Jon 'Irish' Hawkins is an Australian Defence Force veteran of 25 years, SAS-trained officer, and the founder of Omni Executive - one of Australia's fastest-growing sovereign defence companies. Starting from an idea at his kitchen table in 2012, he built Omni into a 400+ person operation spanning aerospace, consulting, security, maritime and vetting, with around $100 million in annual turnover. A fierce advocate for truly Australian-owned defence capability, he stepped back from the CEO role in February 2026 to serve as Chair of Omni's Board.
Yinon Weiss is a serial entrepreneur, decorated military veteran, and the Founder and CEO of Stress-Free Auto Care - a tech-enabled auto repair chain with 30+ locations across California and Texas. Before Stress-Free, he co-founded RallyPoint (the 'LinkedIn for the military') and CarDash (a transparent auto repair marketplace that went through Y Combinator S17 and was acquired). A UC Berkeley bioengineering grad with a Harvard MBA, Weiss served 10 years on active duty as a Marine Corps Scout/Sniper Platoon Commander and Army Special Forces officer, earning the Bronze Star before transitioning to Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.
Matt Goldman is a General Partner at J2 Ventures, a Boston-based early-stage VC firm backing dual-use technologies at the intersection of commercial markets and U.S. national security. A retired U.S. Air Force Colonel with 22+ years of service, he served as the founding Chief Medical Officer of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), bridging commercial innovation with defense applications. Simultaneously, he is a practicing pediatric gastroenterologist and Clinical Assistant Professor at Stanford Children's Health - an almost singular combination of MD, military officer, and venture capitalist. J2 Ventures has raised three funds totaling $468M+ and backed 35+ startups including two unicorns: Oura and Apex Space.
Frank Ferrante is the CEO of ForwardEdge ASIC, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary dedicated to advancing U.S. domestic semiconductor chip design. A 30-year veteran of the semiconductor industry, Ferrante has held leadership roles at Intel (Senior Director of Military, Aerospace and Government), Wolfspeed (VP of Worldwide Automotive Sales and Marketing), and Altera. He is a vocal advocate for U.S. advanced manufacturing policy, having advised policymakers on the CHIPS Act, SHIP, and RAMP-C initiatives. Under his leadership, ForwardEdge ASIC achieved U.S. Government Trusted IC Vendor Status in February 2026 and selected the MIPS S8200 for mission-critical autonomous platform ASICs.
Ross Shuel is Network Operations Partner at a16z Crypto, the crypto-focused arm of Andreessen Horowitz. A West Point graduate and former U.S. Army Ranger with seven years of military service including a deployment to Afghanistan, Shuel brought a systems-thinker's discipline to crypto governance. At a16z Crypto, he helps portfolio companies navigate the full arc of decentralized governance - from network launch and governance design to on-chain participation as protocols mature. He co-authored research on application token economics and has appeared on the web3 with a16z podcast discussing DAO governance attacks. His ENS identity, shuel.eth, reflects his deep embeddedness in the on-chain world he helps shape.
Leslie Riley is an Analyst at Right Side Capital Management (RSCM), a quantitative pre-VC investment firm in San Francisco that has made 2,000+ early-stage bets since 2012. She brings a rare combination: West Point grad, seven-year Army Aviation officer who flew CH-47D Chinooks over Kosovo and South Korea, then reinvented herself as a facilitator, keynote speaker, and leadership coach for Fortune 500s and federal agencies before landing in venture. She's also a published author, founder of The Penny Project (which has raised $4,800+ for charity), an ultra-marathoner, and creator of the Lead Like a Girl community for women in leadership.
Caitlin Doornbos is a Washington D.C.-based political journalist and war correspondent for the New York Post, specializing in national security, foreign policy, and military affairs. A Kansas native, she built her career from local crime reporting to embedded battlefield dispatches in Ukraine, earning the Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence in 2025. She previously served as Stars and Stripes' Pentagon reporter and Indo-Pacific correspondent based at Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan, and was part of the Orlando Sentinel team that was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for coverage of the Pulse nightclub shooting.