DMV Rising 2023: A Look at Last Year

John Ackerly

Co-Founder and CEO, Virtru

As CEO and Co-Founder of Virtru, John is a long time privacy advocate. Prior to co-founding Virtru, John was an investor at Lindsay Goldberg LLC, working with entrepreneurs to dramatically scale their businesses. John also served as the lead technology policy advisor at the White House National Economic Council and was the Policy and Strategic Planning Director at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

John graduated from Williams College, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Alex Berry

President, Sonatype

Berry serves as Sonatype's president, focused on operational excellence. He is an award-winning executive with more than 20 years of experience transforming and growing global businesses, taking organizations from $30 million to over $1.3 billion. As Sonatype continues to expand its cloud offerings, his remarkable history of operational excellence across all SaaS business functions at companies like Vector Solutions, Syniti, and Neustar will be an unrivaled asset. Berry’s teams have sold and delivered more than $10 billion in cloud-based and enterprise software solutions.

John Funge

Managing Partner, DataTribe

John Funge is the Managing Director of DataTribe. He has co-founded and built three successful technology firms, all of which have been acquired by larger companies: Clara Vista acquired by CMGI (1999), Pickle.com acquired by Scripps Networks (2007), and BrightContext acquired by WealthEngine (2014).

John started his career as a software developer around the time the Mosaic browser was first released in the early 1990’s. His experience spans a wide range of markets including cybersecurity, digital media, telecommunications, television, healthcare, and disaster response. Earlier in his career, John has held management, sales and engineering roles at Sapient, Bell Atlantic and Pulse Technologies. Johns holds a BS in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and received an MBA from INSEAD.

Andy Hunn

Founder & President, Absaroka Advisors

Andy Hunn has nearly 30 years of leadership experience driving success in high-growth technology companies in the DMV region. Through a series of roles with responsibility for strategy, business development, corporate development, and strategic partnerships, he has helped build pioneering companies across a diversity of tech sectors, including AdTech/Martech, SaaS, Cybersecurity, Cloud, and Big Data/AI.

Mr. Hunn is Founder & President of Absaroka Advisors, a strategic advisory firm providing digital transformation, business strategy, and M&A advisory services for venture-backed technology startups. Previously, Mr. Hunn was co-founder & Chief Operating Officer of Resonate, an big data/AI-driven software company delivering deep consumer insights to leading brands like Disney, A&E, AFLAC,  and many of the largest global ad agencies. Resonate was acquired by private equity in 2022. 

Katherin D. Ledesma

Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs, Dragos

Katherine D. Ledesma leads public policy and government affairs for Dragos. She is a former Senior Advisor at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Infrastructure Protection. She has also held positions at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) the U.S. Department of State.

Gray Loftin

Director, Solutions Architecture, National Security Solutions

Gray is a founding member of Flashpoint National Security Solutions where he oversees a team of solutions architects. He has 16 years of experience supporting national security efforts, working in the private sector and directly with the U.S. Intelligence Community. Spending the majority of his time, 10 years, in the USIC, deployed and embedded with Special Forces, among other agencies. Gray’s background includes electronic warfare, TIO, analysis, and Human Intelligence (HUMINT).

Coleman Mehta

Senior Director, U.S. Policy, Palo Alto Networks

Coleman Mehta serves as Senior Director, U.S. Policy, at Palo Alto Networks. In this role, he is responsible for the company’s engagement on public policy issues such as cybersecurity and data privacy, IT modernization, cloud computing, high-skilled immigration, and more.

Coleman previously worked as a career civilian U.S. government official at the White House National Security Council, serving as Director for Legislative Affairs. He led the NSC's legislative strategy on cybersecurity and technology issues – including encryption policy and data privacy – plus other homeland security, intelligence, and foreign policy issues. Prior to his tenure at the White House, Coleman worked at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, leading the Department’s negotiations with Congress on several high-profile cybersecurity bills,including the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, Federal Information Security Modernization Act, and National Cybersecurity Protection Act.

A security fellow of the Truman National Security Project and former Presidential Management Fellow, Coleman was named a 2018 “Tech Titan” by Washingtonian magazine. He holds degrees from North Carolina State University, the University of Virginia, and Bard College at Simon’s Rock.

Fahd Patel

Of Counsel, Morrison Forrester

Fahd H. Patel is Of Counsel in the firm’s Intellectual Property Group. Fahd focuses his practice on intellectual property litigation before the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in district courts, as well as post-grant proceedings at the U.S. Patent Office.

Fahd works on developing case theories throughout the life cycle of a case, from complaint to trial. He frequently works with technical experts, has taken and defended expert depositions, and has prepared multiple experts for deposition and trial. He also prepares case dispositive briefs, performs case management duties, and handles offensive and defensive discovery.

John Sahlin, Ph.D.

Vice President, Cyber Solutions, GDIT

Dr. Sahlin leads GDIT’s strategic planning, client engagement, and capability development for enterprise cyber solutions and zero trust architectures supporting defense agencies. He manages a team of cybersecurity and systems architects who apply state of the art cyber capabilities to achieve cybersecurity readiness and resilience.

Jeremy Schroop

Partner, King & Spalding

Jeremy Schropp is a partner in King & Spalding’s Corporate, Finance and Investment Practice.  He focuses on full life-cycle representation of technology and emerging growth companies in a variety of sectors, including aerospace, defense, government services, cybersecurity, data analytics, clean technology, education, software and communications.

Revi Sterling

Senior Technical Director, Digital Inclusion at CARE

Keith Stone

Managing Director of Private Investments, Brown Advisory

Keith is a partner, member of the Executive Team and managing director of private investments at Brown Advisory. Keith serves as a Portfolio Manager and leads the firm’s venture capital investments, overseeing more than $1 billion of commitments across funds, co-investments and direct investments.