For decades, five prime contractors have controlled the lion's share of America's defense spending. Now, a wave of software-first companies led by product innovators like Seanna Senior is rewriting the rules of this almost trillion dollar game.
As Senior Vice President of Product at Govini, Senior is at the forefront of a movement that's bringing startup velocity and AI-powered intelligence to an industry notorious for its glacial pace. Her journey from Amazon's customer-obsessed product teams to the heart of defense innovation makes her one of the most compelling voices in the conversation about who will build America's next generation of defense capabilities.
Senior joins DMV Rising 2025's "Defense Tech Disruption: The Last Supper is Over" panel to share insights on how newcomers are successfully challenging contractors who've dominated since 1993's infamous consolidation mandate.
She bridges Silicon Valley innovation with Pentagon necessity. Senior's product leadership trajectory spans both worlds, from driving consumer-focused innovation at Amazon to building defense capabilities at Vannevar Labs and now Govini. This dual fluency in commercial tech speed and government requirements makes her a key architect of the new defense tech playbook that's attracting top engineering talent previously uninterested in defense work.
She's transforming how the government buys through AI-enabled software. At Govini, Senior leads product strategy for Ark, the company's groundbreaking defense acquisition platform that replaces manual workflows with AI-powered intelligence. By integrating commercial and government data streams, she's helping acquisition professionals make faster, smarter decisions, a direct challenge to the slow-moving processes that have historically favored incumbent contractors.
She brings institutional credibility with disruptive thinking. As a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations alongside her Harvard MBA and University of Pennsylvania degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Senior represents a new breed of defense leader. Her background at Morgan Stanley's capital markets division adds financial sophistication to understanding how venture-backed defense companies can leverage different capital structures to outmaneuver traditional primes.
Senior's work at Govini carries particular weight in the DMV region, where federal acquisition decisions shape billions in contracts and thousands of jobs. Based in Washington, DC, Govini sits at the epicenter of defense procurement reform, working directly with Pentagon leaders to accelerate acquisition timelines from years to months.
The "Defense Tech Disruption" panel will explore how companies like Govini and Anduril are rewriting the rules of defense contracting, leveraging software supremacy and data intelligence to compete against companies 100 times their size. Senior will share the stage with Jennifer Bird from Anduril and Charlie Katz from King & Spalding, with WestExec Advisors' Vikram Singh moderating this crucial conversation about the future of American defense innovation.