situational-awareness
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Akshay Birla Makes a Career of Asking What Happens Next
From an economics classroom to healthcare technology, a curious interview podcast and the operational edge of emergency management, Akshay Birla has built his career around a deceptively practical question: how do people coordinate when the stakes rise?
Ryan Litt Is Turning the Fireground’s Two-Radio Problem Into One Clear Picture
A fire chief once held a radio to each ear and listened for panic. Ryan Litt saw a product brief hiding in that impossible ritual - then built FLORIAN to make emergency scenes legible.
The Grid Has a User Interface. Michael Legatt Wants It to Remember the Human.
A quarter-fed dryer, a continent-scale blackout and two doctorates led Michael Legatt to a stubborn idea: the safest power grid is designed around the people watching it.
Garrett Smith
Garrett Smith is the founder and CEO of Reveal Technology, a Bozeman, Montana defense-tech company that turns drone video into offline 3D maps and runs mobile biometrics on a phone at the tactical edge. A former U.S. Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer who still serves in the reserves, Smith built the company he wished he had in combat, where he was making high-stakes decisions off pen-and-paper maps in a digital war. Reveal's Farsight and Identifi platforms are used by U.S. Special Operations, the Army, the Marines, and allied forces in Ukraine, the UK, and Israel. In July 2025 the company closed a $30 million Series B led by Ballistic Ventures.
James Kubik
James Kubik is the co-founder and CEO of Somewear Labs, a San Francisco company building satellite-and-mesh communications hardware and software for teams that operate where cell towers end. A Northwestern product-design engineer and former Intuit product leader, he launched Somewear in 2017 after a childhood friend drowned in a Lake Michigan sailing accident with no way to call for help. Somewear's pocket-sized devices - Relay and the hybrid mesh/satcom Node - now serve every U.S. Department of Defense service, federal agencies, wildland firefighters, and backcountry explorers. The company raised a $13.7M Series A in 2022 backed by a roster of Fortune 500 CEOs.