Federal Innovators: Part II
They're using technology to keep track of millions of acres of federal lands, building robotic bees and drones the size of a hand, and making all technology accessible to people with disabilities. If you thought Part 1 of our Federal Innovators series was impressive, read on to be further wowed. We're excited to celebrate all of these innovators at our Leading Entrepreneurial and Federal Innovators event on June 11 in Crystal City.
Dana Marlowe
Principal Partner, Accessibility Partners
Company: Makes technology accessible and usable for people with disabilities by auditing products and providing feedback to manufacturers and federal agencies. Launched by Dana six years ago, the firm’s clients include Dell, Amazon, Kodak, the Kennedy Center, the Library of Congress and HHS.
Innovative project: Provides technical subject matter experts to the Library of Congress’ Braille and Audio Reading Download service. The free program provides recorded Braille books and magazines to anyone who can’t read print material. Other work has included making hundreds of HHS documents accessible to people with disabilities and doing a year-long audit of the Library of Congress to see how accessible it is by employees and patrons with disabilities.
Innovation inspiration: Keeping up with fast innovations in technology so people with disabilities don’t get left out.
Why this career: Grew up loving sign language and studied it and communications at a technical university. Realized how technology can be a huge game changer for people with disabilities and fell in love with accessibility, which is the "nexus where technology and disability advocacy intersect."
Hometown: New York
Why DC: Came after husband lost job in Austin during the tech bust and wanted to be closer to East Coast family.
First job: Mom-and-pop pharmacy clerk.
Free time: Listening to indie music, rocking out at concerts and coffee shops with friends, reading, art and travel
Family: Married 12 years; two sons (6 and 3)
Favorite vacation spot: Northwest corner of Costa Rica
Bucket list: Learn to fly a plane and traveling to countries where she doesn't speak the language or know the food on her plate.
Daily habit: Check in with mom on Facetime or phone.
Startling facts: Her first boyfriend was the real life Adam Goldberg from the ABC TV show The Goldbergs, rides a motorcycle, and interpreted for Billy Joel in concert three times.
Nate Fick
CEO, Endgame
Company: Cybersecurity software company that builds easy-to-use, intuitive, open products for commercial and federal customers. Company has had nine consecutive quarters of revenue growth, tripled sales from 2013 to 2014, and is on track to double this year. Endgame has 150 employees and is growing one person per week.
Innovative project: Solved security problems for the government at a global scale and helped equip agencies against some of the world’s most advanced cyber adversaries. Company's network of global sensors detected Shellshock vulnerability before anyone else.
Innovation inspiration: Love solving hard problems with creative people, who are willing to think big and fail fast and iterate.
Why this career: Joined the Marines out of college and was interested in security. Went to business school and focused on early-stage enterprises and worked as an operating partner for Bessemer Venture Partners. Endgame was the perfect intersection of interesting technology, an important mission and early-stage business growth.
Grew up: Baltimore
Why DC: Moved to DC when wife was awarded a White House fellowship in 2008.
First job: Pool life guard
Free time: Spend time with two small kids, running, reading and fly fishing.
Family: Married since 2007 and two daughters (5 and 3).
Favorite vacation spot: Maine coastline
Bucket list: Ride a bike across the country and hike the Appalachian trail.
Daily habit: Walk daughters to school.
Startling fact: People who knew me in the Marines are startled that I run a tech company and people who know me as a tech entrepreneur are startled that I was in the Marines.
Patrick Stingley
CTO, Bureau of Land Management
Job: Finding the right technology to manage BLM’s 245 million acres of federal land. Some of the technology includes LIDAR (light detection and ranging), communications that can work in the middle of the desert, and drones (imagine trying to manage millions of acres of land in a pickup truck). The IT budget ranges between $120M and $140M.
On the job: Since 2008
Innovative project: Developed a plan and cost model that could potentially save bureaus 60% of their IT budgets by embracing more current technologies, including cloud computing.
Inspiration for innovation: "We’re the government—we should do things better."
Why this career: Joined the Marines after college and ran an information management system office in Japan. (A quarter of the planet’s data came through the office at the time.) Decided one day to learn to program and taught himself one Saturday. Can program in 12 to 18 languages.
Grew up: Southern California
Why DC: "If you want to manage lots of computers, the government is your best chance, and your best chance of doing that is from DC."
First job: Dishwasher at Officer’s Club in Mechanicsburg, PA
Free time: Play with computers and currently refreshing Python programming skills.
Family: Three kids (10, 13, 16)
Favorite vacation: Rent an RV and take the kids to different places.
Life goal: To see cloud computing embraced and done well.
Daily habit: Bike 22 miles to work.
Startling fact: Co-authored the term "cloud computing," which was inspired by Patrick's work in telecom during the '90s.
Tom Suder
President, Mobilegov
Company: Launched in 2011, Mobilegov helps government agencies use mobile devices to enhance their mission. For example, the 22-person company provides security and the applications to replace paper-based processes with mobile applications. Revenue is projected to hit $5M this year.
Innovative project: Mobilegov helped create the idea for the Digital Government Strategy, a plan to make government information and services mobile and make government data available to the public to spur more innovation. Also launched the Advanced Technology Academic Research Center to spin technology out of federal and academic labs for use by other government agencies.
Innovation inspiration: Mom was a grammar teacher and passed down a love for reading, especially sci-fi stories. "Very cool to play a small part making their advancements happen in real life."
Why this career: Uncle was a serial entrepreneur and taught Tom basic engineering as a teen.
Grew up: Aliquippa, PA (near Pittsburgh)
Why DC: Moved to Vienna, VA, at age 9 after several steel mills closed. Grandfather was based in the DC area at the Pentagon.
First job: Busboy at a Herndon restaurant and McDonald’s—employee of the year in 1985.
Free time: Read sci-fi novels and world travel
Family: Son (16) and daughter (14)
Favorite vacation spot: Outer Banks
Bucket list: Son plays high school football, so would like to see him play in college. Daughter is top-ranked soccer player and would like to see her play in the Olympics.
Startling fact: Near photographic memory for faces, even ones he hasn’t seen in several years.
Geof Barrows
Founder, Centeye
Company: Makes vision-based chips, hardware and technology to allow small "nano" drones (size of your hand) fly in near earth environment without using GPS. Company has been focused on R&D since its 2000 launch and has the Air Force and DARPA as customers.
Innovative project: Made small, high-performance camera an IoT application that counted cars as they drove by and posted the results online to see the busiest points of the day for that particular street. Team also works with biologists studying how insects fly and perceive objects and used these insights to enable drones to do things like detect and avoid obstacles and hover in place, even in the dark and without GPS. And they worked on the Harvard Robo-Bee project, a five-year program to make a robotic bee. Team successfully made an eye weighing 50 milligrams that flew on an early Robo-Bee prototype.
Innovation inspiration: "Insects can fly around and perceive the environment and do it with such a small brain. If they can do it, why can’t we copy it?"
Why this career: Childhood idols were Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison. Always liked to make things.
Grew up: Father was in the Air Force, so all over, including Germany. He eventually retired in the DC area.
First job: Doorman at Fair City Mall movie theater in Fairfax City.
Free time: Walks in the woods, going on long drives through the hills, spending time with family, including precocious 3-year-old son, and listening to music.
Family: Married 11 years and son (3).
Favorite vacation spot: Anywhere on the Mediterranean Sea.
Bucket list: Make Centeye’s technology come together and seeing a million copies of it working flawlessly.
Daily habit: Make a morning cappuccino for wife and I.
Startling fact: Was a member of an African dance troupe 15 years ago.
Big thanks to our partners on this project: Eastern Foundry, KPMG, NeoSystems, Sheppard Mullin and JLL. Stay tuned for more profiles of DC's Federal Entrepreneurs and Innovators and sign up for our event to honor all of them.
