Vetted Risk Management Professionals

“Candidate brings an operator-to-founder profile with leadership experience in IT and Business Systems and a strong grasp of how ideas become venture-backable products. They speak fluently about startup evaluation criteria such as TAM, technical defensibility, speed to scale, and AI differentiation, and appear especially motivated by building solutions end-to-end in startup or venture studio environments.”

Gary Pulford

Screened ReferencesModerate rec.

Executive sales leader specializing in public sector SaaS, public safety, and SLED

Lafayette, CO26y exp

“National public sector sales leader with deep experience in public safety, broadband, and government modernization deals. Built organizations from the ground up, exceeded quota, maintained strong retention, and led complex partner-driven wins with Microsoft, AWS, and major public agencies including New Orleans, Atlanta, and Hawaii.”

“Candidate comes from SaaS and healthcare analytics rather than game development, but has strong end-to-end ownership experience building real-time, high-availability systems in Python/AWS. They highlight measurable impact across performance, throughput, uptime, and cost reduction, including queue optimization and predictive ICU utilization pipelines, and are looking to transfer that systems engineering foundation into Unity/gameplay work.”

“Chief Quantum Officer working at the intersection of quantum and AI, motivated by market opportunities to safely accelerate AI adoption. Four-time CIO/CTO with global technical and business leadership experience, plus exposure to the startup funding ecosystem through Newchip (Austin-based accelerator) and fund advisory work with AFG Partners in Hong Kong.”

“Program/operations leader with Booz Allen Hamilton experience turning around a near-canceled Millennium Challenge Account Indonesia procurement-training contract by implementing train-the-trainer, mentorship, and KPI/dashboard-driven execution. Currently supports the CFO organization at Berkeley Lab, translating high-level strategy into people/process/technology/governance plans with an executive operating cadence.”

“Automotive embedded product leader (player-coach/product-functional engineering) who helped ship a cybersecurity gateway ECU into production, owning architecture decisions, critical module reviews, and delivery. Demonstrated hands-on security/diagnostics expertise (ADA, RSA) and production defect ownership, plus experience tailoring quality-gate processes to speed variant delivery without sacrificing quality.”

“Game QA professional who shipped AAA (Overwatch 2) as quality feature owner for Campaign missions, owning high-risk areas like mission progression stability and preventing soft-lock/state desync issues. Also shipped Stormgate and caught a critical Steam achievement integration failure near RC by recreating the issue in an anti-cheat, live-mirroring environment and driving it through fix + regression verification.”

“Bootstrapped founder of a 1-year-old IT consulting/technology advisory firm with two active contract clients. Focuses on integrating business strategy with technology direction for organizations, growing through networking and targeted marketing (e.g., LinkedIn/Indeed) while maintaining a financially disciplined, client-first growth approach.”

“Former PwC Director with hands-on early-stage venture experience (e.g., BridgeLights, a big-data analytics concept for early fintech) spanning concept creation, platform architecture, and go-to-market experimentation. Strong focus on building scalable, modular data platforms with rigorous governance/compliance (data lineage, quality controls) and supporting technical diligence in investor-aligned environments.”

“Sourcing/procurement professional with Accenture experience supporting telecom infrastructure expansion, owning RFQs through delivery and managing 12+ vendors. Known for strong supplier performance management (scorecards, KPIs, corrective actions) delivering ~97% on-time material delivery while cutting expedited freight 13% and avoiding ~AUD 500K in delay costs; also brings supplier onboarding and capability/capacity assessment experience from Nestlé and Accenture.”

Briana Schoffman

Screened

Director-level Program & Professional Services Leader specializing in Enterprise SaaS and PMO

25y exp

“Entrepreneur who invested in a startup franchise concept and opened a dog-grooming store that became the most successful location in company history within one year, with projected revenue of $600K+ in 2026. Uses structured market sizing (PAM/TAM) and GTM thinking, and has executed cost-effective local marketing through grassroots social and community sponsorships.”

“Candidate is not currently pursuing a startup and has no familiarity with the VC/accelerator ecosystem, but shows a thoughtful founder mindset centered on building from scratch, evaluating user impact and implementation feasibility, and avoiding financially reckless entrepreneurship.”

“Compensation professional with hands-on experience supporting complex year-end salary, bonus, and equity payment processes from the comp side of payroll. Built an Excel-based modeling tool to implement a new target bonus structure for a Technology population, and shows strong strength in reconciling incentive budgets, handling late-cycle pay exceptions, and putting approval controls around high-risk compensation scenarios.”

“Senior software engineer with hands-on experience leading multi-agent AI workflows in financial trading infrastructure. Most notably, they applied a specialized agent setup on a high-frequency trading backend to cut delivery time from three weeks to ten days while improving validation against risk, performance, and compliance requirements.”

“AI Product Manager who also operates as a product marketer/CRM lifecycle lead, focused on behavior-driven onboarding and retention. Has delivered measurable growth through segmentation, multi-channel lifecycle programs, and experimentation (e.g., activation +23%, TTFV -30%, retention +14%), and led a cross-functional chatbot integration that improved course completion (+23%) while reducing refunds (-15%).”

“Commercial leader currently in building management systems/DDC controllers with a focus on the data center vertical; previously worked at Oracle. Has negotiated reserved-capacity style agreements in telecom (including a Vodafone Group deal using a retail-minus model) and has experience selling into Federal Government and Defense by shaping RFP outcomes through stakeholder alignment.”

“CTO/enterprise architect who stays hands-on in code while leading strategy, stakeholder alignment, and team scaling. At Eastridge, established product and technology vision/roadmap, built product engineering/strategy functions, and helped launch products into global markets; most recently led GenAI product design including tech selection, infrastructure, scalability, and observability.”

“People/operations leader with experience managing global teams and building product, design, and analytics organizations. Partnered directly with CEO and operating leadership to drive post-acquisition integration—unifying fragmented teams, systems, and cultures through a target operating model, clear roadmaps, and accountability frameworks while protecting company culture.”

“Engineering leader who proposed and delivered a new API-based document management platform to replace a vendor-dependent system, improving latency by ~1s and availability to 99.9% while migrating legacy data. Also drove Python-based automation of ~12 workflows via third-party API integrations and led an SSO/auth integration focused on backward compatibility and high login success rates.”

“Fractional CFO/operations advisor specializing in early-stage and scaling service businesses, combining Profit First-informed cash management with lean operating systems. Known for 360-degree operational audits and translating complex finance/ops into simple dashboards, scorecards, and process maps; delivered predictable cash flow and scalable structure within ~90 days for a fast-growing startup.”

MICHELLE WEATHERSBY

Screened

Executive Governance & Compliance Leader specializing in AI and multi-cloud security

TX & GA25y exp

“Operations and governance/risk consultant with experience across retail, beauty, construction, and consulting, drawing on prior work at MetLife, Fidelity, and BB&T. Known for replacing manual, spreadsheet-driven compliance/operations with centralized governance dashboards and scalable frameworks, and for mentoring early-stage founders using RACI, financial controls, and AI/automation to scale deliberately.”

Joseph Dowden

Screened

Director-level HR Business Partner specializing in org transformation and talent strategy

Basking Ridge, NJ14y exp

“HR/People operations leader with global scale experience supporting a 600+ person customer success org across US/EMEA/APAC, including 500+ compensation reviews and employee relations/investigations. Led a major transformation moving 75 employees into sales-compensated roles to improve retention and customer outcomes, and partnered with senior leaders on pay equity/eligibility work resulting in $34K in retro bilingual premium payments plus leader training for consistent application.”