Now the Slingshot Aerospace co-founder is bringing that experience to national security programs at Vast.
Kyle Hanslovan and the customers nobody called
He knew how to break into a network. Building Huntress meant learning why a small business would pay him to keep someone else out.
Chase Lane and the art of coming home differently
Before taking charge of his family’s Phoenix agency, Chase Lane studied how complicated organizations work. Now the former Air Force officer is applying those lessons to a business where the family name comes with unfinished business.
Giles Whiting Has Spent a Career Looking for the Seams
The former Air Force physicist now leads Decisions, where his job is to make sure a rush of AI agents, rules, systems and people can behave like one accountable enterprise.
Vishaal Hariprasad Learned to Price the Invisible
He wanted to fly. Instead, a South Bronx math student learned how invisible networks move missions, markets, and money - then built a company where cybersecurity and insurance finally speak the same language.
Rosemary Johnston Built a Career Around What Others Couldn’t See
A whim took her into an Air Force recruiting office. Twenty-three years later, Rosemary Johnston had learned the enduring lesson of logistics: what you cannot see, you cannot command.
Chris Hughes
Chris Hughes is a U.S. Air Force veteran, co-founder and president of Aquia Inc., VP of Security Strategy at Zenity, and the founder of Resilient Cyber - a cybersecurity newsletter and podcast with 31,000+ subscribers. A three-time Wiley/Springer author, inaugural CISA Cyber Innovation Fellow, and adjunct professor at two universities, Hughes has become one of the most influential voices on software supply chain security, vulnerability management, and agentic AI security.