Announcing the Tech Executive Leadership Initiative Winter 2024 Leaders

The Aspen Institute’s Tech Policy Hub and the Tech Talent Project are thrilled to announce the 31 leaders who participated in our Winter 2024 Tech Executive Leadership Initiative (TELI). These leaders come from a wide variety of backgrounds; they serve as start-up executives, product chiefs, cyber professionals, engineering leads, and more. During their time in TELI, the leaders learned extensive policy and government leadership skills.  

The leaders are:

  • Dawn Comer, Executive Officer and Senior Director of Digital Inclusion and Innovation, Office of Mayor Karen Bass, for the City of Los Angeles
  • Dave Contreras, Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer at Brightbots
  • Sumant Dhall, Product Management Consultant and Former Associate Director of Product Management at Wayfair 
  • Luis H Gomez, Co-Founder and Chief Product and Innovation Officer at Stealth Startup 
  • Guillermo Fisher, Fractional Chief Technology Officer at Kuzaa LLC 
  • Lili Gangas, Chief Technology Community Officer at the Kapor Foundation
  • Kevin Gautreaux, Manager of OT/IoT Security at FedEx
  • Allan Gomo, Head of Cybersecurity at Hacker.Nexus 
  • Learie Hercules, Chief Executive Officer at Heft IQ and Lifelong Learning Labs 
  • Donnie Hasseltine, Vice President of Security at Second Front Systems
  • Vanessa Kaskiris, Director of People, Finance, and Administration at Stanford Impact Labs
  • Asha Keddy, Senior Technology Executive, Member of the Board of Directors at Smith Micro Software Inc. and Former Corporate Vice President at Intel
  • Nick Kotakis, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Third Party Risk at Northern Trust
  • Rebecca Lawler, Digital Innovation Executive and Former Vice President of Digital Product Management at Target Corporation
  • Ivy Teng Lei, Digital Strategy Leader and Former Vice President of Growth at Exygy 
  • Ted Mandelkorn, Product Management Leader and Founder of Product Path Consulting
  • George Mathew, Chief Medical Officer at Dedalus
  • Angela Mitchell, Product Innovation Leader and Former Senior Director of Technology at Comcast
  • Heather C Morelli, Software Engineering Leader and Former Vice President, Applications and Tools at Pantheon Systems
  • Kalyani Narayanan, Senior Director, Solutions Architecture at Moloco
  • Tatiana Pilon, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Brightbots 
  • Durreshahwar Qadir, Digital Strategy Consultant
  • Mel Reyes, Global Executive Coach, Trainer, and Keynote Speaker at Elite Technical Concierge
  • Gloria Romeo, Technology Executive and Former Senior Vice President of Product & Development at enGen
  • Raquel Romano, Former Senior Director of Engineering at Fora
  • Clyde Rodriguez, Founder of Ascend Logic and Former Vice President of Engineering and Head of Security at Meta Platforms
  • Leslie Scott, Chief Experience Officer, Advisor, and Founder at Coral Ring Consulting
  • Jodie Cadieux Twitchell, Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment Transformation Projects Director at Washington Technology Solutions
  • Nidhi Wadmark, Product Management Education Director at IBM
  • Sheetal Wrzesien, Marketing Technology Advisor at Google 
  • Janice Zdankus, Board Member, Start-up Advisor, Founder, and Former Vice President of Technology Strategy and Planning at Hewlett Packard Enterprise

TELI provides senior technology professionals with a unique leadership opportunity to strengthen their executive skills through real-world engagement with government problems. The Winter 2024 program began in February and ran through March. The leaders spent the first four weeks engaged in an intensive policy boot camp. They are now working in teams to tackle real-life policy projects in partnership with government clients. 

For more information about the TELI program and its leaders, see here. For a full press release, see here. To learn more about these representatives, you can read their bios here.