Speakers & Mentors

• 
  Chitra Sivanandam
  Exelis
  Enjoy scouting and developing new technologies and finding unusual synergies across disciplines. currently trying to leverage LSM methods to develop corporate innovation strategy.
• 
  Jabe Bloom
  TLC Labs
  Jabe Bloom is the CTO of The Library Corporation, as a creative technologist who specializes in managing innovation, Jabe has been leading teams and companies, developing software and products, for nearly 20 years. He is interested in strange problems.
• 
  Teague Hopkins
  THG
  Teague is the founder and principal of Teague Hopkins Group, a lean product development firm that helps entrepreneurial organizations of all sizes succeed faster and more often. In his free time, he plays with fire.
• 
  Danny Boice
  Speek
  Speek co-founder & CTO. Product & tech focused. Successful exit in 2000's (Jaxara). Former executive at The College Board. Harvard & MIT.
• 
  Sarge Salman, PhD
  Baltimore Lean Startup
  Sarge is going where no Lean has gone before. Working to solve product/market fit in society and rivers. Founder of Baltimore Lean Startup, Organizer of Startup Weekend Baltimore.
• 
  Tony Cappaert
  Contactually
  Tony is the co-founder & COO at Contactually. He was previously a PM on the Bing Ads (adCenter) team at Microsoft and an investment analyst at a social VC firm. He's an MIT alum and loves hiking, camping, and drinking great beer (his favorite is Pliny the Elder).
• 
  Steph Hay
  FastCustomer
  Stephanie Hay co-organizes the DC Lean Startup Circle, co-founded FastCustomer, and is a resident mentor (content & UX) at 500 Startups.
• 
  Brant Cooper
  The Lean Entrepreneur
• 
  Ben Willman
  ClientHat
  Ben has been involved with startups for fifteen years. He has been an active participant in the DC Lean Startup community and is working on his current startup ClientHat.
• 
  Mark McGovern
  Mobile System 7
  Founder of Mobile System 7 - Mark brings 20+ years of experience building, breaking, securing and investing in technology...for the good guys (i.e., Fortune 500 companies and the US Intelligence Community).
• 
  Frank DiMeo
  IQT
  Frank is currently a Vice President, Technical Staff in the Physical and Biological Technologies Practice at In-Q-Tel, where he evaluates new technologies from start-ups for their applicability to US Government applications. Prior to In-Q-Tel, Frank was a Principal Investigator working on semiconductor process development and MEMS sensor research, and has over 18 issued patents.
• 
  Carla Valdes
  The Fort VC
  Carla is a General Partner at Fortify.vc, co-creator of Distilled Intelligence, and a co-founder of the Accelerator known as 'The Fort' and is very active in the local DC tech scene.
• 
  Frank Taylor
  Restin, LLC
  Frank brings over 7 years of entrepreneurial experience to his current role as Founder & CEO of Restin, LLC. Frank also manages partnerships for Foster.ly and is a former LSM pitch competition winner.
• 
  Stephanie Rowe
  NEXT LLC
  Stephanie is founder of NEXT LLC, an innovation and human-centered design consulting firm. Organizer of Design Thinking DC, Mentor at The Fort.vc and obsessed with customer experience.