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.

After fifteen years at Dell and a founder turn in public-sector AI, Kelli Furrer took on a stranger brief: make the crowded space above us understandable, useful, and worth acting on.